Robinson-Briggs budget proposal sloppy and deceptive. On purpose?

The inscription above City Hall cites the building as
"dedicated by [the people] to the cause of just and capable government."

The Robinson-Briggs budget proposal presentation for FY2009 evoked visible signs of anger and consternation among Council members at Thursday's budget hearing, according to phone conversations I had after the meeting (which I did not attend).

Members of the Citizens Advisory Commission had privately expressed concerns to me over the inability of the Robinson-Briggs administration to provide accurate and timely information to them previously.

But Thursday evening's meeting seems to have gone over the top.

Among the issues that bear looking into are --

• Robinson-Briggs' effort to deceive the Council over secretly funding the Dudley House drug rehabilitation program (which has non-Plainfield and non-Union County clients) out of the City budget after failing to get grant monies to run it;
  
  
• Robinson-Briggs' failure to advise the Council in advance that the much-vaunted 'shared services agreement' with the school district for information technology services had foundered and is considered dead as of August, a revelation which appeared as news to the Council;
  
  
• Robinson-Briggs' attempts to portray her reduced staffing of the Police Division as an 'improvement' over the McWilliams' administration, for which she drags out the old, discredited canard of '18 police layoffs' (which Courier reporter Mark Spivey innocently reported as fact in his story on Wednesday's meeting which can be found here); and finally,
  
  
• Robinson-Briggs' budget proposal misstates expected receipts in a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) program by a figure in excess of $1.5 million. This means that the shortfall in revenues will have to be made up. The choices are: 1) through a tax increase, 2) through a one-time fix such as the sale of an asset [which the State frowns on], or 3) dipping into the City's 'rainy day' funds.

According to members of the Citizens' Budget Advisory Commission, these are only the latest bloopers. What intrigues me is that once the State's Department of Community Affairs reviews the budget proposal and bounces it back for needed corrections, time will be lost, more than likely running the projected adoption process into overtime.

The shambles in the budget process that is being revealed is particularly striking since no one can recall such a mess during the tenures of previous finance directors Ron West or Tom Morrison III, which takes us back to at least 1994.

Robinson-Briggs' new finance director, Douglas Peck, may yet rue his comment to the Plaintalker last July (see here) --

Peck said he sees as the biggest issue that decisions are being made about the budget “that are not informed decisions.”

All of which leads me to wonder if Robinson-Briggs intends to delay the budget's adoption to minimize the effects of proposed program and staff changes, rendering them effectively moot, as has been the case with past budgets.

In any event, dear taxpayer, it is your wallet that is being picked.

Be watchful!

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-- Dan Damon

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