When the last sands of the fiscal year hourglass run out on the City of Columbia at midnight June 30, they will be red.

At least, that is a gathering consensus at City Hall.

“I think there’s going to be a deficit,” interim City Manager Steven Gantt says.

Gantt joins Councilman Kirkman Finlay, chairman of City Council’s budget committee, and Bill Ellis, the city’s interim chief financial officer, in predicting a shortfall.

If they are right, the city will have to tap its ever more thin reserves to cover any red ink, because state law prohibits the city from closing out the year in the hole.

Finlay, once largely dismissed as a budget alarmist, is increasingly being regarded as an authority on the city’s finances.

A projection he put together for the council to discuss in an April 29 meeting shows a nearly $5.7 million shortage, plus however much the council sets aside for future employee benefits.

A fairly new Governmental Accounting Standards Board rule, known as No. 45, or GASB 45, requires such a set aside.

Finlay’s estimation lists $4 million for it.

Coupled with the $5.7 million, that would balloon the deficit to $9.7 million, eviscerating the reserves from $13 million to a mere $3.3 million. As recently as 2002 they totaled a hearty $64 million, according to Finlay.

There are many reasons for the city’s fiscal meltdown.

One big explanation is years of mismanagement, witnessed in everything from paying bills twice to losing money on investments.

Another sizable piece of the puzzle is higher health care costs, which neither the administration nor the council anticipated or attempted to remedy until after the city had incurred millions of dollars in overruns.

But perhaps the most all-encompassing answer is the culture of city government, likewise at both the administrative and council levels.

Culture is an amorphous concept, but even Mayor Bob Coble, who is hardly a boat rocker, acknowledges the degree to which the status quo contributed to the city’s financial mess.
“We’re changing the culture of the city, and it’s a very challenging process,” Coble is quoted as saying in a recent newspaper report.

Indeed, in a remarkable display of candor, Gantt shined a light on that culture at the April 29 meeting.

It happened as he was talking with the council about a continuing problem of excessive overtime in some departments, namely public safety, even after directives to eliminate overtime unless unavoidable. Gantt said he thinks some departments are using the salaries of unfilled positions to pay overtime.

Councilman E.W. Cromartie interjected a question: Do they work for the council, or does the council work for them?

Replied Gantt, “Sometimes, councilman, I have difficulty answering that question.”
Finlay says it’s been years in the making.

“My suspicion is that there was a lot of pressure not to report numbers to council that might look bad,” he says. Good government was sacrificed for individual concerns, with promises of everything to everybody, Finlay says. “That is the culture.”