Our view: Can't count on state aid until budget passes

July 23, 2008 05:00 am

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Count your chickens before they hatch.

That is apparently the modern version of prudent fiscal management, at least as practiced in the public sector: Unless you count them, people might think you don't really need them.

The latest example of this comes from Haverhill Mayor James Fiorentini, who said that is the reason he included $1.2 million in his budget for the current fiscal year that he not only didn't have, but hadn't been promised.

Gov. Deval Patrick did promise $1.2 million to the city to help pay the city's annual $7 million installment on the debt remaining from the former Hale Hospital. But the Legislature, through the urging of state Sen. Steven Baddour, D-Methuen, and Rep. Brian Dempsey, D-Haverhill, doubled that, to $2.4 million. They did caution city officials, however, that the added money was a likely candidate for the governor's veto pen.

That prompted some city councilors to wonder how wise it was to count that money before it was officially part of the state budget. Fiorentini insisted that if the city didn't build its budget with that assumption, then the governor would conclude that the city didn't really need it.

Sadly, there is some truth to Fiorentini's thinking. It is the same kind of bureaucratic philosophy that says all department heads should spend their budgets down to zero every year whether they need to or not, because if there is anything left over, they'll get less the next year. There is no thought, of course, that this is taxpayer money, and that it should be the job of the public sector to spend only what is absolutely necessary.

Hence the fraudulent little dance that municipalities do — instead of practicing real fiscal prudence and preparing a budget based on what they know they have, they assume they will get everything they have requested, in an effort to convince the state that they really, really need it.

Ultimately, none of it worked. Gov. Patrick vetoed it anyway.

Now, with the budget at least $1.2 million out of balance, Baddour and Dempsey say they will try to get two-thirds of the Legislature to override the veto. Meanwhile, the mayor and councilors are discussing what they should have discussed months earlier — how to balance the budget based on what they really have instead of what they wish they had.

Fiorentini still defends his tactics, saying, "You can't get money unless you ask."

That is true, of course, but the problem is that the mayor went well beyond asking. He asked, and then assumed the answer would be yes. He should hope that local taxpayers don't manage their own finances the same way. That would put the city in much more serious trouble than it is now.