In view of the double talk that
City Auditor Trent Williams resorted to in order to evade answering the questions
of Frank Gerlach and Jane Murray about city finances at the recent hearing at
the Court of Common Pleas, the underlined excerpt from the minutes of the Portsmouth City Council for 12 January
2004, shown above,* is revealing.
Williams announced in January, 2004, that there were no deficits for the year just passed, 2003. First Ward councilwoman
Anne Sydnor asked how this balancing of the budget had been achieved. Where had
the revenues come from to erase an
anticipated deficit? The question could not have been clearer, but Williams replied
he “was not sure to what figures she was referring.” Williams gave the same evasive
answer more than once when Gerlach asked the same question earlier this month. Williams
said he was not sure what figures
Gerlach was asking about. Gerlach, like Sydnor in 2004, was asking for an
accounting of the revenues that had help erase the deficit. Williams said he
was not sure which revenues Gerlach was referring to. Williams was being
evasive because it was not “revenues” that
had erased the budget but rather funds that had been transferred from the
Capital Improvement fund. In October, 2003, with the approval of Judge Harcha, the
city had made up the deficit in the
General Fund by transferring money from the Capital Improvement fund. By law,
the Capital Improvement funds are supposed to be used only for capital
improvements, for the city’s infrastructure, and for such structures as the
Municipal Building. But a loophole in the law allows the city to petition the Common Pleas Court to allow the transfer
of CIP funds, which is what was done in 2003 and which is what the city is
asking to do again, in 2011. The Capital Improvement funds are the piggy bank
that the city periodically empties to pay off city employees.
The sorry condition of the
Municipal Building today is a consequence of the funneling of Capital Improvement
funds into the General Fund, which is used to pay general operating expenses,
such as salaries and benefits for city employees, including fire and police
personnel. The city has been generous to
the fire and police personnel in particular because they are a potent political
force in Portsmouth, and politicians cannot expect to stay in office if they
don’t cater to that powerful political constituency. Now Judge Marshall, presiding in the
Common Pleas Court, is being asked again to make an exception, even though, as
Gerlach pointed out, the city is not currently in a deficit and has revenues
coming in that will assure that it won’t fall into a deficit. Why does the city
want the CIP funds to be transferred again? What is the emergency? The
emergency is that the politicians, including City Solicitor Jones (who, last time
we checked, appeared to be mortgaged to
the hilt and beholden to those who control the city financially**) wants to make
sure there is enough money in the city treasury to provide a reported 12% pay
increase in wages for the fire department. Can that be right, 12% for fire
personnel in these belt-tightening times? Surely the court is not going to reward
the city’s budget busting-infrastructure
wrecking behavior by allowing the transfer again. Will the citizens again have
to take it to a higher court to see that justice is done, as it did when it
appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court to overturn the Common Pleas Court’s ruling
that City Clerk Jo Ann Aeh had not mutilated recall petitions?
The city is now rehiring the
same employees, the same people, who negotiated the contracts while Kalb was
mayor that put the city in the financial bind that caused the state to put
Portsmouth on a fiscal watch list. Kalb will once again be in a position to help take Portsmouth down the road to bankruptcy, a road he knows something
about, having traveled it himself personally, as did the unelected, out-to-lunch mayor David Malone and
the deadbeat president of city council, John Haas. The court should not allow
the city to continue to follow the same path
of misusing capital improvement funds, which led the state to declare Scioto County the
first county ever to be in a fiscal emergency. The city will end up like the
county if Williams is allowed to get away with his double talk. The city and the auditor have made no effort to change the way the city mishandles its finances since the Common Pleas Court approved the transfer in 2003. By approving another transfer, the court will be condoning the way the city auditor cooks the books.
*For more on the 2003 transfer of funds, go to Teresa Mollette’s invaluable website Portsmouthcitizens.info by clicking here.
*For more on the 2003 transfer of funds, go to Teresa Mollette’s invaluable website Portsmouthcitizens.info by clicking here.
