Springfield City Councilor Tim Rooke was getting ready to head over to a budget meeting at City Hall last Tuesday when he decided to make a quick call to the mayor's office to let them know he was coming.
Rooke says he's always made it a point to show up at these early budget hearings, where department heads meet with the mayor and his financial team to present their funding requests for the coming year.
And, Rooke says, he's always made a "courtesy call" to the mayor's office first to ask that an extra copy of the budget proposal be set aside for him.
This year, though, an aide to Mayor Dom Sarno called Rooke back with a simple, one-word response: "No."
At first, Rooke says, he thought there had been some misunderstanding. Why would Sarno ban city councilors from a crucial part of the budget process, particularly when, for the first time since the state imposed the Finance Control Board on the city in 2004, the mayor and councilors will have a hand in shaping next year's budget?
But Rooke confirmed Sarno's message with the mayor's office, then with the city's Chief Financial Officer.
By City Council meeting time that evening, Sarno's budget ban was the hot topic. Councilor Rosemarie Mazza Moriarty asked her colleagues to endorse a letter to Sarno asking that the budget process be inclusive. Several councilors asserted that they'll attend the hearings, welcome or not.
"I don't understand [Sarno's] logic," Rooke said the next day. "The real meat and potatoes [of the budget process] is at these working sessions." They provide a chance for department heads to justify their funding requests, and for the mayor—and, ideally, the councilors—to ask detailed questions. From there, the financial officers draw up a budget that eventually comes to the Council for approval. "But by then it's pretty much on auto pilot," Rooke says.
Councilor Pat Markey agrees. "It's kind of silly for us not to be there if we're going to have something to do with the budget," he says. "What comes out of [these meetings] is everything but signed, sealed and delivered. It would add to the efficiency if councilors could weigh in on that process, rather than weighing in at one or two meetings just before the deadline."
As a city councilor, Sarno was known for his gregarious nature and impeccable manners (whether it was sincere or self-promoting depends on who you ask). So his closed-door approach to the budget is surprising. In a memo to the Council, Sarno referred to the "short space of time to conduct this important work" and asserted his authority to meet privately with the financial team and department heads "in an atmosphere that is frank and confidential."
In asserting that authority, Sarno is leaving himself open to bruising political attacks from councilors, a number of whom are already lining up as rivals for him in 2009. Several councilors have pointed out that the ban runs counter to the inclusive administration Sarno promised when he took office. Rooke has suggested that perhaps Sarno is so "inept" at budgeting that he doesn't want the councilors there to witness his performance.
But it's not just offended councilors Sarno has to worry about. By excluding elected representatives from the budget process he is, in effect, excluding city residents, too. Library Commissioner Sheila McElwaine says she's surprised by Sarno's position, especially given how well prepared and "collaborative" he'd been at a recent library meeting.
"Of course, the mayor can meet with department heads on an individual basis whenever he feels the need to talk about the budget or anything else; nobody challenges that," McElwaine told the Advocate. "So it's hard to see why he feels the need to challenge councilors on coming to budget hearings."
Banning the councilors from this step is inefficient, and will make it harder for them to understand the thought process behind the mayor's budget, she notes. And it certainly is not a promising sign as the Control Board prepares to hand back financial power to City Hall next summer. "[J]ust how does this silly flap make Springfield look in terms of being able to manage its own affairs after June, 2009?" McElwaine wonders.?
mturner@valleyadvocate.com
