After five years of overseeing the city's finances, Springfield's Finance Control Board has packed up and moved out this week—leaving behind a politically charged atmosphere that will only intensify as the November election approaches.
Among the parting gifts received by the Control Board was a grumpy letter from city councilor (and mayoral candidate) Bud Williams. Last week, Williams sent an open letter to Control Board Chairman Chris Gabrieli criticizing the body for failing to provide a final 2010 budget to the City Council with just days to go before the end of the fiscal year.
"At this critical time for Springfield, it now appears the City Council will be completely out of the decision-making process relative to the budget," Williams wrote. "I suggest to you this is not the way to transition to local control of city government."
This year's is the first budget process since 2004 that the mayor and Council have overseen at least semi-independently, albeit with the Control Board closely watching. It's been a slow and difficult process, in large part because of prolonged uncertainty about how much local aid Springfield (and indeed all municipalities) will receive from the state.
Late last week, the city finally got the news that it will see its local aid cut by an additional $1.6 million in the new fiscal year. With that information in hand, Sarno released a revised $528.5 million budget—$1 million less than the provisional budget he released back in May.
While the city lost more than 140 municipal jobs in fiscal 2009 (some by layoffs, some by positions not being filled), the new budget calls for no layoffs—something that, presumably, Sarno hopes voters will remember come the November election.
Sarno's budget also knocks $10 off the current, controversial $90 trash fee. (Senior citizens will be charged only $60.) That token gesture, however, will probably do little to appease voters who remember that Sarno promised to eliminate the fee entirely during the 2007 election, only to backtrack from that position once he was elected.
Under the mayor's plan, the city will compensate for the additional loss in state aid through "efficiencies" and—Sarno hopes—through a new local meals tax option recently approved by the Legislature. The meals tax, which City Hall estimates would bring $1 million into city coffers, needs local approval. At deadline, the Control Board was expected to vote on the matter at its final meeting on June 30.
That's sparked protest from Williams, who thinks the city's elected officials—not the departing Control Board—should decide whether to adopt the tax.
In his letter, dated June 25, Williams complained that Sarno and his financial team had yet to brief councilors on the latest state aid figures or present them with a final budget.
"I am further disappointed with the lack of transparency into the budgetary process," wrote Williams, hitting on a particularly sore point for councilors. Last year, Sarno banned councilors from attending preliminary budget hearings, where city department heads present their funding requests to the financial team. While he (wisely) lifted that ban this year, this budget cycle could hardly be described as a joint mayor-council effort, as tensions remain high between Sarno and several councilors.
Williams' letter also called for a "major restructuring of city services" and lamented that the "City Council will not be able to even make recommendations for the coming year in this regard."
(If Williams himself has any recommendations concerning what that "major restructuring of city services" would look like, he's keeping it to himself. His letter offered no suggestions as to what those presumably sweeping changes would entail.)
While Williams' letter is addressed to Gabrieli, its true target, of course, is Sarno, who, as mayor, holds a seat on the Control Board. Although Williams sat by silently during the mayoral administration of his pal (and campaign donor) Mike Albano—whose "leadership" helped cause a $40 million municipal deficit and the implementation of the Control Board—he's shown a keen interest in city finances since deciding to run against Sarno.
Well, maybe not that keen. As Sarno's spokesman pointed out in response to the councilor's criticisms, Williams did not attend any of this year's departmental budget hearings.
Indeed, the complaining heard from certain councilors that they've been cut out of important decisions during the Control Board's tenure has been hard to take, given how little interest some have shown when it comes to the hard work of fixing the city's daunting fiscal problems—not to mention their complicity in creating those problems.
