untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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The Governor is holding out more revenue sharing money for transparency in government along with other conditions. Council has been trying to get information about recent HUD monitoring reports for months. Recently a citizen filed a Freedom of Information with HUD and made them available to council. Eason's explanation, which outraged council, was that he could not get answers from HUD so that his staff could explain the results to council. He also told them they would not understand the monitoring results of the Neighborhood Stimulus Program monitoring reports. That is strange as most council asked the right questions about what they had read.
Kudos to Nolden, 3rd ward Councilman and Grants Committee Chairman, for bringing the hard issues to council. He understands that council cannot make informed decisions when they are kept n the dark by walling and Eason.
Eason blames HUD and HUD's Steve Spencer for Flint's current problems, although he admits all of the staff in his reorganization are new and in training to learn HUD ru;les, policies and procedures. He also did not seem to know that MSHDA has had an embedded staff helping for over a year and claimed the only outside person was one of the two Office of Inspector General audit staff that has been in City Hall for well over a year.
When HUD stated in the May 20th monitoring report that the city did not work with them for over a year in solving some serious issues, Eason had the audacity to proclaim HUD had not gotten back to him. He claimed he begged and pleaded HUD for HUD to give tthem help and thank God there is a new regional director.
Good luch with the transparency issue. Some departments are already approaching a budget deficit as the conditions Walling and Eason promised the council would be met have not occurred. The unions have not met the concessions Walling wants. There appears not to be any movement or meetings as citizens complained to Flint risk manager investigate why Union REp Franklin Greene was never at work and always at home, when they were told that investigations of union officials were ignored by the administration.
Flint working on Gov. Rick Snyder's transparency, consolidation, compensation reforms
Published: Sunday, August 21, 2011, 10:01 AM
By Kristin Longley | Flint Journal The Flint Journal
FLINT, Michigan — The city of Flint is racing to meet Gov. Rick Snyder’s deadlines for government reforms in the hope of getting more funding from the state.
Local municipalities have to put the governor’s “best practices” in place if they want to win back a portion of the state-shared revenue that Snyder cut in his budget plan earlier this year.
In Flint, the cut initially equaled a hit of about $8 million to the budget, but officials are hoping to get some of it back by meeting the three deadlines.
First up is the “transparency” mandate for local municipalities to publish online a citizens guide to its finances by Oct. 1.
Finance Director Michael Townsend said the city is on track to meet the deadline.
“We just have to input the numbers and have those up on the website,” said City Councilman Joshua Freeman, chairman of the council’s finance committee. “That was a pretty easy hurdle to get over.”
By Jan. 1, local governments have to submit a plan to consolidate services that will result in a savings to city taxpayers.
Townsend said the city is still examining ways it can cut and consolidate, and said the plan is expected to be submitted on time.
He said some things the city already has done — such as combining the once-separate budget and finance departments — may also count toward that requirement.
“It’s as long as there were savings attached to it,” he said.
Finally, the city by May 1 has to develop a plan to change employee compensation in future labor union contracts.
The plan has to show the city will cap its employer contribution to employee retirement packages; reduce the multiplier used to calculate pensions to 1.5 percent or 2 percent; prevent “pension spiking” by limiting the amount of paid leave and overtime that can be included in the pension formula; and require employees to pay at least 20 percent of their health care premiums.
“It appears we have to submit a plan that basically says how we could meet that criteria moving forward,” he said. |
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