It’s about accountability.
That’s what some 30 residents told county legislators at
their meeting on September 14. The speakers were opposing a Republican plan to
move the county executive’s deadline for submitting a budget from mid-October
to mid-November. That would leave only a month for the legislature to
deliberate on a budget and adopt it. And it would mean the budget wouldn’t be
released until after the November election.
The move was recommended by County Executive Maggie
Brooks’ Budget Advisory Team as a way to keep party politics out of the budget
process. Critics say the reverse is true: that it will stifle healthy political
dialogue and keep residents from knowing about the county’s finances before
they vote.
At Tuesday’s legislature meeting, advisory committee
co-chairs Robert Fischer and Louise Woerner spoke in favor of the change. But
Chris Hilderbrant, Director of Advocacy at the Center for Disability Rights,
summed up the prevailing mood of the other speakers: “I actually kind of like
knowing what my elected officials are doing with the budget before the
election,” he said, “so I can boot the buggers out if so needed.”
On the heels of a few dozen such speeches, Republican
Majority Leader Bill Smith did not seek a vote at last week’s meeting. “I think
that legislators are entitled to hear from a broader and more representative
cross-section of our community in this matter, and to allow for that I decline
to move to lift it from the table,” he said, ending the session.
Democratic Minority Leader Stephanie Aldersley was more
cynical about Smith’s move. “I certainly would like to believe that the public was
heard,” she says, “but I suspect that they didn’t have the votes.”
So what’s at stake?
Democrats and other critics charge that delaying the
budget date until after elections would prevent residents from making an
informed vote in November. Politicians could make unpopular budget decisions
with electoral impunity, they say.
Smith sharply disagrees. “It’s a completely bogus
argument,” he says, since legislators aren’t required to adopt a budget until
mid-December. “The budget is not usually voted on until after the election,” he
says. “It’s almost always a month to five weeks” before a budget vote is taken.
That would mean that the only politician who might
benefit from the delay would be the county executive, who would not have to
unveil an unpopular budget before an election. And that would be a campaign
issue only once every four years, when the executive’s term is expiring.
Not so, says Aldersley. “I’ve always had to take a
position on the budget before election day,” she says. Although the legislature
usually acts on the budget after elections, media and constituents press
legislature candidates for a position during the campaign — and hold them
accountable for their votes after it.
Aldersley predicts that the public won’t like the next
county budget. “I think that’s part of why the Republicans want to move it to
after the election,” she says. “I think they want to raise taxes.”
The possibility of service cuts could be what brought out
many of the speakers Tuesday. Most were county employees (and their union
leaders) or representatives from the county’s social and human services
community, some of which receive funding from the county.
Smith says such groups are partly to blame for bloated
government spending. They lobby hard and effectively for unnecessary services,
he says, for which the county foots the bill.
“From my perspective, that’s almost a Good Housekeeping
Seal of Approval on the budget submission date,” says Smith of the measure’s
opponents.
But Aldersley contends that since tax hikes are
unpopular, those groups actually stand to lose if the public has more time to
react to the proposed budget. “These people [county employees, their unions,
and social-service agencies] have nothing to gain by having the budget known by
the public,” she says.
Aldersley says her biggest beef with the proposal,
though, is that it changes the balance of power between branches of government.
The time available for the legislature to study the budget would be halved if
the new date were accepted, she says. “It really puts a lot of power in the
executive’s hands,” she says.
It takes about three weeks for constituents’ feedback on
the budget to trickle in, says Aldersley. Some local non-profits speaking at
last week’s legislature meeting echoed that, saying they needed time to analyze
the budget before giving their comments to legislators.
Aldersley says she believes Republicans will convene a
special meeting once they get enough votes within their own ranks to pass the
proposal. They’ll have to hurry. For the resolution to take effect this year,
it would need to be passed soon: Brooks’ next budget is due by the
legislature’s meeting on October 12.
This article appears in Sep 22-28, 2004.
