Last year the BET did an admirable job focusing the BOE on reigning in budget requests and demanding prudent fiscal accounting. This year, the BET has decided that it would know better what the aggregate salary total should be. They are seeking a legal opinion on whether they request is possible. First, from the Hour:
n past years, Board of Estimate members assumed that state law precludes them from exercising line-item control over school spending. The newly found provision within the city charter now gives Board of Estimate Chairman Fred Wilms and another board member pause to ask for a legal opinion.
“The (charter) language seems to state that the Board of Estimate may establish a ceiling for the Board of Education aggregate salaries,” Wilms said. “The question is what is the intent of this language and does it conform with state statute? There’s certainly some questions there for the Corporation Counsel to investigate.”
The Board of Estimate is scheduled to meet tonight. Among the items on its agenda: Submission from Board of Education concerning salaries per City Charter 1-518; and Request Corporation Counsel to render formal legal opinion on City Charter Section 1-518.
Mayor Richard A. Moccia said he has talked to Wilms and Corporation Counsel Robert F. Maslan Jr. about the matter and also wants a “a legal opinion as to exactly what the powers are, and if this BET, or any BET in the future, would be in conflict with state law, if they were try to set the aggregate amount.”
“That is the first step in the process,” Moccia said.Board of Education spending typically consumes more than half of the city’s annual operating budget. For fiscal year 2007-08, which ends next June 30, the Board of Estimate approved $262.3 million in spending. Of that, $141.5 million is allocated to the Board of Education, according to the Department of Finance.
“We’ve been doing the overall budget for the Board of Education, but the charter section seems to say that we should be saying to the Board of Education, ‘Here’s the total amount you can spend on salaries. Here’s the total amount you can spend on everything,’” said Board of Estimate member Michael W. Lyons, who also wants a legal opinion from the city’s law department.
Lyons said setting the aggregate salaries for Board of Education would not amount to line-item control of the school budget. Rather, it would be limited control of a second line item within the school budget. By contrast, the board has control of hundreds of line items when developing budgets for city departments, he said.
“That charter section does not say we can set individual salaries. That would all be set by collective-bargaining agreements. You can’t call this real line-item control. It would probably tweaking the budget, because we can’t interfere with union contracts,” Lyons said. “It would be a wild overestimate to call this line-item control. It gives you a little bit more tweaking ability.”
Of all the things that the BET should be looking at! There is no business that survives in the world that has the “accountants” dictate a salary cap. Even in football, it’s the owners that collectively set a cap so you don’t have one owner wildly over spending another team resulting in an uncompetitive league.
There are some serious fiscal issues with the way in which Opdahl moves money around the BOE budget. Salaries are pretty straightforward to track. It’s the maintenance, supplies, operations slush funds that Opdahl raids for various nebulous activities. Corda seems unwilling to address this hug problem as of yet. Tomorrow night the BOE finance committee meets. On the agenda is hiring a financial director. The BET should be in support of having a finance director and and the very least demanding that the BOE deliver its monthly operations spending reports to the Mayor and that those reports and the budget meet some standard proforma accounting practices.
Collective bargaining is the point where the labor costs are negotiated and set. Having the BET attempt to revisit the issue, when ultimately nothing can be changed, is purely a political move, and one that will not solve for the complete lack of financial credibility that this BOE has earned. With energy and transportation costs about to hit both the city and the school system in a big way, let’s see some creative thinking on how both can be better managed now and in the next years.
From the Advocate:
s school officials begin another budget season, after one of the most contentious in recent memory, some new Board of Education members are looking to make the process more transparent.
A special board meeting will be held at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday to allow the public to comment on the 2008-09 budget.
The district only recently started compiling figures, but School Superintendent Salvatore Corda already has begun meeting with the board’s Finance Committee, which some candidates in the fall race for the school board said was too hands-off.
The committee’s meeting Monday resulted in an understanding that the budget document should provide more information on where the money goes.
Jack Chiaramonte, who was elected to the school board in November and sits on the Finance Committee, was critical of the process during the campaign. The committee intends to ensure the budget will be written “so any lay person can understand when they read it,” he said.
“The book will be a lot thicker,” Chiaramonte said.
The committee worked to clarify items in the budget that lack an explanation. For example, there were two listings for supplies, Corda said, but it was not clear that one was for custodial supplies and the other for maintenance supplies, such as light bulbs.
“The point I think that became clearer is maybe we need to be more specific,” Corda said. “I think that we’re going to be providing more information and hopefully we’ll get a response on whether or not the changes are useful.”
For the 2007-08 fiscal year, Corda initially proposed a $147.7 million budget, but cut $6.7 million after the Board of Estimate and Taxation limited the increase in the district’s budget to 3.8 percent.
The disparity led to tension, with some residents decrying cuts in education and athletics, and others calling the school budget excessive.
One dispute that likely won’t be settled is the desire of some Board of Education members for the panel to have a finance director. The school district’s chief operating officer now is principally responsible for crafting the budget.
Members have said that when the school board had a finance director, he would meet regularly with the Common Council’s Finance Committee.
source: The Hour, Can tax board set aggregate salary amount for school employees? Matter in hands of city law department, December 17, 2007
source: Officials want to simplify school budget process, By Lisa Chamoff, December 16 2007
