By Bill Oakey – June 10, 2015

Part One

I guess today is Wednesday. That’s what it says on the special clock that somebody gave me for a retirement gift in 2007. It shows the days of the week instead of the time, in case you forget. In any case, I got up early this morning so I could eat breakfast downtown and then head to the City Council Budget Work Session.

It was held in a small room across from the City Council chambers. The tables are arranged in a square, so the Council Members can face each other. Looking at that scene made me wonder if the Council Members will be pleased to face the taxpayers when the long hot summer is over and the budget is finalized. I was the first one in the room, except for the guys setting up the video equipment.

Before the meeting got started, I received a bit of very exciting news. It has to do with a newly calculated budget surplus, left over from the current budget. As soon as I receive the details on that, I will post them here. But the subject of budget surpluses leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Last year the Austin American-Statesman reported a $14 million surplus. I urged the readers of the blog to contact the City Council members and implore them not to spend it. We succeeded on that front. The Council pulled back their spending requests and agreed to leave the surplus in a reserve fund. Affordability advocates wanted it to be saved for taxpayer relief, or perhaps transferred to the Water Utility to soften their upcoming rate increase. But neither of those options took place. The surplus was tossed into the available spending pot for last summer’s budget talks. In fact the decision on what to do with the surplus was never mentioned publicly. The existing Financial Services Dept. policy and the city ordinance for budget amendments lack sufficient taxpayer protections. That’s why I have included it in my list of reform proposals.

OK, so back to the square table in the small room and the Budget Work Session. It was not at all what I expected. In my imagination, the Council Members would sit down and start sharing ideas on how to meet the needs of the City, while in the midst of our serious affordability situation. I had hoped that they would bring up cost-saving proposals and perhaps debate them. Those kinds of talks will probably come later. At least I hope so. This morning’s session was a very long staff presentation on their vision of the spending needs for the upcoming fiscal year. I quickly found myself awash in a sea of acronyms and buzzwords. I did not have access to one of the big loose leaf binders that adorned the spaces at the table.

But here’s the bottom line. The word “affordability” never came up. Not even once while I was there. It was all about millions upon millions of dollars in spending needs. Certainly, there will be needs for funding the various departments. But as a retired State employee, I am used to the concept of comparative budget scenarios. There is a baseline budget request that reflects very little increase in overall spending, and then 2 or 3 higher spending options to evaluate as alternatives. If the City has a budget review process of that nature, I am not aware of it. After watching and listening to the proceedings for about an hour, I exited the room and went home.

Part Two

I had a 3:00 afternoon meeting with the Policy Director in Council Member Ellen Troxclair’s office. It was very productive. In fact, I learned a great deal about the complexities of some of my proposals. There are questions to be answered and details to be sorted out. But the willingness of people on the new City Council to consider major reforms is extremely gratifying in its own right. This was a full one-hour meeting. I came away armed with the knowledge that if there are hills to climb, I now have a better map to approach those hills, and perhaps even the right tools to climb partway up some of them. That’s a very good feeling.

Part Three

At 5:27 I received an email from the Budget Adviser to Mayor Steve Adler. He requested some information on my proposal to implement the “Honolulu Plan” to control funds budgeted for vacant staff positions. His timing was great because I had just been informed at my last meeting that there was a potential pitfall. I decided to take a stab at solving the stumbling block, and to lay out an example of how one City department might comply with the new guidelines. But first, you can take a look at the Honolulu news article from 2013 that sparked my proposal. Their City Council grew weary of City departments taking money budgeted for vacant staff positions and spending it for other purposes. They even invoked the term “slush fund.” The situation in Austin has been very similar, with the staff vacancy rate approaching 10% of the total workforce. The reform could yield several millions of dollars in annual savings.

Here is my response to the information request from the Mayor’s Office: