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The Broken Budgeting Process
By Greg L | 5 March 2007 | Manassas City, Prince William County | 4 Comments
Budget season is upon us, and county boards and city councils are now going through the relatively pointless exercise of suffering through departmental presentations and reviewing the marketing efforts, disguised as budget proposals, of various agencies. The end result of this process is that elected officials effectively rubber-stamp the poorly-documented proposals that county and municipal employees draft. Not only is this annual exercise something that few citizens would ever want to be subjected to, but being held responsible for decisions based on such thin evidence must be gravely disturbing to elected officials.
Take for example Manassas City councilman Andy Harrover’s description of the process:
Well, we’ve had our first budget meeting and it was a real eye-opener. The process promises to be grueling. The first meeting where we covered 4 departments lasted 5 hours. Every department makes a presentation to the Council and we go through it all. If my experience so far is any guage, we will find things that need a second look and we will find some things that need to go.I suppose that my only beef with this particular process is that, by it’s very structure, it is intended to promote the status quo. This isn’t all bad as there is much the government does that is status quo: we have to keep the lights on, trash picked up, police on the street and the schools open. Those types of functions rarely change. However, the current budget process seems so insular that a status-quo outcome is all but assured. We need a process that is more reactive to the dynamic real-world outside the doors of City Hall. The council needs to consider strategic direction in advance, as a body.
If you can’t blind them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bulls**t, I suppose.
For Prince William County legislators, it’s probably even worse. I asked a few members of the Board of County Supervisors if they got more detailed information about the county spending plan than is provided to the citizens, and their negative response clearly showed a great deal of frustration with the process and it’s result. For example, if you look at the 2007 Spending Plan for Prince William County, there’s more in the way of non-financial statistics than there are actual budget line items. It’s a huge set of documents to wade through and make sense of, and when you start trying to make sense of them the actual detail that’s available is so improbably thin that it’s a wonder anyone would be willing to make decisions based on the information, much less be held to account for those decisions.
If we look at the spending plan for the Community Services Board, each entity within the CSB categorizes spending by “Personal Services”, “Fringe Benefits”, “Contractual Services”, “Internet Services”, “Other Services”, “Debt Maintenance”, “Capital Outlays”, and “Leases & Rentals”. Within those eight categories is hidden nearly twenty seven million dollars in public expenditures. Nowhere is there any detail on what the spending within these categories will be used for, but the submission for the Community Services Board nevertheless drones on for thirty-seven pages and discusses everything from the mission statements of the various entities within the Community Services Board, how many “clients” are served, and results of citizen surveys. To the extent that any financial detail is discussed, a section on “budget adjustments” lists various bits and pieces of spending that are entirely divorced from any of the budget information aggregated into categories. The clear pattern is that every dollar in the past was spent in exactly the right way, and we should only bother to spend time discussing the marginal changes from last year’s baseline.
I cannot imagine how any elected official could be comfortable participating in this charade of oversight authority. If a departmental manager in a business tried to justify his operating budget using this approach, which borders on willful obfuscation, they’d be fired instantly. Departmental budget presentations in municipal government are little more than marketing fluff which protects department leadership from having to answer tougher questions such as “Why are we spending $27 million on this?” or “If we’re spending $950,000 per year on the early childhood intervention program, why does the program completely suck?” (Yes, I do have a little experience with this program) Were I in the position of approving these budgets, I’d vote against them on the basis of not having sufficient information in order to adequately justify this level of public spending to the voters.
The theme that runs across localities is that municipal employees exercise far too much authority in establishing spending levels, and the voters are ultimately responsible for this state of affairs. To expect that Prince William County, which currently spends eight hundred and fifty-seven million dollars each year, can be adequately overseen by eight part-time supervisors is entirely unrealistic. The same situation largely exists in municipalities such as Manassas City. The staff has to take up the slack, and not only is budget development something in which the staff would certainly want to assume as much responsibility as possible, but the sheer drudgery of wading through a budget is probably the first thing that human nature would tempt elected officials to jettison. It’s not the most fun job in the world unless there’s some way you can benefit from being a big part of the process.
So how are we going to get the degree of oversight we need? Will it involve elected officials leaning on their staff more heavily in order to produce better results? Or is it time to compensate elected officials enough so they can afford to take on oversight responsibilities for these massive bureaucracies as a full-time occupation?
The opinions expressed here are solely the views of the author, and not representative of the position of any organization, political party, doughnut shop, knitting guild, or waste recycling facility, but may be correctly attributed to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. If anything in the above article has offended you, please click here to receive an immediate apology.
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According to an article in the MJM last week, due to the down turn in the real estate market, the City will get about the same amount of revenue from real estate taxes this year as they received last year. Of course this has caused some concern with the City leadership(there was no concern last year). However, unlike last year, when the tax rate was dropped, this year, the City Manager has proposed an increase in the rate, and some budget cuts. The funny thing is that last year, the City Manager proposed eleven new positions for the City, including an assistant for him. Of course some of the positions were not approved by the Council.
What I do not understand is how the City Manager could propose eleven new positions last year, and then wanting to increase the tax rate this year, along with making cuts this year with about the same amount of money.
Of course it is shame that for the last three years or four years the City could not pass on a real tax cut to us, and it appears that chance is over for now.
Calling for cuts in a government budget is easy in the
abstract but often difficult in the specific.
For example, at a budget work session last night
the Manassas Registrar’s office noted that the
guideline of a flat budget supported only two
elections while the next fiscal year will
have four elections - net added cost - $36,100.
Items like this pop-up throughout the budget process-
it isn’t waste, stupidity or malice - it is life. Don’t
want to pay for the increase? What is your option?
People in office hold the public trust and must be
guardians of the treasury, but public trust also
means doing what has to be done for the long
term good of the community.
There’s no way to identify where potential cuts can be made unless you get enough detail about the budget to see where efficiencies can be obtained.
For example, how much does the city spend on software licenses when they could be using open-source software instead? What is the average per-seat cost for IT technical support? Is it higher or lower than what it would cost if contracted out? What are the maintenance costs for city-owned vehicles? Are we replacing them at the right rate in order to achieve the lowest overall costs, or should that replacement rate be adjusted?
These questions cannot be anwered when all we’re doing is looking at what the changes in last year’s budget should be. And evaluations like those are where savings can be incurred without cutting services or capabilities.
Anytime a current budget is used as the benchmark the process is broken. It defies all common sense associated with the business approach of zero based budgeting. That said, the larger issue is the scope of services local Government provides. As pointed out in the blog from Mr Harrover, we lack a strategic approach or vision to dealing with this. Case in point, I’d gladly pay more in taxes than the whole lot I already do, if I thought we’d solve overcrowding, gangs and the issues that are deteriorating the City.
My new peeve; signs in Spanish. The business takes our US currency. There’s no intention to assimilate and these businesses are only expanding the huge divide that exists. If we let businesses advertise in their native language then our Government should stop pandering and eliminate bilingual staff and translators.
Notice I linked sign ordinances to staff requirements; it’s the big picture perspective. We’ve got to quit focusing on the today or there will be no tomorrow for the City of Manassas.