[BALTIMORESUN] Why did Baltimore need to pay outside consultants half a million dollars for a report that says the city's financial future is grim?Probably because a city govt largely made up of friends and relatives of Dem politicians didn't have anyone who could spell well enough to put the report together.
Some city residents wondered as much after Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake called for a new trash collection fee, a smaller city workforce and cuts to employee benefits as a way to deal with the projected $750 million, 10-year budget shortfall the consultants projected. For a city as financially strapped as Baltimore, couldn't that work have been done in house?
A smaller city workforce would involve dumping some of those friends and relatives. Cutting city employees' benefits would show a lack of "compassion for the working man" so that ain't gonna happen, even though they're gonna vote Dem from long-established habit; the city's had two Republican administrations since 1943, both of them Theodore McKeldon, and he's dead now. A new trash collection fee will bring in new funds which can then be pissed away on projects that don't involve filling potholes or tearing down rotting, boarded up row homes, or changing the oil in garbage trucks. That's assuming any of the recommendations are put into effect at all.
The answer, according to city budget director Andrew Kleine, is no.
Those who've heard of it are still working on that "i before e except after c, except when the word's weird" thingy. They're not in the majority, mind you.
Though the city's finance department makes three-year projections, it lacked both the manpower and the skill set to make long-term actuarial projections and propose reforms, Kleine said. Many of the more than 100 proposed reforms will be detailed Wednesday when Rawlings-Blake releases the full report, officials said.
It's just a report, not actual legislation. That would involve the city council, which feels "compassion for the working man."
"We just didn't have the staff or the expertise to do this," Kleine said. "Our core function is to formulate the budget and monitor the budget."
"City budget directors aren't involved in putting together actual budgets, y'know. We just formulate 'em. We can add and subtract pretty good, but all those graphy thingies are hard. It's best to call in outside experts for that sort of thing."
As for the cost, Public Financial Management Inc. of Philadelphia won the contract in 2011 with a proposal to charge the city $460,000, beating two other finalists whose work would have cost taxpayers $500,000 and $507,000, respectively.
Shucks, I'da done it for them for a mere $400k flat.
But the scope of the needed work grew over the past year, Kleine said, and city officials added another $125,000 to the deal -- meaning the consultants were paid $585,000 in all.
We call that sort of thing "requirements creep" in the consulting game. Other times we call it "money in the pocket."
Even so, Kleine said, it was money well spent.
"Oh, yeah. If you're gonna piss it away, this is the way to do it."
Public Financial Management assigned 20 employees to the project, with two workers logging more than 750 hours, he said. The company and its subcontractors did in-depth research on the "best practices" of other jurisdictions, conducted interviews, made actuarial predictions and suggested reforms.
Two guys with more than 750 billable hours between them? And actuary contractors don't come cheap. And another eighteen guys to google "best practices city management," make phone calls, and generally pass verbal gas. Lotsa travel in there, per diem, and all that. It's stuff like this that keeps MBAs off foodstamps.