Balancing budgets
on the back of democracy
Please forgive any lapses in this week’s paper. Not only are we down a reporter. (A candidate to replace him is coming this weekend.) A lot of last-minute work also is being done remotely, from a laptop in Lawrence.
Before I knew exactly when Finn Hartnett would be ending his yearlong fellowship, I accepted an invitation from the Dole Institute of Politics to talk Tuesday night about journalism’s impact on communities and society.
Not only did I not know Finn wouldn’t be with us. I didn’t know Marion City Council would be meeting at that exact moment to do its first and only real examination of a budget scheduled to be adopted in final form Monday.
What was published in last week’s paper was merely a confusing top-line summary. Every planned expenditure for the city’s gargantuan general fund was lumped together in a single number. To truly evaluate any budget, you need to look at line items that make up the general fund — how much goes for police, streets, administration, parks, etc.
The full budget additionally breaks these down by personnel expense, supplies, services, etc. Those numbers provide the only way anyone can reasonably evaluate a spending plan.
When I heard last week that the city’s accountant had finished making sure everything added up, I had hoped these numbers might be made available. But instead of emailing the document last week, the accountant apparently planned to simply bring copies of it to Tuesday night’s meeting.
That will severely restrict opportunities to determine what specific spending is planned — and potentially to identify opportunities for savings — and instead focus all attention on just one number: the proposed tax rate.
The council decided months ago, before it knew what it needed to spend money on, that it would tax at the same rate even though doing so would increase revenue — and most property tax bills — by double digits because of ever-rising appraisals.
Lost in all of this will be the answer to a key question: Exactly who decided what the city’s specific spending priorities will be? The council clearly wasn’t involved. Even the administrator wasn’t there for the entire process. Maybe it was just the city clerk and fellow employees.
The answer is important. For the next 12 months, whenever a taxpayer or council member questions some expenditure, the answer will be the same: It was in the budget the council approved. But if the council didn’t actually study what’s in the budget, how can rubberstamping a proposal at the last minute be deemed studious approval?
Budgeting raises many questions. The city, for example, has budgeted for three years for five full-time police officers, but it has never had five at once. Sometimes it has had as few as two. Where did the money for the extra salaries go? It didn’t go into someone’s pocket. It stayed in the general fund. But what was it used for in the general fund?
Likewise, what happened to money budgeted for an economic development director we haven’t had or to raises doled out to people who temporarily filled higher-ranking positions until permanent replacements could be hired?
Looking at budget details undoubtedly would raise other questions, but we’re unlikely to get answers. So much of our democracy has become controlled by people other than elected representatives that many citizens have given up and decided to vote for candidates who either will blow things up or will cover up with Band-Aids of civility deep wounds that need to be treated.
Journalism, I planned to say at the Dole Institute, can draw attention to these issues, but in the end citizens, taxpayers, and especially voters have to solve the problem.
— ERIC MEYER