What do you do when you’re a budget director who’s just received a revenue estimate that will force painful cuts in already-reduced services? Well, if you’re the City of Houston’s Finance and Administration Department director, you increase the revenue estimate, of course.
When Municipal Courts Director Barbara Sudhoff turned in her 2003 revenue predictions to the city this spring, she estimated the courts would produce about $43 million. But with the flick of a pen, [Finance and Administration Department director Phil] Scheps increased that estimate to $48 million, and thus was born a deficit.
Scheps said he and others expected more money from parking and traffic tickets. But the city also was facing a tight 2003 budget, in which library hours were cut and city health services barely escaped being slashed.
By boosting the courts’ revenue estimate, Scheps was able to avoid worse cuts. But changing the estimate didn’t change the reality, and the courts are coming up short for the third year in a row.
Council members are exasperated by the repeat problem. They blame budget officials for their rosy projections and the courts for not bringing in enough money.
“First it was police officers weren’t writing tickets,” said Councilwoman Annise Parker. “Then officers weren’t showing up in court. We kept expecting it to get better, and it never did.”
All I can say is that I’m grateful that so far no one has found a way to blame this on Bill Clinton.
This is all Clinton’s fault. Those 10,000 new officers he put on the street aren’t showing up in court, and now the City of Houston in particular is paying for it with a deficit. If those Clinton officers had done their job and saw that the fines were collected, we’d never be in this mess!
…Just kidding. đŸ™‚
My ex-girlfriend’s father was a campaign manager for a city council candidate (“Texas” Sam Fayad, but then legally changed his name to Sam Texas) who ran for the city council in 1996 or so (special election I think?) on an anti-Clinton platform. His 8pt four page brochure tied Clinton to drug smuggling in Colombia, ranted on and on about China, and mentioned virtually nothing of the city budget, potholes, or whatever else actually concerned the city at the time.
Anyway, we Houstonians don’t need no durn Clinton. We got Lee Brown to pin it on instead. Hurm. Where’s my “Don’t blame me, I woulda voted for Sanchez if I was registered inside city limits” bumper sticker?
Whitlock
“All I can say is that I’m grateful that so far no one has found a way to blame this on Bill Clinton.”
Wait.
Alex,
I’ve been following ol’ Sam Texas for awhile now. I wrote about him a few months back. I even met him once, a coupla names ago, at a Planned Parenthood meet-the-candidates event. What a loon.