Has the city of Springfield finally seen the end of the Great Trash Fee War?
Last week, the City Council rejected a proposal by Mayor Domenic Sarno to extend the much-despised residential trash fee, instead supporting a competing proposal, by Council President Jose Tosado, to eliminate the fee at the end of the fiscal year.
The trash fee was first instituted in 2006 by the state-imposed Finance Control Board, which was created in 2004 to clean up years of fiscal mismanagement that had left the city with a deficit of more than $40 million. Since then, the fee has served as effective ammunition in a number of political battles—most recently, between Sarno and Tosado, who’s expected to challenge Sarno for the mayor’s office next year.
If last week’s trash votes were the unofficial start of the 2011 mayor’s race, then Tosado, it appears, has the early lead.
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Ironically, Tosado was one of the people who created the trash fee in the first place. As Council president at the time, he sat on the Control Board when the fee was instituted, and voted in favor of it.
But last month, Tosado announced that he felt the time had now come to eliminate the fee.
“Today, while still facing economic challenges, we are in a much better position,” Tosado said in announcing his plan to ask the Council to do away with the fee. With the city looking at a projected financial reserve of about $44 million, he said, “It’s time to do the right thing again and rescind this fee to give our citizens a needed break and restore their confidence in local government.”
Not long after Tosado’s call to end the fee, Sarno countered with his own proposal to extend the fee for two more fiscal years. Referring to the “continued fragile financial situation of the city and state,” the mayor said the city could not afford to do away with the revenue the fee generates.
“The loss of $3.7 million would result in major cuts to other city services and it is not the fiscally responsible thing to do. We must not return to past fiscal practices which had placed the City of Springfield on the verge of bankruptcy and prompted the creation of the Finance Control Board,” Sarno said in a press release.
It was a politically risky move for Sarno. The trash fee was widely criticized by residents, who for years had had their garbage pickup covered under their property taxes, and were unhappy to suddenly find themselves with yet another bill to pay. For frustrated residents, the fee represented one more instance of being nickeled-and-dimed while they watched their quality of life decline; for a number of politicians, meanwhile, killing the fee served as an easy populist issue to rally behind—whether for sincere or opportunistic reasons.
Making the matter even stickier for Sarno was the fact that in 2007, during his first campaign for mayor, he ran on a platform that included eliminating the fee. After defeating incumbent mayor Charlie Ryan (who had supported the fee as a necessary revenue generator), Sarno then changed his position, saying that he now believe the city needed the trash fee—a change of heart Sarno’s critics and political foes won’t let him live down.
Sarno acknowledged the political aspects of the issue in his call to extend the fee, saying, “I am not willing to make a decision that is based on politics instead of good governance, a decision that is sure to hurt the citizens of Springfield in the long run.”
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In terms of political fallout, it’s Sarno himself who stands to be most hurt by last week’s votes. His proposal to extend the fee failed to get a majority of votes from councilors; instead, the Council split on the question five votes to five, with three councilors abstaining. Meanwhile, Tosado’s competing proposal to eliminate the fee passed by a seven-to-three vote, with the same three abstentions.
The mayor, however, is not walking away from the battle just yet. After the vote, Sarno vowed to consult city attorneys and financial staff to see what recourse he might have to counter the Council’s vote.
While the trash fee fight pits Sarno most directly against Tosado, his presumed foe in next year’s race, the mayor aimed particularly strong criticism at the three councilors who declined to vote on either trash proposal: Ward 2 Councilor Michael Fenton, Ward 6’s Keith Wright, and Ward 7’s Tim Allen. “You are elected to vote and make difficult decisions whether up or down,” Sarno said in a Springfield Republican article. “I’m just astonished.”
Fenton stands firmly by his decision. Neither Sarno’s nor Tosado’s proposals came with supporting documentation showing what their fiscal effects would be, leaving councilors with no data on which to base their decisions, said Fenton, who serves on the Finance Committee.
At the meeting, Fenton made motions to send both proposals to committee for further study; neither motion got enough votes to pass. After the meeting, he expressed frustration that the Council was being asked to take up the trash issue at a time of year when it’s already busy with pressing issues, including setting the new tax rate, and suggested the motives behind the competing proposals were based in politics, not sound policy.
“There was no need for that issue to be on our agenda in December,” Fenton told the Advocate. “That’s the gunshot to start the politics for the [2011] mayoral season. … It was political theatrics, and I didn’t want any part of it.”
