Thursday, June 26, 2008

Budget Shortfall Fallout - Teaching Positions Cut

Proposal: 52 positions cut... click here for more details.

The School Board has yet to vote on the cuts. Note also that some of the positions are already vacant and/or existing teachers reassigned to other spots.

The only cuts specific to the Fourth District were two Driver's Ed teachers at West (I assume killing the whole program).

Lots of cuts at Farragut High, but presumably that's related to the opening of Hardin Valley, I suspect.

I had also heard that the school board is moving towards a budgeting program that starts with the principals (bottom-up rather than top-down). It will be a tough transition for principals not used to doing this, but probably a good move in the long run for the principals to have input in defining what they need (and don't need).

Hospitality Account Audit

It may finally yield something- even Commissioner Hammond is calling for a special prosecutor.

(Link...)

The call for an outside investigator is badly needed. Attorney General Nichols has had a conflict of interest over this administration through the whole process. This is one of the downsides of appointed positions. I wonder if Commission had the authority to remove the Attorney General (as per the proposed Charter Amendments for the proposed fee office appointments), would they have been able to muster the votes to do it? I tend to doubt it. If the AG office were elected, would the situation be different?

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Two Air Quality Alerts in a Row...

I've heard from a lot of people lately about the air quality issues. Fortunately, this is a topic I am well-versed in (for the last 20 years) and I'd like to bring my expertise to this important issue on Commission.

The EPA determines the relative health hazard by looking at two pollutants- ozone and find particulate matter (PM). The data is available in near real-time on the EPA's web site (http://airnow.gov/), and some links on there explain in detail what the different alert levels mean and how they are computed. An orange day ("Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups") mean that people with asthma, COPD, etc should stay indoors, and everyone should limit strenuous outdoor activity.

Knox County also has a phone number you can call and get the latest AQI without a computer. I believe it is 215-5925 (but it doesn't seem to be working this AM).

Two things that aren't on the EPA site, though:
  1. The Air Quality Index (AQI) is calculated by looking at the risk of the two pollutants independently, and taking the highest of the two (and discarding the lower entirely). Thus, not all "yellow" or "orange" days are really the same. There's a big difference between a day with "orange" ozone / "orange" particulate and a day with "orange" ozone and "green" particulate. There are studies that show synergistic effects, so my advice to anyone with breathing disorders or heart disease should try to find the concentration levels of ozone and PM and look at them both during yellow or orange alert days.
  2. The ozone standard for compliance was lowered from 80 parts per billion to 75, but it was noted at the EPA conference that the science pointed them to lowering the standard all the way down to 60. Of course, this was politically untenable, so the EPA compromised with 75. But it was interesting to note that the studies showed, for the first time, damage to the respiratory system of healthy adults at levels over 60 ppb. Thus, this is no longer an issue just for people with asthma, COPD, etc.
What can we do? Other areas have programs that click into place on ozone action days encouraging carpooling, lowering highway speed limits in down, anti-idling regulations, dropping the bus fare (or making rides free). There's a lot of good programs in other counties we can examine and consider adopting. As an individual, it's quite astounding what changing your house lights over to compact fluorescents (CFL) will do (less power generation = less ozone). Reduce unnecessary car trips on hot summer days (not a problem with gas prices).

Be safe.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Rate of posting?

Posting has been a little slow lately, as we've been cranking up the door to door meetings and having to support meetings, etc. Mark your calendars for two events though:
  • July 8, 7pm, West High School- Fourth District Candidate Forum
  • July 15, 6pm, Casa Don Gallo (Rocky Hill)- Meet the Candidate 'happy hour'
  • July 18 - August 2 : Early Voting!
Remember Black Wednesday. In less than 4 weeks, it's time to finish the job.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Budget Hearings

Been watching the stream (http://www.ctvknox.org/stream.htm). Wow.

The commission can't bring themselves to cut anything at all. I see another $40M of debt being added to Knox County's debt load at the next meeting.

Remember- early voting starts July 18th.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

June 16 Committee Meeting- Key Items

  • Approval of $40M in additional bonded debt
  • Approval of sale of South High School
  • Contract with Tourism & Sports (divvying up the hotel/motel tax)
  • Library / PBA contract break
  • New financial controls (auditable expense accounts, eliminate p-cards, no more interest-only payments on bonds, quarterly statements from Finance)
  • Civil Service proposal (ahem, see below)
  • Establish new tax rates (or leave them as is)

See you there!

Live update- apparently it's not a joint Finance/IG meeting today. Finance is passing lots of things through without recommendation so far.

Some discussion about the County Travel policy- trying to keep the big boys on a per diem, without strangling rank-and-file employees who might get sent to San Francisco and could lose out on a per diem approach. Owings notes there is an exception to handle these cases, but there doesn't seem to be a copy of the travel policy on the County web site. Making these policies available to the voters would be a good step!

Pinkston just proposed, amongst a number of other changes (some very good ideas, too) to eliminate the wheel tax and replace it with a $0.15 property tax hike (about 6%). His argument is that the burden actually goes down for working class people, while raising more funds (and thus less borrowing).

Update:
'Across the board' cuts are stupid and show a lack of leadership. It penalizes parts of the organizations that operate at higher efficiency than those 'fatter' part of the organizations.

What's really interesting about Pinkston's proposal is that it's a progressive tax hike. The average working Joe/Jane gets a small cut or it has no effect, while those with higher $$ properties and business properties get soaked by the tax increases. Yes, the supply-siders will way that the increase on businesses will be eventually paid by everyone, but any business is going to be hard pressed to raise prices (other than to cover their rising fuel and materials costs!) in this environment.

I'll go on record as saying I'd rather have a progressive tax hike than more debt. I'd modify Pinkston's raise proposal to something like $50K or $60K.

If I were up there, I'd post all the county vehicles on the Web (including make/model) and let the power of crowds audit the necessity of our vehicle fleet.

Civil Service Proposal (more detail)

So, although our opportunity to have anti-nepotism and conflict-of-interest in our County Charter was voted down by Commission, we have a new proposal (a substitute to make us feel better?) to bring City-like civil service protection to our County offices.

If you're not familiar, the city system allows an employee that has passed a probationary period (typically one year) protection against being removed for other than proven cause, and that their advancement be based on 'merit' (although their merit is still measured by the elected office holder).

This works in the city because the directors are appointed, not elected. There are a number of problems applying this policy to Knox County where the office holders are elected. When an office turns over, the new officeholder faces a staff that can't be removed that is arguably politically loyal to his/her opponent. No manager wants to be in that situation, where undermining activities and leaks will affect the function of the office.

Consider the case of our new County Law Director, who wants to bring in a trusted right-hand assistant. To be effective, the new Law Director needs to have someone who knows how he works, and someone he can trust. Being forced to keep the existing chief admin would make a very important office much less effective. It's one of the impacts of elected offices.

This proposal would do nothing to eliminate the propensity for employees to work for their director's campaign (who measures 'merit' for raises, after all??). Existing employees in political machines would be 'grandfathered', and it would create more problems down the road for all of us.

If we apply this proposal to other than fee offices (e.g., Engineering, Health, Libraries, etc)- that's a reasonable consideration. I would still argue that we are putting the cart before the horse- that anti-nepotism and conflict of interest policies are MUCH more important. Let's not imagine this proposal is the cure-all.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

News-Sentinel Starts General Campaign Coverage

... not really. The only attention so far has been delving into the personal tragedy of one candidate. Otherwise, the KNS has ignored the general election.

(I'm not even linking to their garbage article).

For shame, KNS, for shame.

Until KNS starts covering the election, there's no point in having their link on the left. Sorry if I wasted anyone's time with that link.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Civil Service Protection? Let's not put the cart before the horse here...

(see original KNS article...)

We need to put in the anti-nepotism and conflict of interest policies FIRST (by ordinance, now that certain commissioners took away to opportunity for the Charter amendments). This would be my very first proposal as County Commissioner.

What I can't figure out is why commissioners who opposed the anti-nepotism and conflict of interest proposals a few months ago now think civil service protection is the solution to the problem. It's certainly not the best solution to the problem we face right now. It may be a good idea (it may not, it has its pros and cons), but to consider this first, before passing anti-nepotism and COI policies is *ludicrous*.


Thursday, June 5, 2008

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Our County Budget Crisis

Sorry I haven't posted in a while- took a little more downtime with the family.

So, I mentioned to someone today that I would be posting my perspective on the Knox County budget on my blog. "That's suicidal," he said. "Your opponent isn't hanging himself out there on this or any other issue- why would you go out on a limb on an issue like the budget?"

That's exactly the problem. If someone is unwilling to stick their neck out as a candidate, how do you think they're going to behave as a Commissioner? Part of the problem we're in is the unwillingness of elected (and even appointed) officials to look at 'sacred cows' in our budget and do what is necessary to bring back fiscal responsibility.

In the business world, when times are lean, you can't raise taxes, and your ability to borrow in tough times is limited. So what do you do? You learn to do more with less. But the stupidest thing I've seen companies do is a flat X% "across the board" cut of the entire organization. Divisions that are highly productive are penalized equal with lower-performing groups.

It's too late for this year, but if elected, I would start in the fall of 2008 to lay the groundwork for the 2009-2010 budget. The process would involve defining metrics for each office, measuring that office against other peer counties, and identifying which offices can absorb bigger cuts.

We also have to look at the effect of salary on our overall costs. Another truth from the business world is that if your workers are underpaid and have other opportunities they can move to, your personnel costs will rise and effectiveness falls because your best people leave, and you are stuck with the costs of having to rehire and retrain replacements. This is particularly a problem with our teachers. In some cases, a salary increase can save you money in the long run. In the more brutal approaches, you would look at what positions you are losing good people and direct resources there, away from positions that aren't seeing high turnover.

Other points:
  • I can see that some of our fees that haven't been increased over 5-10 years can be increased to obtain more revenue without hitting those on limited incomes.
  • Duplicate car allowances and county vehicles should be eliminated
  • The list of county vehicles provided should be reviewed and each vehicle must be fully justified as an necessity for the position. For positions with occasional vehicle use, the County could offer mileage reimbursement rather than provide a full time vehicle, insurance, maintenance, etc. Perhaps even excess vehicles could be sold.
Will that get us all the way there? Probably not. But we need to get a lot further down the road of fiscal discipline than we're going right now. Whether we borrow or raise taxes for the rest, we need to minimize those options (and, in the case of a tax increase, minimize the effect on those who can least afford it).