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Rooke Critical of Some Provisions in New Law

by Bill Dusty

Springfield City Councilor Timothy J. Rooke said on Saturday that he was concerned about several aspects of the “Springfield Bill” – a loan extension bill that became law on Friday after Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed-off on it in a ceremony in downtown Springfield.

The new law gives the City of Springfield an additional ten years (now 15 total years) to pay off a state-issued, $52 million no-interest loan. Other provisions of the new law include the creation of three new city positions – a Chief Administrative and Financial Officer, a city comptroller, and a Director of Internal Audit. Furthermore, under an amendment inserted by state Representative Cheryl Coakley-Rivera, the city-wide trash fee would be abolished by 2011.

Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno had vowed to end the unpopular trash fee during his successful campaign for office in 2007. Once in office, however, he determined that budgetary constraints made ending the fee unfeasible. He subsequently supported a “pay as you throw” system for the city in the spring of 2008, but that plan quickly fell into disfavor. The initiative was dropped soon thereafter.

Coakley-Rivera had initially called for amendments that would have ended the trash fee and also extended the term of the Springfield Finance Control Board into 2010. The Board is currently set to disband on June 30, 2009. The state Representative later dropped the Board extension as part of a compromise.

“I like the idea of the extension of the repayment of the loan,” said Rooke via telephone interview with the Intruder on Saturday. But he said he did not like the idea of the city abolishing the trash fee in 2011 without first determining where the over $4 million in revenue lost as a result would come from.

Besides the trash fee elimination provision, Rooke also took issue with the idea of the newly-created positions of Chief Administrative and Financial Officer (CAFO) and Director of Internal Audit. The CAFO position, according to Rooke, has “a lot of responsibility but very little authority.” He said the CAFO essentially makes only “suggestions,” and has no veto power over decisions made by the Mayor or the City Council. As a result, he said, he is “not sure it will work.”

As for the audit director, Rooke said that he doesn’t like the idea of the position being appointed by the Mayor. “How do you have an independent auditor,” said Rooke, “when the Mayor appoints him and [that same] auditor may be reviewing the Mayor’s policies?” He said the city needs truly independent oversight if it is to continue its financial recovery. “I don’t think there’s a lot of political people willing to [work] on things that need to get done,” said Rooke – especially during an election year.

In preparation for hard times ahead, Rooke said he also would have liked to have seen an initiative of his own, reforming municipal layoff procedures, included in the bill. He said that with more state budget cuts looming this year, he feels certain that layoffs are eminent. He has said in the past that rather than going by seniority, he would like for the city to have the flexibility to retain productive employees over non-productive or poorly performing employees. “Why would we opt to keep an employee who is out on WC [worker's compensation] on a regular basis for ‘bogus’ causes, unproductive on a daily basis, and disruptive to the daily flow of work,” wrote Rooke in an e-mail to the Intruder this past November, “when we would have the option to keep instead your ideal employee who arrives early, is cooperative, conscientious, goal oriented, meets deadlines, arrive under budget on projects and is professional to the other employees and clients?”

According to this Republican story, also from last November, union officials asserted that such a provision would be “illegal.” The proposal also received a cool reception from other city officials at the time.

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Posted by Bill Dusty on Jan 11th, 2009 and filed under Cities & Towns, City Hall, Feature Stories, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.