Heard in the Hall

Butkovitz too wants five-year plan rejected

City Controller Alan Butkovitz today added his voice to calls for the city's financial overseer, the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA), to reject the Nutter administration's five-year financial plan.

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Butkovitz too wants five-year plan rejected

POSTED: Wednesday, August 8, 2012, 11:23 AM

Troy Graham @troyjgraham

Butkovitz objected to the plan's assumption of millions in labor cost savings, despite a recent costly arbitration award for firefighters.

The city has appealed the arbitration award, which the administration says would cost more than $200 million over the next five years and push the city's budget into the red. The five-year plan calls for $50 million in overall workforce savings, even though the city's blue and white collar unions, District Council 33 and 47, also have been due for new contracts since their old ones expired in 2009.

“There is no reasonable basis for the city to assume a favorable outcome in its appeal of the firefighters (IAFF) award,” Butkovitz said in a statement. “There is also no reasonable basis for the city to assume that there will be no added costs resulting from ongoing negotiations with unions representing the city’s non-uniformed workers.”

The five-member PICA board is scheduled to meet Thursday to vote on the plan. Last week, board Chairman Sam Katz expressed similar concerns about the plan, but refused to say how he would vote. Katz also said he was "uncomfortable" with the notion that a vote in favor of the plan would be seen as validation for the city's reasoning in its appeal of the firefighters award.

Brett Mandel, a tax activist and former and current candidate for Controller, also has been urging PICA to reject the administration's math. Rejecting the plan could jeopardize state funding for the city, but the most likely consequence simply would be the need to rewrite the plan.

The argument against budgeting for unknown wage and benefit increases is that doing so establishes a "floor" in negotiations with the unions.

Butkovitz, who is required by law to review the five-year plan, also questioned other city forecasts. Butkovitz said:

-The Plan overstated expenditures for debt service over the life of the Plan by approximately $90 million.

-Forecasted FY13 revenue includes a $9 million request to PICA for design work for a new Police Department headquarters, city morgue and health offices in the City’s general fund. These expenditures should be budgeted and recorded in the City’s capital projects fund.

-The probability of additional large funding requests by the Philadelphia School District (District) in future years. The District’s current year deficit is approximately $282 million; a staggering amount which has it on the brink of insolvency.

“Regarding the School District’s financial situation, I want to reiterate my recommendation that the School District prepare a five year plan of its own which would require the approval of an independent authority,” said Butkovitz.

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Comments (4)

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 11:57 AM, 08/08/2012

for the sake of transparency I like to see in dollars and cents how much he has increased the mayor office of community services with non union low paying jobs buying the best equipment money can buy all along while he was cutting union jobs and denying civil service regulations with freezing step increases and of course no contract.Everytime this guy wants to sit dowm with the city unions he sends his young collage graduates that have no working expierence armed with 22 pages of givebacks crying that the city has no money.Reject this fake budget!! Its time for this mayor to sit down and talk to the citys unions and reward them for what they deserve!! Kudos to Buckovitz.I hope you run for mayor you always stand up for the working stiff instead of kicking him like this guy does.

— cityslicker

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 2:24 PM, 08/08/2012

Further, if the Nutter Administration eliminated more non-profits in Philly that are actually nothing more than no-work salary sources, millions would be saved. Nutter has shut down or cut off some of these bogus non-profits, but many more exist. When Rendell was in office, the money flowed for these non-profits, so everyone started filing to be a non-profit to "help" low income folks. They were kick-backs for getting the votes.

— TR3

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 2:29 PM, 08/08/2012

How about talking to the taxpayers. That's OUR MONEY not the City's and not the union's. Perhaps, for the sake of tranparency, we could also put on the table the gross over-staffing in almost every City department, many of which still fail miserably in delivering even baseline customer service. So, sure we'll talk wage increases for the City unionized work force provided that a reduction-in-force to right-sized staffing levels is also part of the deal. That way our tax dolalrs go to pay more to those City workers who do the most/best work and we cut out the dross (e.g., sinecure jobs hand-down by ward bosses to friends and family). That's how a real-life business in a competitive, open-shop industry would do it.

— eam30717

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 12:17 PM, 08/12/2012

The best reason to vote for Obama is the hope that he offers Nutter a cabinet position so we get rid of him. The biggest failure in the last 50 years. Typical progressive policy wonk who doesn't understand how to get something done. The only chance this town has to move forward is to move him out so we can all move forward.

— non excidet