EDITORIALS : How to make sausage
Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008
IT’S NOT as eye-catching as all the
campaigning in an election year, but
there’s always a lot of entertainment in watching annual budgets being ground out by local governments. Those who compare watching laws being made to making sausages might note that the comparison applies just as well to the making of city and county budgets. This year’s budgeting has been unusually entertaining in Northwest Arkansas. Take Fayetteville’s antics, please (see H. Youngman, social critic ). The city council has been trying to balance another of Mayor Dan Coody’s proposed budgets. He’s notorious for avoiding the tough calls at budget time and tossing the tough decisions into the lap of the city council—after he’s proposed a budget that requires dipping into reserves. (Which isn’t a good idea, unless there’s absolutely no other choice. )
But the city council in Fayetteville has come up with some alternatives. A few less streets being overlaid, a few less speed tables, another cut or two here and there, and—presto !—the budget’s balanced. All neat and tidy. It’s a nice way to end the year. Too bad Mayor Coody couldn’t have done more of this necessary trimming on the front end. But then he’s been busy running for re-election. Minor details like balancing the city’s budget just have to wait till the city council gets around to it. Which it did.
Then there’s Rogers. That city had its budget balanced from the get-go. Its employees will even get pay raises (5 percent !) in these tough economic times. But elected officials will get theirs, too. While employees will get an annual raise, elected officials are to get their salary bumped up only every two years. So they have to make the most of it. And they did:
The mayor of Rogers is to get a whopping 15-percent raise, the city clerk an 8-percent raise. Members of the city council are in line for 16. 7-percent increases. That’s right: Sixteen Point Seven. And the city attorney, Ben Lipscomb, will be making 7 percent more, which he negotiated up from 4 percent—over the mayor’s objections.
It seems these percentages had first been discussed back in June, but City Attorney Lipscomb said nothing at the time. Back then he was running for a district judgeship. He objected to the 4-percent pay raise only after losing his race November 4 th. The original proposal didn’t even cover cost-of-living increases, Mr. Lipscomb lamented. And he would have objected even if he’d been elected district judge, he tells us—now. What he didn’t explain was why he waited until after the vote was in to make his case. Any guesses ?
No matter. The city council agreed to give the poor feller a 7 percent increase anyway.
MEANWHILE, in Benton County,
the quorum court thinks elected
officials deserve a break, too. The justices of the peace decided to give themselves raises from 4 to 7 percent, while employees are to receive 2-percent increases, and up to 2 percent more in possible merit raises. Two JPs, Beverly Williams and Debra Hobbs, objected to the difference between the raises for elected officials and those for employees, but were overruled. As another JP said during the discussions, “It does look bad when the people at the top get a lot bigger raise than the people doing the actual work.” To which we would only add: Yes, it certainly does. The budget talks going on in these city and county governments aren’t over yet. Final approval is still required. All these messy—and embarrassing—details remind us again of what an imperfect system democracy can be. Still, for all the shortcomings revealed each year when local budgets are put together, we’ll take comfort in the old observation that imperfect democracy is still superior to perfect tyranny.
One more thing: When elected representatives serve mainly themselves, those who elected them have to take some responsibility, too. We the People chose these budgeteers and have to shoulder our share of the blame for it. The grabby types didn’t elect themselves.
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