Should a Councilor Ever Have to FOIL?Say It Ain't So, Mr. Manager and Mr. Attorney

Some of her colleagues on Council took Augustine to task for using FOILed records (i.e., records obtained under New York’s Freedom of Information Law) in our recent post on filling it up at the City pump. One of our readers expressed the same concern in a signed comment to the post: “Forgive me for being rude, but the City of Geneva appears to function in a unique way. It is not common for Council members to have to file a FOIL request to talk to their own comptroller about the budget.”

We agree that it’s probably not common for Council members to file FOIL requests for public records available to any ordinary citizen for the asking. But there’s a reason we FOIL documents, thanks to an absurd protocol established by the previous City Manager and supported by the legal opinion of the previous City Attorney. In fact, that very issue is one which helped to launch NoStringsGeneva, back in March 2007. In our March 25, 2007 post, titled, “Shouldn’t City Councilors have Access to Public Documents?” we described the difficulty Capraro and Augustine had in getting a simple copy of the total compensation spreadsheet for then City Manager, Rich Rising.

Our request for the record was blocked by then-City Attorney, Clark Cannon. According to Cannon, an individual Councilor’s request for a public document was a violation of Section 13.2 of the City Charter. According to Cannon, “neither the City Council nor any member thereof shall give orders to any subordinate of the City Manager.”

Capraro, who was then on Council and made the request for the document in question, was being told by the City Attorney that he could not ask the Comptroller for a photocopy of a record! Of course, any member of the public, simply by filing a FOIL request, would have been given the record on demand. Instead, the Attorney told Capraro that the request should be made by “the entire Council” and only “in consultation with the City Manager.”

At the time we thought it sounded quite ridiculous for City Councilors to have less access to public records than members of the public not serving on City Council. We also thought it was quite ridiculous for City Councilors to have their requests mediated by the City Manager, presumably so that he would have a chance to ‘explain’ things before Councilors asked too many questions. We still believe that unfiltered, direct access to public records by all people is essential to government accountability.

Since 2007, we have used documents gained through FOIL requests in several posts. We posted public documents about the County Revolving Loan program, about the City’s Wastewater Treatment plant performance, about attorney’s costs. Usually they are simply the fact basis for our fact-based point of view, but sometimes, as in the case with the NYS Attorney General’s investigation, FOILing turns up records that reveal the secrets of City business, unknown to Council itself, such as the bill for legal fees for Rising’s proffer agreement.

Because we rely on only publicly available information, FOIL requests over the years have ensured that we have never violated our ‘no leaks, no gossip’ policy. While we do believe that City Councilors should have unimpeded access to city records, and therefore not be required to file FOIL requests, we want to make it clear that when City Councilors challenge Augustine’s use of the FOIL, their anger is misplaced. If Councilors and the public want City Councilors to refrain from FOIL requests, then the policy requiring it should be lifted. We believe the City Manager and the City Attorney and, by consent, Council itself can clear up this matter by announcing an end to the information lock down of the previous administration and allowing unmediated, direct access to the public record by Council members. In the meantime, we’ll continue accessing public records in the way clearly allowed and promoted under the law.

Fuel For Thought: Readers and City Manager React to Gas Post

In response to our post on fuel consumption and the City budget, we received two signed comments that raised interesting points or questions that warrant more discussion:

First, we agree with Mark that the main point of our post was to suggest that the City’s published budget is virtually impossible to follow, that the numbers just didn’t seem to add up, for whatever reason.

Our attention was first drawn to line items relating to fuel consumption (revenue and expenses) when the City announced that by mid-year 2008, the City had used up all of its allocation for fuel, thanks to a spike in the price of gas. Council budgeted for 2009 and then the price of gas went way down. Wouldn’t that create a budget surplus and effect the budgeting for 2010?

Every member of the public has the right to read the city budget, in its entirety, and to view the records that support the various budget line items. We did just that, and found the documents to be cumbersome and unnecessarily vague when it comes to reconciling various line items.

Yet, Mark goes on to state, and, again, we agree, that a reader who is unfamiliar with general municipal operations might get the impression that we were suggesting “something funny” is going on. That must be what happened when some Councilors read the post and accused Councilor Augustine of attacking staff “from the bushes.” Not only was the post not an attack on City staff—we went out of our way to express how cooperative staff had been-but we’re not sure how a signed blog entry on the internet could be more public: if there was anyone hiding in the bushes it wasn’t us. So rather than indulging those who like to jump to conclusions, we want to take some time to respond to the real questions raised by our readers, who apparently, like Mark, understand general municipal operations.

Tom also concluded that we were not claiming to have “hit on some kind of conspiracy, but a system of payment and accounting that was set up years ago and never adjusted.” There is value, he states—and we agree-in looking at these systems closely to make sure that what City government is doing today meets the City’s current needs, rather than simply doing things ‘as we’ve always done them.’

We point out that after the post appeared, the City Manager drafted a memo to Council
addressing the question of apparent discrepancies in the City’s published budget.(We’re not sure if it was his own response to our post or a response to other Councilors who may have read the post and asked for an explanation.) Our post had been on revenue and expenditures for 2006 and 2007, but the City Manager addressed figures for 2008, so we’re not sure how that clears things up. Also, in the same memo, he indicates that in order to reconcile figures for 2008 he had to use a “figure different than the 2008 figure represented in the budget documents,” so, actually, he’s acknowledging the same problem: the numbers don’t add up in the published budget documents. Again, he’s not exposing some conspiracy, but commenting on the numbers generated by the accounting system that’s in place.

Mark’s comment also addressed outside agency use of City fuel. While we don’t disagree that support of critical agencies is a nice thing for the City to engage in, we cannot agree with the implication that the City must do this, or should continue to provide gasoline at cost. Consider this: if the City purchases gasoline from the state contract at $2/gallon and the price at the pump is $3.50/gallon, for example, that is a significant savings for any agency that is billed at cost. But the City incurs a cost to maintain the gas station facility, to generate the bills and do the associated accounting. Even if the City were to charge a $.50/gallon surcharge, the agencies would still see a great benefit and the City would see some actual revenue to cover those costs. There is the additional question of whether the Geneva Housing Authority, which already receives substantial subsidies from the City for services that might not be wholly consistent with the City’s strategic imperatives, should receive additional City assistance for their County-wide operation.

The question of outside agency gas usage has been raised on the floor of City Council before, but never taken up for discussion. We hope that it will be now, given the City’s tight budget constraints.

And that leads us to the last question or concern that our post generated, both on the blog and at the most recent televised Council meeting. Our readers say that Councilors should not have to file a FOIL request to speak to a department head or to receive records. It seems that many on Council share this view, but as we will discuss in an upcoming post, the standing policy prohibits that—as one of our first posts back in 2007 discussed. So, perhaps our post raised yet another ‘old system’ that’s in need of a change.

City Manager's 2010 budget proposal is a call to action

It will be impossible for the City of Geneva to sustain year after year of zero per cent property tax increases AND retain its current administrative structure AND current service-delivery model. City Manager Matt Horn sent that message loud and clear to Council and the citizens of the City of Geneva in his 2010 budget proposal.

In our view, Horn’s challenge is not a threat to raise taxes, but a call to action. Council must respond with bold, decisive choices following directly from the mission, vision, and priorities for the City it has already declared. In other words, it’s up to Council to now walk the walk, after talking the talk.

Horn’s proposed budget holds property taxes to a zero per cent increase for 2010, through a series of interdepartmental line items, and by refusing to bond for capital projects and foregoing an installment to the equipment amortization fund. In effect, he is allowing Council until the next budget cycle (which should begin the day after the 2010 budget passes) to deal with the long-term, structural challenges to the budget.

And the challenges are many. New York State faces massive debt, thanks to unrestrained spending and severe cuts in revenue attributable to the recession. State aid to the City, never guaranteed, is, therefore, in even more doubt. In addition, cities across New York State will likely receive, in 2011, a bill to cover shortfalls in the State pension fund to cover the costs of benefits for retired City workers.

And though the City will realize some cost savings for health insurance coverage for current employees in 2010, thanks to a change in plans offered, this does not eliminate all benefit increases. Even with some measure of health care reform at the federal level, policy premiums are projected to rise. The City can also expect further declines in sales tax revenue, the second highest source of revenue after property taxes.

Those are the challenges. But Horn, undaunted, says Council has already developed a framework to address them; the “strategic imperatives,” passed by Council in 2008: (1) “value for taxpayers,” i.e. giving tax payers their money’s worth in services; (2) “enhancing neighborhoods,” i.e., following through on the neighborhood initiative; (3) “engaged governance, i.e., better communication and deliberation; (4) “economic development,” i.e., investment and job creation.

His budget document, page after page, hammers home the priorities. The question is, “Exactly how will those priorities address the challenges?” That is for the City Council to wrestle with.

"Follow The Money"Bloggers Resume Talk Radio with Ted Baker on WGVA

After a late summer’s hiatus of a few weeks, we resumed blogging with a fact-based point of view on the City’s own gas station, “Filling it up at the City Pump,” and resumed our regular time slot on Ted Baker’s morning radio show. Ted spoke with us about that post and other financial matters as the City ramps up for the 2010 budget process. Our effort to reconcile what the City spends on gas with amounts of gas departments actually use is a matter of accountability and transparency in government.

But the other hot financial topic of the day was the grant money for lakefront development secured—or not—by State Senator Mike Nozzolio. Remember that this money was first announced last year in the midst of the Bergmann study of the highest and best use of City-owned lakefront property. At that time, we questioned the wisdom of dropping money for a predetermined project into the middle of a process that everyone had been assured had no predetermined outcome.

Now it seems that the pressure to do something, anything may have been rooted in some fiscal realities that are none-too-flattering for the state legislators who made all those big ticket promises in the lead up to the last election. Nozzolio had initially indicated that a total of $5 million was earmarked for the City. In reality, $4 million of that was specifically dedicated for the City, but the remaining $1 million is uncertain, with budget deficits in Albany and a funding source which is not clear. So other guests on Ted Baker’s morning radio show, from the Senator himself to local special interests have been saying that the City must “hurry, hurry,” leaving many to question if the money is really ready and waiting for the City to draw down or if was a premature appropriation that never found its legs?

We also looked ahead to the bigger picture of the City’s budgeting process, stressing the need to address long-term structural stressors on the budget and alternatives to property tax increases for new City revenue. The idea, we think, is to “follow the money,” i.e., to get a better handle on what money is coming in, and where it goes out.

So take a listen and give us some feedback on what issues, fiscal or otherwise, you’d like to see us dig in on in the coming months!