Citizen fiscal watchdog John Marshall Lee often encourages City Council members to eat their OATs–open, accountable, transparent–while reviewing the city budget. In his latest address to the council Monday night, Lee suggests they coulda cut the budget they approved recently. From Lee:
The budget for the 2015-16 that the Mayor presented to you in a NO TAX INCREASE form was easy. But the Mayor’s budget did most of the work for you, didn’t it? No major cuts to make, except in your proposed schedule of meetings. What about next year is on the taxpayer mind? When you voted on the budget, did you feel sure of yourself? Or did you feel frustrated with the fact that the subject was too big and too confusing. Perhaps a cut is necessary?
When you walk away from a major decision like a budget and do not feel happy about it, it’s a problem. Is there anything you can do about it now, because it is an election year, both for those of you who will run again, or those who will not run? You still have 25% of your term left, an entire six months. What can you craft of lasting value for your successors and the people?
You can in very practical terms “cut the budget” and help the people gain an insight into City finances, right here, right now. In my hands is a monthly financial report of the City of Bridgeport. It is a report from a previous year in the same size and format as that which you receive today. If we want to cut this budget representation down to size, for you to get your arms around it, first we need to wrestle the staple holding over 80 pages together. Then we remove the final 20 pages containing info on the Board of Education, its Nutrition Program, and its Debt repayments. The Finance Department can supply all of this info simply on no more than 25 lines that will provide you with every answer to any question asked about BOE by City Council in the past five years, I suggest and eliminate thousands of wasted paper each year. Does this cutting cause a problem for anyone?
The Police and Fire Department budgets which have been bloated with sub-department categories intended only to confuse you and any public who chose to look at their finances take up some 13 pages with multiple redundant expense categories. They can be reduced for your specific review into six lines of financial data per department using the six categories the City uses currently in the budgets you just reviewed. Sound simple? It would be. Why not try this format for the remaining six months of the term and see if it works for you. The budgeted expense numbers in each category remain as you voted them last week. But your attention will start to move in a 20 page report to the variance columns as they should. When you look at a line in a department, for instance Information Technology and the Compensation Line 1, you may begin to wonder why this department has received budget approvals for $900,000 and more in recent years, and yet turns around and turns back $200,000 or more per year. Is this a problem? What is it? Do you know? If not, you can dig deeper and interview departments that are off target to gain a better understanding of City finances.
Or look at Lighthouse program. Early in the current year their leadership compensation for six people was $387,010. But the monthly report was noting that half of that number was surplus in the range of $190,000 to $200,000 indicating that they had found a way to cut as many as four people from their staff? Incredible, but is it more likely that Lighthouse had enough grants money to transfer the employees to a grants budget that you do not see. Why don’t you see the grants budget as representatives of the people? Why are you cut off from that information? And speaking of the Lighthouse budget, why did your B&A Committee accept another annual budget without receiving revenue numbers for this Department? They report $850,000 of fee revenue from their programs. Parents and families who may pay little in property taxes do pay fees for participation. Why is their contribution to the City budget not recognized?
Budget cutting to get your arms around it and provide an ability to understand better the subject of your votes? What do you say? It’s a green initiative, so the Mayor should love it. It’s focused on the six categories that OPM uses for transfers, isn’t it, so Mr. Sherwood should be happy. Include data of those employed currently in each department and all Grants info as well. Variance narratives can be explained in more complete form by Finance Department than currently. (For instance the Lighthouse compensation line is a 50% change and should have caught everyone’s attention much earlier this year but there is no narrative on this in any report.) This “cutdown budget report” can now show up on line each month just as the proposed budgets and Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports have for years now. Will voters and Council persons benefit? Can it be done? Certainly. Within six months? Affirmative. Will you do it? Time will tell.
John Marshall Lee, you wrote, the police and fire department budgets are made to confuse the public and the council on purpose. This practice has been going on for years.
Ron,
What I have done is ask your City Council reps and mine to take advantage of the “paper reduction” alternative the City performed for them at budget time. It can be done every month. It can be simply put on line, every month, saving much paper and informing the public. It can include grants info with a few pages more as well as how many employed are serving at the moment. Will you ask your Council person to raise the issue and make a valuable change for the City? Time will tell.
Although I don’t always see eye-to-eye with JML, I would like to see this same analysis to the board of education budget. The highest percentage of all tax dollars collected goes to them and more than half of the city (especially those of us without children) sees absolutely no benefit.
Brick,
Happy to see your two recent posts and know another longer-term reader has returned to the discussion process.
The Board of Education operating budget is published every other month and posted about two weeks after closing. Included on the site are various grant programs with revenues as well as numbers of employees.
What analysis do you wish? It is not clear to me. Actually the Board of Education budget received mostly State dollars of various types, and then local and Federal dollars. Most of the dollars from City taxpayers goes to operating the Cityside budget.
The Board of Education has a Finance committee that meets regularly. I have witnessed more knowledge, discussion and fiscal savvy at these meetings (though improvements are always welcome) than at almost any meeting of the City Council Budget and Appropriations Committee. Incidentally, if there is time, a member of the public may ask questions at the BOE meeting, whereas that is not allowed by the Chairs of the B&A in my experience.
Finally, Marlene Siegel, CFO of the school budgets answers questions to assist learning and increase understanding by the serious questioner. At this time I cannot think of a single person in the Finance Department, Office of Policy Management, or other fiscal area that shares that same attitude and practice. If anyone can think to volunteer such a name as a City fiscal resource, will you inform me? Time will tell.
Kudos to John Marshall Lee!!! He sounds like a really astute economist who genuinely wants to keep taxes down and reduce the confusion and waste of duplication of efforts.
In the recent poll as to the most important issue to Bridgeport residents, 48% said: High Taxes, so public servants need to be mindful of that.
Mr. Lee shows a real concern and a desire to make the budget readable and understandable to City Council Members and this is crucial! How can you vote a budget up or down if you cannot even begin to understand it?
Good work, Mr. Lee!!!
PavlickInTheNorthend,
Not an economist, or an accountant, or a municipal employee but just a taxpayer who started looking at Bridgeport financial doings some five years ago. I met Andy Fardy and the two of us with a few other supporters organized under the title Budget Oversight Bridgeport, also known as BOB, have taken the measure of many vulnerabilities in the City fiscal operations, errors that are purposeful or just sloppy and the failure in City operations to have any monitoring or oversight to represent taxpayers. Andy and I write on this blog regularly and for the most part are appreciated for the facts and connections we make about City operations that would not be known or understood without comment. Feel free to call if there is an area of particular concern or interest to point us in a new direction. The more watchdogs out there, the safer our dollars may become. Time will tell.