The list of District government agencies overspending their allocated budget continues to grow. I reported earlier this month, the Department of Corrections has a potential shortfall of $10 million for this year. The Department of Parks and Recreation has an $8 million deficit. There are estimates that Child and Family Services has a budget problem of between $10 million and $25 million.
Last week, The Examiner‘s Michael Neibauer reported the fire department has a hole of more than $11 million in its 2010 budget, partly because certain benefits weren’t included in salary calculations. Someone blamed software for the problem.
Where is the chief financial officer? Isn’t he supposed to ensure an accurate budget and keep each agency within those fiscal boundaries?
The overspending exacerbates the city’s overall money woes. In December, CFO Natwar Gandhi estimated the city would collect $17 million less in revenues this year than originally projected. Another revised estimate expected in the spring likely won’t be much better.
Gandhi may feign impotence, but Congress invested the independent CFO with broad power and authority over the District’s entire financial management system. He supervises the majority of finance workers in the government. It’s the job of those agency fiscal officers to help managers prepare budgets and to oversee every transaction, including payroll, payments to contractors, and other expenditures.
If overspending occurs, the CFO ultimately bears responsibility. If there is financial mismanagement, lay the blame at Gandhi’s door.
CFO spokesman David Umansky thinks Gandhi and crew are doing fine — thank you very much.
He told me the CFO ensures the city doesn’t have “a deficit at the end of the fiscal year” as required by District law. He said it’s not unusual that “agency spending may be at a rate that, if not rectified, would cause a deficit.
“Throughout the fiscal year, the CFO works with the administration and city council to move funds within departments and between departments to ensure that their budgets are balanced at the end of the year,” added Umansky.
Reprogramming funds should be the result of emergencies — not the prime feature of a financial management plan, as it has become with Gandhi’s operation. Further, a so-called clean annual financial audit doesn’t exonerate a year of sloppy management that, along the way, has caused taxpayers’ dollars to be wasted and most surely has inspired fraud and abuse.
Economists — perhaps even Gandhi — may think the recession is over. But average citizens know it isn’t. The District has a rising unemployment rate, which this month hit over 12 percent. Residents can’t afford the frittering away of their tax dollars, leaving government unable to provide critical services when they most need them.
If Gandhi and his fiscal crew won’t aggressively perform their jobs, ensuring the executive, the independent agencies, and the council live within their budgets, then maybe it’s time to look for a new CFO who will.
Jonetta Rose Barras, hosts of WPFW’s “D.C. Politics with Jonetta,” can be reached at [email protected].
