New Rule for Council: Pass a Budget or Don’t Get Paid

Embarrassed Carson City Council members, who have yet to approve a budget for the fiscal year that is 4 1/2 months old, have decided that they will work for free if they cannot agree on a budget by the end of December.

The council on Tuesday gave preliminary approval to the automatic withholding of council salaries if a budget is not passed by Dec. 20. A final vote is scheduled for Nov. 20, and the ordinance, an amendment to the Municipal Code, would take effect 30 days later.

Future councils will have until the end of July, the first month of the fiscal year, to pass a budget before the withholding penalty is imposed.

The decision at a council workshop came after a 3-2 vote to approve, in concept, a budget for 1990-91 that includes minimal layoffs and is contingent on three employee unions accepting freezes in wages and benefits.

That budget, however, is all but stillborn, said city officials and union members. One of the unions has already rejected such a freeze, and two others are likely to follow suit. If the unions do not agree on the freezes, the council will resume budget considerations, which began last April.

Council members are paid $9,792 a year, or $816 a month. Under the new ordinance, their salaries would be withheld from July 30 until the date a budget is adopted. Council members would resume being paid once a spending plan is approved, but the salary would not be retroactive. They would continue to receive their monthly $300 reimbursement for expenses.

Mayor Vera Robles DeWitt, who introduced the ordinance, said a budget needs to be adopted in a timely manner for the city to be able to run in a fiscally sound manner. The proposal was approved 4 to 0, with Councilman Michael Mitoma abstaining.

The same proposal was defeated 3 to 2 in February. DeWitt authored that measure as well, which came on the heels of the council approving a deficit budget six months into the 1989-90 fiscal year.

The $29.6-million spending plan approved Tuesday contains no specific allocations for each city department. Council members Mitoma, Juanita McDonald and Kay Calas voted in favor of it, and DeWitt and Councilwoman Sylvia Muise voted against the proposal.

Muise criticized the new budget as unrealistic, saying that it is based on assumptions about the unions accepting wage and benefit freezes to existing contracts. The cutbacks would save up to $500,000.

Mitoma, who has said he opposes large-scale employee layoffs, said he would be forced to side with DeWitt and Muise in adopting a budget if the unions do not accept a freeze. DeWitt and Muise argue that layoffs are unavoidable in balancing the budget.

“I would have no other choice,” Mitoma said.

The city has spent more than $6 million since the fiscal year began July 1, according to city officials. City expenditures are on a pace that would lead to a deficit unless a new budget, with substantial cuts in spending, is adopted soon, DeWitt has said.

Last year’s $29.9-million budget was balanced by taking $2.2 million from the city’s reserve account, which has $7 million left. Carson officials would prefer to reserve most of that fund for replacing capital equipment.

The city’s financial problems stem, in part, from stagnant sales tax revenues, which provide much of the city’s income. Overall, expenditures have risen almost twice as much as revenues in the last several years, city officials have said.

Carson Revenues And Expenditures Graphic shows revenues and expenditures, in millions of dollars, for the city of Carson fromthe 1979-80 fiscal year to 1989-90. Source: City of Carson