Electoral politics in all of its glory gave Bossier City a 2025 budget in deficit, complete with an upside-down spirited if fantasy-based defense right out of George Orwell’s 1984 and a bowdlerized version of the ridiculed old saw that begs, “Trust us, we’re the government.”
The City Council unanimously passed a budget about $8.5 million unbalanced, knowingly and willingly engaging in deficit spending for city operations through the general fund. That was shaved to under $6 million by the transferring in from a few other funds along with the usual (over the past few years) transfer out of $4 million to pay in part debt. The bulk of the transfer in also is typical, $6.8 million from the “1991 Sales Tax,” a shorthand for transfer from funds collecting for the 1991 half-cent levy that can go to towards fire, jail, and municipal buildings operations, along with other things not eligible for general fund backing.
This is unprecedented. Councilors Democrat Bubba Williams and independent Jeff Darby have served since 1997, Republican David Montgomery since 2001, and Republican Jeff Free since 2013. Since 2013, the city never intentionally passed a budget with a deficit, much less one with expenditures about 110 percent of revenues, transfers included. In fact, from 1997 through 2017, the city consistently in budgeting for surpluses missed every single year with deficit spending that had to be balanced by tapping other funds. 2018 saw for the first time actual revenues (and expenditures) exceed those budgeted, but then the next three budgets missed with actual numbers below those budgeted, but unlike the previous two decades excepting 2018 their actual revenues exceeded expenses. Only in 2022 and 2023, skewed by Wuhan coronavirus pandemic fiscal dynamics that have since passed did the budget underestimate expenses and overestimate revenues, rapidly building up general fund reserves.
That noted, the norm for the city over the past nearly three decades has been general fund revenues unable to sustain general fund expenses, bailed out by the 1991 monies and other sources, until 2018, and even then for a few years the city missed substantially on budgeting revenues and expenses, overstating them in the general fund. The most recent exceptions to this have come from a fiscal environment entirely different from what the city faces today.
How very different has been brought home throughout the year. Early in 2024, it became increasingly apparent that sales tax revenues would not come close to last year’s levels. Through October, these have fallen seven percent or $4 million over the same period last year, with the proportional decline accelerating. And it will get worse next year still as the Louisiana Legislature just passed in special session an increase in state sales tax, which will discourage buying thus depress sales tax proceeds. Plus, keep in mind that the budget has a built-in property tax increase as well, where the city must roll forward rates to capture another million or so bucks, that will act as a brake on the local economy thus other tax collections.
The deficit spending resulted from a desire, as introduced by Montgomery, to trigger pay raises for the entirety of city employees at a minimum flat $500 monthly, and some who were particularly underpaid according to a recent city compensation study even more. This differed from the original budget offered by Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler, who wanted raises tailored to the study’s data that aggregated to a much more modest increase in taxpayer costs (and ratepayers; these would apply to the city’s water utilities as well, where in theory rates would cover expenses but no rate increases were offered, meaning the extra will have to be covered by cuts in how the city dispenses water or by robbing the Water Fund of reserves which normally stay ready to pay off debt).
Chandler, at the meeting’s beginning, defended his budget as responsible governance living within the city’s means and making rational decisions. He said any budget needed a stable revenue stream – not part of Montgomery’s offering – and didn’t need to rely on a “credit card or savings account.” He noted no serious business would be run this way.
He’s right. A budget built like this is little more than a hope and a prayer, as if it was a household who planned to spend more than it earned on the belief that a breadwinner would have a pay raise miraculously appear to make up the gap. Keep in mind that once given the employee raises become a permanent commitment, which within a few years at this pace of loss would drive general fund reserves back to the subsistence levels of less than a decade ago.
Yet despite a history that shows persistent revenue overestimation and frequent expenditure underestimation – all part of budgets consistently approved by the graybeards Williams, Darby, and Montgomery, and Free at the end of the streak – and a shakier fiscal environment going forward, taking time at the end of the meeting Montgomery unleashed a screed about how observers should forget all of that and instead proclaim the red ink signified sound government management.
On behalf of the other graybeards, of which half oversaw the entirety of $93 million in deficit spending from 1997-2017 while the other two pitched in most or part of the time, Montgomery – who two weeks earlier had sprung without almost no warning the deficit version onto Chandler and Republican Councilors Chris Smith and Brian Hammons after missing the public hearing over the executive budget weeks earlier – begged listeners to pay attention only to the past three, historically aberrant, years of financial results, as opposed to the baseline previous 25. He maintained that the practice of counting chickens before they hatched was sound fiscal management.
As if this excursion into doublethink wasn’t enough, in discussing the recently-accumulated general fund reserve he then went full bore Oceania sloganeering: “How much money do we have to sit on before we give it back to the people” – in reference to city government spending more! Indeed, if the city has gathered such a large reserve – a predicted $45 million after subtracting the deficit – that begs the question why there’s been no tax relief? Why did the Council (which was mirrored in Chandler’s budget) build in the budget a property tax increase for 2025 if, as Montgomery is maintaining, the city is generating hand-over-fist revenues higher than expenses?
To “give it back to the people” doesn’t mean distributing more of the people’s money to 700 or so city employees. It means cutting taxes, a concept that seems alien to Montgomery and his ilk who have overseen city spending grow from $62 million in 1997 to $156 million in 2023, an increase of 152 percent while the population increased only about 10 percent and price inflation went up just 90 percent over the same period.
Yet even if spending more than your income makes you queasy, Montgomery said not to fear, revenues targeted for capital outlay, up to $4 million, always could be transferred to the general fund. Saying that means Montgomery now can claim to have four chins since he has become two-faced: whenever in the past citizens commenters to the Council have criticized the city’s massive runup in debt for which the main cheerleader has been Montgomery, in the context of debt crowding out funds available for operating expenses such as higher city employee salaries, he constantly attempted to deflect from that by saying capital outlay wasn’t the same as operating expenses. Yet now he contends that distinction has disappeared when it suits him – even though, he admitted, he thought the Council thought it wasn’t spending enough on capital items, which would contradict that strategy.
Of course, that was the entire motivation of Montgomery and the graybeards (and presumably their lapdog rookie GOP Councilor Vince Maggio, who was absent for the meeting but had voted for this version the previous meeting) for their decision to have the city live beyond its means. Increasingly, and compounding in relevance as spring elections loom, they have been stung every time it has been pointed out their lust for needless capital spending has put the city in a position where it could not responsibly afford things like pay raises. Thus, you try to negate that issue, as well as win votes from city workers and their families, by saying you can have your cake and eat it, too by living for today and who cares about tomorrow?
In short, according to Montgomery a counting on selective past performance and ignoring the episodes contrary to the chosen narrative to predict definitively the future, as well as using funds designated for capital outlay for recurring expenses, made for a budget “fundamentally sound, fiscally responsible from a financial standpoint.” See, all it takes is redefining what “responsible” means and let the good times roll. After all, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.
Every councilor signed onto this, even the usually level-headed Smith and Hammons. For their part, they explained they had sat down with some folks from the city and been apprised of some double-secret information that magically when applied in 2025 will generate more revenues – despite the fact that the products of these presumably new initiatives appear nowhere in the budget they passed – to offset the deficit spending, earning their votes in favor.
That may even be true. But with certainty one they are up for reelection and it might not have been so politically good for them to vote against employee pay raises, no matter how risky the means to deliver them. Trust us, we’re the government, indeed.
Chandler could make a real statement for fiscal prudence if he vetoed the budget, but he’s up for reelection as well and it would get overridden, so it looks like there won’t be any adults in the room. That leaves citizens with little choice but to join their elected officials in what appears to be Bossier City’s latest financial strategy: crossing your fingers and hoping this all doesn’t blow up to make for yet another sorry chapter for a city that in the past three decades financially mismanaged its way into subpar population growth and out of the opportunity to become a low-tax, high-growth haven.
Advertisement
Advertisement