The recent decision by the Springfield Finance Control Board to let city officials have a crack at shaping next year's municipal budget hardly comes across as a vote of confidence. The newly restored power comes with a list of conditions and a general tone of admonishment: The mayor and City Council can put together the budget, if they can make it balance, if they remember that they're not supposed to spend more money than the city takes in.
You might think that a group of elected public officials wouldn't need such hand-holding, that they would already have grasped the basics of how to put together a realistic budget. Ah, but then you wouldn't have been paying attention to Springfield's city government, which was stripped of its financial decision-making powers in 2004 after the city sank into an abysmal deficit. Many of the current councilors are the same ones who presided over the city's crash, and many have passed the Control Board's tenure in an uncooperative sulk. Their return to authority seems less a sign of faith in their abilities than a function of the inevitable: The board is set to expire in 16 months, leaving local officials in charge.
"I think it's the right decision," first-term Councilor Pat Markey says of the qualified return of local power. "If the plan is the Control Board is going to leave in the summer of 2009, they should take off the training wheels slowly. …
"The worst thing that could happen is the Control Board retains 100 percent until the last day, then turns it over to the City Council, which was never good at budgets and has forgotten whatever they knew," Markey adds.
Control Board members can be forgiven if they privately enjoy the spectacle of councilors who've criticized their every move struggling with a half-billion dollar budget in a city with limited resources and seemingly endless needs. The test begins, however, with new Mayor Dom Sarno, who will craft the budget the Council will ultimately vote on. At the top of Sarno's to-do list: finding the money to hire 50 new cops and rescind the residential trash fee, two of his top campaign promises.
Local officials have been anxious to demonstrate their commitment to fiscal responsibility in the aftermath of the Merrill Lynch fiasco, although their motives may be more political than pure. Late last year, the city lost $13.9 million in what officials called unduly risky and unauthorized investments made by Merrill Lynch. The firm insisted the investments were legal and were made with local approval, but reimbursed the money after the state AG announced an investigation.
Some local pols—notably, state Sen. Steve Buoniconti and Councilor Jim Ferrera—place the blame on the Control Board and, specifically, its executive director, Stephen Lisauskas, who knew the Merrill Lynch agent who handled the investment (a former co-worker of Lisauskas' wife). Lisauskas says he did nothing improper, and the Control Board apparently agrees, announcing after a closed-door meeting that he would retain his job. The Springfield Republican, meanwhile, slapped Buoniconti for launching a "disingenuous and politically self-serving" attack on Lisauskas. "We can only assume that [Buoniconti] either has decided to seek higher office or is attempting to collect a bounty for some special interest group," the paper wrote.
City Councilor Tim Rooke believes the accusations against Lisauskas come from "people who aren't informed" and others who are "politically motivated and are trying to protect local people." But, Rooke says, the buck stops with local people—namely, Treasurer Sal Calvanese, who, by law, has the ultimate authority in investment decisions. (To further complicate matters, Calvanese is Sarno's cousin, although he was hired under Sarno's predecessor, Charlie Ryan.) Rooke is pushing to tighten up the city's investment policies and wants the Department of Revenue to review what went wrong, with an eye to preventing future problems. "Let's move forward and put safeguards in place in the future," he says. "But there should be a review done of those individuals locally who had a responsibility but didn't uphold that responsibility."
The Council recently approved a proposal asking DOR to come in. Sarno, however, is cool to the idea, writing in a letter to the Council that the state Auditor is already reviewing the city's investment activities.
mturner@valleyadvocate.com
