Failing their budget exam

We were hoping the Board of Supervisors would prove to be “fast learners,” but we’re afraid they have already showed up too late for their latest big test — the annual budget hearings this week. After the taxpayers’ trouncing of their Measure A sales tax increase proposal in the June 2 election, we expected our county’s leaders to do some extra studying, rethink their political blunders and ask the public for some after-school tutoring.
Instead, the five elected supervisors approved a $1.45 billion, 327-page two-year budget with no citizen or taxpayer input whatsoever. The entire document has been drafted by the county administrator’s office and a cadre of top department bureaucrats. The proposed budget was released on June 1 and was rushed through several hours of public hearings.
Set to fail the test again, the supervisors are continuing to talk to their taxpayers like children, telling them they know what’s best — without even asking.
No wonder the new year’s budget includes more staff, salary raises, pension bumps and more self-fulfilling prophecies about growing revenues to pay for it all. We had extra hopes for first-year Supervisor James Gore. He pledged to ask extra questions and challenge staff-entrenched assumptions. He’ll need support from at least two more supervisors to pass the test.
Except for a series of mandates from the Community and Local Law Enforcement Task Force following the Andy Lopez shooting, the newly proposed county budget is absent any signs of citizen input. There is no mention of restored library hours. Road repairs — the subject of the June 2 special $400,000 election — are being budgeted at only $9 million per year. The growing deficit of unfunded pension liabilities is only mentioned three times in the massive document. No new pension reforms are proposed anywhere and past savings ($170 million over the next 10 years) remains in dispute by earlier citizen inquiries that still have not been answered.
The non-citizen, “closed loop” budget includes an overall four percent growth in employees (4,200) and salaries. The major budget priorities listed by the supervisors include increased affordable housing support, universal preschool access to all children, implementation of some of the Community and Local Law Enforcement Task Force proposals, annexation of southwest Santa Rosa, continued healthcare initiatives and expanded Medi-Cal support and completion of a study on providing better support for rural fire services.
Maybe those are the same priorities that most taxpayers would list. But we don’t know because nobody asked. Who can blame the 67 percent backlash against Measure A, even when most of us favor road repairs? Maybe the supervisors’ big test question is not how to fix the roads or reform their $1 billion runaway pension crisis. Maybe the biggest test question is about the “closed loop” budget process.
The authors of the newly proposed budget (top county administrators and department managers) all suffer from a huge conflict of interest. Who can blame them for proposing more jobs and higher salaries? Any extra money spent on road repairs, library hours or extra pension fund paybacks would likely come out of their paychecks.
The top three administrators in the county executive’s office next year will earn a combined $518,034, plus big benefits. The top three Sonoma County Water Agency officials will earn $477,027, plus benefits. There is a proposed increase of 50 new jobs at the Department of Human Services. The trouble is that half of this total is for added administrative/office positions and not for field or caseworkers.
One of the stated outcomes in the budget calls for “a professionally managed county organization that is accessible, transparent, fiscally responsible and accountable to the public.”
We’re sorry, but we are compelled to give all five supervisors a grade of ‘F.’ That’s an ‘F’ for failure to listen and failure to communicate.
— Rollie Atkinson