Yesterday, the Board of Estimates managed to make a mountain out of a molehill when they considered the resolution I submitted asking for suggestions for improvements to the budget process. And the Mayor and Alder Brandon got snarky.
Ald. Brandon led the charge to . . . I’m not sure what. It was clear Alder Brandon was upset that the Common Council Organizational Committee and not the Board of Estimates was chosen to look at the changes. There’s a reason for that. The Common Council Organizational Committee (CCOC) is the committee that makes recommendations about how the Council functions, it is completely made up of alders and it is much more informal which more easily allows for mayoral and comptroller staff input. This is compared to the more formal televised Board of Estimates meetings. Also, 3 of the 7 members of CCOC are members of the Board of Estimates. Additionally, we explained that likely there would be a council president workgroup and that Ald. Verveer promised to appoint any alder who wanted to serve, regardless of who was on CCOC, since he has the ability to do that and the CCOC would likely agree.
That wasn’t enough for Alder Brandon, who got all snarky, slightly belligerent and not very helpful. After a few classic indignant Brandon speeches, I had to ask what he actually wanted to have happen, because we were essentially giving him the everything that he seemed to want – the opportunity to be on the committee and changes to the language below. I gotta admit, the language was a moot point and process is one of those issues where about 5 people are probably interested in being on the committee and committing time to working on this issue, so Alder Brandon agreeing to be on the committee was just fine.
The other hilarious thing that Alder Brandon insisted on doing was removing the language in the resolution that made suggestions about the solution. I agreed and the body considered it friendly – no controversy. It was really a moot point, the suggestions were obvious and likely to be considered no matter if they were in the resolution or not, the offending language that was removed is as follows:
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that recommendations to improve the process may include, but are not limited to, the following items:
a) Holding the department briefings on the budget before the full Common Council instead of before the Board of Estimates.
b) Holding the budget amendment process over a few weeks as opposed to a few days, possibly making amendments immediately after the night a department presents its portion of the budget.
c) Moving the amendment deadline up so that the public and alders have more time to consider the amendments.
d) Creating a process for amendments that are presented at the end of the budget process.
e) Limiting budget meetings to no longer than eight hours at a time.
f) Recommendations about the set-up of the room in which the budget meetings are held.
g) Recommendations about rotating the order in which the departments present and then are considered.
h) Recommendations about the public input process and a process for making amendments following the public input process.
Turns out, Alder Brandon believed, based on what the Mayor’s office told him, that I only put that language in there to make a point to the media. First of all, if that was the point, the media certainly missed it! That’s likely due to the second issue which is that I did ZERO media work on this. No press release, no phone calls, nothing. But someone was obviously promoting it to the press. Channel 27/47 was waiting in the wings for the meeting to get over with so that they could interview me about it even tho the resolution was only hours old and I only mentioned it to a few people. It thought it was strange as I considered this a boring, housekeeping item. Turns out, I think the Mayor’s office had called them since Twigg mentioned to me that it was going to be the lead story for 27/47. Talk about desperate for content.
Anyways, now, on to the snarky Mayor who post-trolley has found a new obsession with opposing anything I propose or even support. You might have noticed that the mayor seems to be obsessed with one alder who sponsored 44 amendments. In fact, he has mentioned it again and again and again and again and again, but I can’t figure out who that is. He’s apparently keeping score and according to him Alder Brandon holds the all-time record for submitting the most amendments. Also, Alder Brandon also holds the all-time record for the most withdrawn amendments. He also is upset with the, what he says was over $1M in proposals in the CDBG and Office of Community Services offices. He also rattled off numbers about how many amendments have been made in the past and several other trivial things. So, I decided to do a little number crunching myself. Now, I don’t have several staff that get paid almost $1M per year, but a real quick analysis by myself of the 153 amendments (Mayor said 120?) made at the Board of Estimates and Common Council is as follows:
Total Amendments Sponsored: Operating and Capital Budget, BOE and Common Council
3 – Skidmore, Pham-Remmele
4 – Judge
5 – Gruber, Clausius
9 – Bruer, Schumacher
10 – Kerr
11 – Webber, Palm, Compton
17 – Solomon
18 – Sanborn
19 – Cnare
20 – Clear
25 – Rummel
27 – Mayor
36 – Brandon
41 – Rhodes-Conway
60 – Verveer
67 – Konkel
Lead Sponsors of Amendments: Operating and Capital, Common Council only
0 – Skidmore, Gruber, Palm, Compton, Clausius
1 – Pham-Remmele, Schumacher, Judge
2 – Webber, Rummel, Bruer
3 – Kerr
6 – Solomon
10 – Sanborn
12 – Mayor, Cnare, Clear
15 – Brandon
21 – Verveer
23 – Rhodes-Conway
28 – Konkel
I really don’t know where the Mayor got his numbers, but he’s had trouble with that ever since his race for Mayor. A few things stand out for me:
- For a Mayor who worked on the budget for 4 to 5 months before it was public, I can’t help but noting that he still sponsored 27 amendments to his own budget, 12 of which he is the lead sponsor. That may be a record in itself.
- The Mayor is in the top 5 people who made changes to the budget. Followed by Brandon, Verveer, Rhodes-Conway and myself.
- Not one alder proposed 44 amendments.
Additionally, instead of crunching numbers, maybe the Mayor should consider his role in the budget process. A few things that could be done differently:
- Meet with alders before the budget comes out and talk to them about what they are expecting in the budget. This was usually done in groups of 5.
- When he did meet with some alders individually, he could have told them that he wanted them to bring their budget suggestions instead of just mentioning it out of the blue without giving the alders time to think about it.
- Worry less about the press and the spin, worry more about the functioning of the government.
- Follow the laws, don’t make them up.
And, now that I’ve caved in to the snark as well, let me just say a few more things.
- I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Of course the Mayor is going to say that the alder that proposed 44 amendments should exercise restraint. What he fails to mention is that if he’s talking about me, I supported over $7M in cuts to the Capital budget and $1M in cuts to the Operating Budget.
- If the budget is the most important thing that we do during the year and is a statement of our values, if people disagree about the values, there will be conflict. And along with conflict, there will be amendments.
- The Mayor made this budget about CRIME – also recognized as “quality of life” issues. The Mayor’s resolution to these issues was a costly addition of 30 police officers that are questionably sustainable in the future and will lead to additional costs in municipal court time, city attorney time and county costs in court and jail time. Others may have felt that there were less costly preventative measures that could have been taken.
- This is not the state government and stop trying to make the City run like State government. It’s hardly a model to be aspired to.
- When you bill the budget as the most important thing we do in the City, you can’t expect there not to be discussion, and disagreement, about it.
Ok – that’s it for today. I’ve promised a short analysis of what happened at some point and I’ll try to get some links thrown in here as well, but I’m having a staffing issue at work.
