City leaders in Vallejo, California voted this week to resolve its worsening financial crisis by filing for protection under federal bankruptcy laws. In so doing, Vallejo will become the largest California municipality to file for bankruptcy.
The vote taken was unanimous, reflecting the reality of a $16 million budget deficit many in the area apparently blame on “overly generous” pay to firefighters and law enforcement officers, following two years of ultimately fruitless negotiations with those groups’ unions.
Bankruptcy for municipalities is governed by Chapter 9 of Title 11, in which is codified the Bankruptcy Code, as amended most recently by 2005’s Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA). Section 101(40) defines municipality to include any political subdivision or agency of a state; South Carolina counties would also fall within the ambit of this chapter.
I wonder how many county and city attorneys in South Carolina have heard about this one yet from their finance directors …
I heard about S. 1144 initially through a news alert that led me to this editorial at the Charleston Post & Courier’s website from state Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom. From Mr. Eckstrom’s article, which appeared in print on April 3, 2008:
Agency compliance with any additional online data posting required by the proposed legislation could be implemented in most cases without costing the taxpayers a dime. Yet a recently released “fiscal impact statement” obtained by the General Assembly dramatically overstates the cost of implementing this proposal. Misinformed or biased “number crunching” only confuses lawmakers and gives governments an excuse not to make their spending available to the public.
Fair enough. But then Mr. Eckstrom goes on to state, by way of supporting his statement that most state agencies are already in compliance with this proposed legislation without being aware of it:
The majority of state agencies already report their finances to my office for me to process their check payments and in turn I summarize and electronically post their spending information on the state Web site. The entire program costs taxpayers nothing.
I respect Mr. Eckstrom’s position on accountability and openness in public finance, but I can’t agree with the statement that his actions “cost taxpayers nothing.” Every employee and official of the state and its political subdivisions has a job description, assigned tasks, and a finite amount of time in which to do those tasks. Adding a function — any function, regardless of how good an idea it is — within that finite amount of time costs the taxpayers something, be it overtime or the opportunity cost for whatever task was set aside to make room for the new task.
I also cannot agree with the implication that this is “simple” legislation that can be easily implemented. Certainly, scanning and rendering a simple 10-page document into a PDF is a simple enough administrative task — but most of the larger county and city statements that would be affected by this legislation would be much larger than 10 pages.
Additionally, uploading it to the web could be a difficult task, depending on the way the county’s IT department has the county’s website setup. Most IT departments restrict the people who have access to the site’s code, for one thing, which means only a handful of people at most would be expected to post all the documents for the entire county or city. Even if that restriction were not in place, uploading the documents to the web isn’t necessarily an easy thing to do. It’s easy enough for me, using WordPress, to upload the full text of the bill (for example — here, in PDF), but WordPress has a one-click solution for such tasks, and not many county websites are powered by WordPress! Most have interfaces that would require some measure of technical skill — which means training, which means more opportunity and fiscal cost.
That, however, isn’t my main objection to the bill. I haven’t looked at the numbers Mr. Eckstrom references, but I do believe the costs would exceed what we’d call de minimis. For one thing, the sheer number of pages for some counties’ checking account transactions would be mindboggling.
Think of Horry County with its 1500-plus employees, each paid by check every other week (two sets of transactions). Then add the credit card transactions — a busy fleet of police cars, public works vehicles, code enforcement vehicles, all using county credit cards to purchase gas. Add the bank cards for council members and administrative staff for necessary travel. Add, too, all the transactions Procurement engages in to maintain stores of widely and frequently used items.
Now, imagine scanning each and every one of them. That would be a time-consuming task that could conceivably require additional personnel. And the resulting PDFs would be enormous — possibly technically unfeasible; the impact on the county’s website bandwidth could be significant as well.
I can’t argue with the impulse to make public expenditures publicly accessible. I think it’s a laudable goal. I simply question how much thought went into this legislation, and how much of that input came from government employees in a position to know the true costs of compliance.
Most state bar associations have a section or division for local government lawyers (though some lump them in with state government attorneys, who arguably have a very different set of concerns). However, in my experience, not many of them are taking full advantage of technology to bring their members in closer contact.
This is the first post in a series about organizing your state’s county & municipal bar. This post will outline a few tools that can help you get your fellow county and municipal lawyers together and talking on a regular basis. Tomorrow, the series will conclude with a list of tips on managing list/group email and discussions.
Google Groups
Google Groups is a free message and website service offered by Google. Anyone can set up a group and invite members to join via email. You can also add members directly though you should be extremely careful using this tool, and make certain you have their permission first.
Each Group is also given some limited webspace that’s easy to use. You can upload files to the site that will be downloadable only to Group members. You can also write pages (useful for collections of website links for resources or books for sale on Amazon or at any online store site, such as the ABA Publications store). Members can communicate via email or by logging on to the website and checking the new messages in a threaded format.
Members should be encouraged to use the Google Profile feature to disclose their backgrounds, current positions, contact info, and areas of expertise. This helps encourage getting to know each other, and also facilitates off-group communication in the event one member has a particular question; she or he can readily see which members have experience in that area.
The other particular use for this kind of site is as an archive. Once the group’s been in existence for awhile, it will accumulate a number of posts on various topics, all of which will be archived at the Group’s site. Future members can then search the archives for useful information when a problem arises.
Another site similar to this, and also free of charge, is the Yahoo! Groups feature.
Basecamp
Basecamp is a tool I use with CLS clients (that’s a referrer URL, by the way — if you prefer the non-referrer site, it’s here, though I’d appreciate it if you’d enter my referral code of EGR6U87F6C when prompted in sign-up; it costs you nothing, but helps me offset the expense of this site).
It’s not free — a basic membership starts at $24 a month (there is a free version but it doesn’t have the file-sharing feature enabled, which in my opinion is the single most useful feature of this site, among many useful features). However, for functionality and ease of use, it’s hard to beat Basecamp.
Here’s how it works: You sign up for your account, and Basecamp sets up your website at a particular URL related to the account name you choose. You establish Projects, and can upload documents (up to specified limits — for more info on the various packages see here); then you specify which individuals have access to which aspects of the site. You can track and manage tasks, projects, deadlines, and more with Basecamp. It truly is colllaborative project management of the best kind, and worth every penny in my view.
Blogs
You can easily set up your own free blog specific to your state’s government law issues, or perhaps dedicated to a particular aspect of county/municipal law (the Zoning Blawg, anyone?).
There are two main free blog hosting sites: WordPress.com and Blogger.com. Either will work well, though I find WordPress a more feature-rich and useful platform.
After you sign up for your free account at either site, you’ll be “walked through” the relatively painless processes of setting up your new blog. You’ll have limited options for templates for either platform; for more choice and customization, you can go the self-hosting route by registering your own URL, signing up for hosting, and installing your own WordPress files, However, this can be daunting for many attorneys who aren’t familiar with FTP and working behind the scenes with websites.
Blogs can be used as a rudimentary knowledge management system. Using categories and tags, you can accumulate posts on specific sub-topics within larger contexts, in whatever organizational taxonomy makes sense for your purposes. Allowing others to post creates a group blog and harnesses the unique skills and expertise of others; it also lessens the burden of administering the blog by sharing the load.
Wikis
Wikis are another content management approach. The best known wiki is probably Wikipedia. You can set up a wiki for your own group at sites such as PBWiki.com. Up to three users can use the site’s services for free; other group sizes and the associated costs are set forth here.
The advantage some see in setting up a wiki as opposed to a blog is one of layout and format. Wikis make use of internally hyperlinked pages, whereas most blogs rely heavily on links to outside pages. You can create entries based on other people’s work and thereby create an ever-expanding body of reference work. For this reason, wikis are best suited for explorations of topics, rather than new developments (at which blogs excel).
Are there other tools? Without doubt. Drop me a line in the comments section below or in the contact form here, and suggest others. I’ll pass them on in future posts.
Sheryl | 
05 10th, 2008| 
