Thank you for volunteering. (From Framed Fathers.)
Plainfield Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs is not scoring any points with citizen-volunteers when she sends City Administrator Marc Dashield out to trash the efforts of the Citizens Budget Advisory Committee, or CBAC, (to which, by the way, she appointed members) who reviewed the proposed FY2009 budget.
Completely ignoring the City's late start on the process, and numerous glitches, confusion and embarrassments along the way -- including, but not limited to, the disappointing performance of Robinson-Briggs' hand-picked Director of Finance and Administration Douglas Peck, whom she summarily fired in the middle of the budget process -- Dashield attempts to defend the Administration's budget proposal by disparaging the CBAC recommendations.
Councilor Burney has done everyone a favor by posting Dashield's presentation online (see here).
Bernice Paglia at the Plaintalker (here) and Dr. Yood at Doc's Potpourri (here) have followed the budget process closely, and you can find my posts on the FY2009 budget gathered here.
The problem here is that if there are shortcomings in the CBAC review, they flow directly from the charge given to the group and oversight (or lack of it) lent by the Administration.
From everything I have heard, the group was pretty much left to its own devices.
This was a poor policy decision on the Administration's part, and Robinson-Briggs should take the rap for failing to give the group a mentor or go-to person to answer questions as work proceeded and steer them away from pitfalls.
(For example, while it is admirable to want to start the budget process early with informal preparation by departments and hearings by the Council as CBAC proposes, the actual budget document proposed by the Administration cannot be presented to the Council formally until the auditors close the books for the fiscal year. With a year ending June 30, that means an optimistic date would come near Labor Day. CBAC can hardly be blamed for not understanding this if no one pointed it out to them.)
I got a call from a reader yesterday who is quite perturbed at the 'Other' category in the budget documents. This merits a post of its own, but suffice it to say that categorizing large dollar amounts -- such as the $3M the CBAC noted -- as 'other' without any further differentiation leads people to suspect abuse, if not worse. More transparency would be a better policy, and it is understandable the CBAC would zero in on the 'other' category as the Council should also.
But who is to blame for that?
It is Robinson-Briggs and her Administration, after all, who prepared this budget.
Adopting a 'kill-the-messenger' attitude is symptomatic of Robinson-Briggs' approach to citizens if they do not see eye-to-eye with her in every regard.
How could anyone think that after you have asked busy people to take a big chunk of their valuable time out to work on reviewing the budget, as volunteers, with inadequate preparation, blaming them is a good idea?
This year, the CBAC got to review the budget.
Next year, they and the rest of the residents get to review Robinson-Briggs.
A point you would think she would keep in mind.
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5 comments:
If there was 1 raised eyebrow of shock and surprise in Plainfield at any of this news...they truly are stupid. Big Surprise from Mayor Sharon..but then again, not much has surprise some of us except for of course the absolute disregard for the public at large in Plainfield. Hopefully she will be gone soon....
As a member of the committee, I would also like to point out that while the timeline for the budget presentations were extended, the timeline to review the budget by the Committee was not.
Therefore, what should have been a 10-day review process became a 5-day review process with one-week end to devote to dissecting the budget.
It should be noted that the reason for the lack of extension - the council and the administration had to vote on the final budget by December 10th.
Jeanette Criscione
Thank you, Jeanette!
All of this would be moot if the process got started earlier -- even if informally, which is what it would have to be if begun before the auditors had finished their work.
An administration should have some idea of what it needs and wants to do in the next fiscal year well before the end of the current one.
The process of preparing the next's year's budget should start within the departments well before the current year ends. The administration should be internally reviewing and fine-tuning the budget well before they give it to the City Council. To wait to start work on the budget until after the audit makes no sense.
Sam R --
I think we're saying the same thing. We started one year in April -- informally -- when I worked for the City.
The problem with "early" formal presentation by the Administration is that it has to wait until the books are closed.
Then you have the matter of the state's aid figure, which comes later and later every year, meaning that waiting for it screws up any savings being planned.
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