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Legislature Requests County Executive Yield Fiscal Control to Legislature
Bondi demurs in effort to protect services funded by taxpayer dollars
by Margaret Sternberg
Basing their request on what is estimated to be a $2.5 million - $3 million shortfall in the County's sale tax revenue at the close of 2007, and a projected county real property tax increase in 2008 of 66 percent, the Audit Committee of the County Legislature has requested that County Executive Robert Bondi execute a 7.07B certification. Signing the certification allows the Legislature to re-open the County's 2007 budget and is executed when there is a shortfall in one or more revenue items implying, by extension, that the budget will fail to meet projections.
The signing allows the legislature to make modifications to the budget so that projected revenue shortfalls will be met by lowered expenses. The administration, represented by Finance Commissioner William Carlin, said they were not prepared to sign the certification at this time.
Much of the May 29, 2007 legislative committee meeting focused on whether there were grounds for invoking the provision, and that decision effectively decides who exerts control of the 2007 budget for the remainder of the year. If a 7.07B is signed, the Legislature is then permitted to go back into the budget to make cutbacks, after first receiving suggestions from the County Executive as to where the cutbacks should be made. However, the Legislature is not required to follow the County Executive's suggestions in making final decisions. The County Executive can veto any Legislative resolutions, but can be overridden by a majority of six legislators.
Legislature Chairman Dan Birmingham said "Our hands are tied…to re-address the 2007 budget wholesale" without the certification being signed. Birmingham went on to say the County was approaching the "breaking point" because it was "obvious" the sales tax receipt projections would not be met.
Commissioner Carlin, who responded that historically the County has based this type of decision not upon specific revenue, but upon a "budget on whole basis," added that despite sales tax revenue having been about $4 million short last year, the budget came in as expected. Carlin suggested that augured against the 7.07B being executed.
Committee Chairman Tony Hay said that because it looked as though the County would not get the sales tax increase it had requested but the sales tax renewal would pass, and that would mean the County would then be considering a 44 percent rise in the county portion of real property taxes, the County needed to start looking at the budget issue now and go to a "wholesale review of the budget and start making cuts." Hay said he could not understand the reluctance of the Administration.
Birmingham pressed the issue, reading from the Charter that "If at any time during the fiscal year it appears that revenues available will be insufficient to meet the amount appropriated," adding that in a strict reading "clearly, on its face, even if we look at the budget as a whole, our revenues are going to be insufficient…" Birmingham and Carlin then could not agree as to whether the cutting of expenses should be considered in the interpretation of the law, with Carlin eventually suggesting that he would return to County Executive Bondi to see "if he wants to read it that way, and where he wants to go from there."
County Executive Bondi later explained that the Administration had held a number of public forums as well as making surveys of the public on whether they would prefer the cutting of public services or the raising of taxes, and that the budget had been developed and passed accordingly. Mr. Bondi said he was unwilling to sign a 7.07B certification because, "We have an obligation to deliver services promised in return for tax dollars taken from the public."
Barring bankruptcy which, he stressed, was not even a remote possibility, he said he would continue to carry through the wishes of the public. Saying that the budget was "not a fickle document that can be changed at will," he said that the public, in having approved the 18.65 percent tax increase for the 2007 budget, had "paid high taxes for services, and we are not going to renege on those services."
The Audit Committee also approved the formation of a Commission for Fiscal Vision & Accountability, which had been suggested by Legislator Mary Ellen O'Dell, but had been tabled at the full meeting of the Legislature due to strenuous, and eventually persuasive arguments, of Legislator Vinny Tamagna.
Legislator Birmingham said approval of the committee might "put ideas on the table [and] doesn't cost us anything," while Legislator Hay also signaled his approval by saying, "anything you can do can't hurt; it doesn't cost any money…" Taking a swipe at Tamagna's use of the term "chit chat" to deride O'Dell's idea, Hay said, "They'll [Committee members] be chit-chatting about things that pertain to the County and something may come of it, and something may not."
The June meeting of the Audit Committee will be posted on the PCN&R's website as soon as it becomes available.
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