Sunday, April 1, 2012

The Day - Rob Simmons: Is Obama preparing for war? | News from southeastern Connecticut

David Collins
Posted by Frank Smith at 1.4.12

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The New Britain Herald
Opinion
OUR VIEW: Time for a change

Sunday, April 1, 2012 3:13 PM EDT
Monday’s revelation that the New Britain Board of Finance and Taxation has recommended an 8.1 percent increase in the non-educatipn portion of the budget caught our attention, especially in light of the fact that Mayor Timothy O’Brien had pledged that taxes won’t rise this year.

As a result, we set out to learn a bit more about budget-building, which, it turns out, is carefully delineated in the city charter.

The process begins with the leaders of the city’s 30 departments, who request what they believe they will need to finance their mission for the coming year. Their spending plans are then scrutinized by a Board of Finance and Taxation appointed by the mayor under strict guidelines set out in the charter. Members must be bipartisan and they must have a specified level of financial expertise.

These unpaid citizens spent the last two months interviewing department heads about their requests and then, within their authority, whittled them down.

Certainly, the volunteer financial experts serve an important function by providing a line-by-line scrutiny of department budgets but they have no power, for example, to recommend consolidation of departments or other structural changes.

Because they are bound by managers’ blueprints of what it would take to run their departments, their final budget added up to a proposed tax increase of over 12 mils.

But taxpayers can breathe a sigh of relief, since Mayor O’Brien has reiterated his promise that there will be no tax increase in the budget he revises and presents to the Common Council on April 11,

While we applaud O’Brien for his stance on spending, we believe this process should be streamlined, beginning at the point where department heads prepare their budgets. The mayor, who sent each leader a letter instructing that they could cut expenses but not add to them, should work with department heads early on so the document presented to the finance board is a realistic one and reflects the mayor’s values. They can then send the scrutinized result to the Common Council for approval.

We recognize that the city charter outlines a different procedure but we believe it’s time for a change. The present system is not only cumbersome, but it produces unrealistic and even frightening results and prolongs an already lengthy process.

The task is made more difficult by the fact that, during the time frame set out by the charter, the city has no clear idea of how much state and federal money will be coming to it in aid and Educational Cost Sharing, since the General Assembly itself has made no final decisions, but we’d add that no one should be proposing a large budget increase now, especially when there is no way to pay for it.

The bottom line is, we should act to streamline the process, even if it means charter change — thoughtfully, but expeditously— judging each step on whether it make senses in 2012.

April 1, 2012 at 6:10 PM
Anonymous said...

I guess the editorial staff at the Herald would be delighted if the charter were revised to give Sherwood total control over the budget?

April 1, 2012 at 8:35 PM

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