I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out why, oh why, anybody would pass such a stupid ordinance. .....but there's a lot of history to this....so let's review....
First, this post from November of last year...during the budget
http://mwprogressive.blogspot.com/2007/11/short-version.html
The battle calmed down until about February of this year when one of the main characters in the budget debate, (who's husband incidentally, was one of the city employees eliminated) proposed that before the next budget cycle and presumably before each budget cycle the council conduct a "staffing plan" and that plan would preclude elimination of staff positions during the budget cycle. The sub-committee looking at it decided that it was impossible for the council to conduct a staffing needs analysis without assistance from a consultant. The council didn't want to engage a consultant. Further, there was concern expressed (by me) that relying on "staff" to justify reducing "staff" wasn't a good idea and so the subject was dropped.
Or so we thought
Late in May, a new aldperperson, the one who took the place of the one suggesting the staffing plan, introduced an ordinance to force any personnel decision to go to the finance, budget and personnel committee before for recommendation before the council could act on it. An alderperson suggesting a personnel cut would have to submit justification and data supporting that justification and defend it before the committee and the City Administrator would provide the "counterpoint" to the recommendation.
In addition, the ordinance was written so that the "justification" had to be submitted to the City Administrator first but there wasn't any time limit on when or how or even "if" the City administrator had to present it to the Committee.
In other words, it would be impossible for the common council to eliminate positions or even order a staff reduction in the budget process.
It's the slickest bureaucracy protection scheme I've ever seen.
I wasn't worried about the ordinance at all. I couldn't imagine that any of my friends on the council would vote for it so I expected it to fail and didn't pay much attention to it.
But somebody got "flipped" and the vote came out 5-5. The Mayor "proudly" voted AYE and this piece of excrement passed.
With over 64% of the budget involving "personal services" that means that if the costs increase to the point where we are forced to either layoff individuals or raise taxes, the option to layoff is taken away. It's an automatic tax increase proposal and gives the city administrator, an unelected offici
al, almost carte blanch control over the budget.A good friend of mine told me over coffee the morning after that he thought the whole executive floor had been drinking out of the stupid fountain.
I think he's right.
Who in the right mind would even propose taking away the discretion of the elected officials. Some alder persons think they were elected to represent only the interests of the city staff....they are mistaken.
