Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

The City Council of San Bernardino, California failed to pass budget cuts at their meeting Tuesday, despite the city already being in bankruptcy.

After a meeting that lasted more than nine hours and stretched past midnight, the San Bernardino City Council failed to pass a plan for drastic budget reductions, an initial step in the city’s bankruptcy proceedings.

The proposed “pre-pendency plan” included $22.4 million in cuts, achieved by measures including slashing more than 100 jobs and closing three of the four city libraries. It would not cover the entire $45.8-million budget shortfall, but city staff called the plan a necessary first step.

Proposed cuts to the Fire Department became an irreconcilable sticking point. Twenty positions in the department were slated to be eliminated without layoffs, and the plan included an option of rotating closures at fire stations.

Instead of voting on the budget plan as a whole, Councilman Chas Kelley made a proposal to vote on an alternate plan for the Fire Department that was backed by the firefighters union, and to direct staff to seek bids on a proposal to contract out some of the city’s trash services.
The vote, taken after midnight, passed 4 to 3 but was promptly vetoed by Mayor Pat Morris, who had called that plan “irresponsible” and an “almost slavish adoption of a union proposal without any analysis.”

Maybe they can delay things long enough that repo men are actually carting furniture out of the council chambers before they vote…

(Hat tip: Dwight.)

Tags: Blue State, Budget, California, Democrats, San Bernardino

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2012 at 6:45 PM and is filed under Budget, Democrats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.