Council Mulling Budget Consultant

Kenya Hudson

Council is considering hiring a budget consultant to work with Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr.

by Adam Lynch
January 12, 2010

The Jackson City Council is looking into the idea of hiring a year-round budget inspector to act as a liaison between the city council and the administrative branch.

"The city of Jackson suffers from shortfalls, just the same as other cities around the country right now," financial consultant Harold Latham told council yesterday. "One of my most notable strengths is to come up with creative approaches to the budgeting process to identify and secure revenue streams that heretofore have not been available. This isn't as much about tweaking the budget as looking at long-term revenue streams of more significant proportions. There are opportunities inside the budget that we're just not taking advantage of."

Latham, who addressed the council during the Monday work session, said the city needed a strategic plan to work throughout the year to iron out budget holes and identify savings and new revenue, rather than feverishly working themselves into a panic during a handful of months every year as the next fiscal year budget comes due.

"What the council needs is somebody to conduct frequent consultation between the administration and the council, so when the time does arrive to vote upon a budget there won't be this rush of concerns. It's better to flush out budget issues throughout the year, rather than within a handful of weeks at budget time," Latham said.

City spokesman Chris Mims could not say if Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. would be open to the idea of a budget liaison constantly asking money questions over the course of the year, be it Latham or some other consultant.

The council voted to put the issue in the council's Budget Committee this morning, but members of the council expressed concern over whether or not the administration would be willing to work with any accounting contractor, considering Johnson's track record of deflecting council probes into some budget matters.

Ward 6 Councilman Tony Yarber, in particular, questioned Latham's confidence that he could successfully establish a partnership with the mayor: "How can I be sure that this kind of collaboration will be established?"

Latham, who admitted that he could not speak for the administration, replied that the mayor would order his staff to work with the liaison as soon as the council passes an order or a contract the liaison.

Budget issues represent one of the few rifts between the council and the administrative branch. Johnson initially refused to respond to Ward 1 Councilman Jeff Weill's inquiries for details surrounding the administration's discovery last year of $1.2 million of "surplus" cash unspent by the previous administration of Mayor Frank Melton. Weill was particularly puzzled and suspicious of the funds, he said, after the volley of budget shortfalls throughout the Melton administration.

"We spent that time basically turning (City Administrator) Rick Hill upside down and shaking coins out of his pockets," Weill admitted, "so the location of that money just shook me."

Johnson has also refused to immediately divulge a list of city employees and their salaries to the council—a request also spearheaded by Weill late last year. The mayor argued at the time that the information would be readily available as part of the city's quarterly budget report, and that compiling such a list outside of schedule would devour city resources.

"We all have a lane to stay in. I try to stay in my lane, and I hope the council stay in theirs," Johnson told the Jackson Free Press last week. "... If I feel that any of the requests borders on administrative or managerial function than I'll let them know that. I'm going to protect the administrative mandate to run the city."

Johnson presented a list of employees this morning connected to the quarterly budget report, although Weill did not notice a list of salaries connected to the names.

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