Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh and his department heads are raising concerns about the lack of transparency leading up to last week’s common council’s approval of deep budget cuts. The more than 80 amendments slicing $16 million from the mayor’s proposal came as an eleventh hour surprise.
Councilors spent most of April publicly reviewing department budgets with their respective leaders. But police chief Joe Cecile said there was no indication councilors were seeking such deep cuts.
“Not one of them has picked up the phone and said, 'hey, by the way, we're about to slash $3.5 million,' or even more importantly, 'do you think there's someplace else that we can slash' and then maybe we could have sat down and worked it out.”
Sue Katzoff, the city’s top lawyer, had a similar experience.
“I went in prepared to review all of the cases that we had brought affirmative actions that we had sought to protect tenants, homeowners, renters," Katzoff said. "And what I got was. ‘so Sue, we don't need to hear about that. We just want to know what are you going to do about corner stores.’”
Video shows less than half of Katzoff’s 20 minute meeting was spent discussing the law department’s actual budget.
Mayor Ben Walsh said part of the problem lies with the council’s reliance on budget analysis conducted by an outside accounting firm. Councilors approved spending $20,750 in taxpayer funding for the service the same day the mayor released his budget proposal.
“They're not elected by the people of the city of Syracuse. I am. The common council is," Walsh said. "The council was elected to represent the people of the city of Syracuse and their interests in this process, and they have simply elected not to take on that responsibility.”
Acting council president Pat Hogan defended the use of an accounting firm, saying they provided clarity in a daunting process.
“They gave us a clinical look at the budget and that's that sort of steadied what we needed to do," Hogan said. "It became fairly apparent and after many discussions with many different councilors, after all our department hearings, budget hearings, our path became clear.”
Hogan has been through more than a dozen budgets as a councilor.
The council also refused to share the firm’s recommendations with the Walsh administration or the public. When asked why, Finance committee chair Corey Williams declined to respond.
“I’m not going to answer that," Williams said. "We entered it into public record. It will be available to the public.”
As of Friday, the firm’s report was not included on the city's website as part of the council’s budget agenda. Councilor Amir Gethers also declined to answer, and Hogan said he hadn’t even thought about it as he walked away from reporters.
