Finkbeiner takes issue with mayor on shortfall

Former Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner and current Mayor Mike Bell. THE BLADE Enlarge | Photo Reprints

Former Toledo mayor Carty Finkbeiner took aim Friday at current Mayor Mike Bell, accusing the new administration of misleading the public about the city's deficit numbers -- a charge Mayor Bell flatly denied.

Mr. Finkbeiner said Mayor Bell's assertion the city inherited a $48 million deficit when he took office in January, 2010, is false. In fact, Mr. Finkbeiner said, the deficit was a mere $7.2 million. As evidence, he provided a copy of a December, 2009, letter from former Director of Finance John Sherburne, which appears to back up that number.

The former mayor said he was spurred to react when, last month, Mayor Bell's finance director, Patrick McLean, blamed a $2.8 million shortfall for this year on an alleged error made by the previous administration, an allegation Mr. Finkbeiner said is not true. He wrote a letter to Mayor Bell this week addressing both issues.

"It is baloney," Mr. Finkbeiner said Friday in an impassioned phone interview. "I think it's time to blow a whistle and say, 'Time out.' You guys need to stop pointing the fingers."

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Letter from former Mayor Finkbeiner to Mayor Bell, November, 2011

Letter from former Director of Finance John Sherburne, December, 2009

Mr. Finkbeiner claimed it would have been impossible for the Bell administration to balance the 2010 budget if the deficit it inherited really were $48 million. The former mayor said his own administration cut $40 million from the city's general operating budget while he was in office, but that took several years.

"There is no way in God's green heaven that they reduced a deficit they're claiming is $48 million to the $21 million they approved in April [2010]," the former mayor fumed. "No way. Impossible. Didn't happen. It's time for them to take a good, hard look at [this]."

But Mayor Bell said Friday he stands by the deficit numbers. He said the shortfalls facing Toledo's general fund are no mystery, given that local governments nationwide are facing similar problems.

Many people outside the administration, including business people and union members, took a look at the budget numbers in 2010 and found them to be correct, he said. The mayor said a state auditor pointed out that error that resulted in the $2.8 million shortfall to his administration.

"I know what the numbers are and I trust the people who are giving me the numbers," Mayor Bell said. "The only person who doesn't believe that the numbers are accurate is the former mayor. … He's entitled to have that opinion and he can keep it. I know what's real."

To balance the 2010 and 2011 budgets, the Bell administration sought concessions from city unions in the first year, transferred capital improvements money to the city's general fund, and sold city assets including, this year, the Docks restaurant complex and the Marina District in East Toledo. Despite these efforts, city officials are projecting between a $5 million and $7 million deficit by the end of 2011.

The main source of the city's budgetary woes is the decline in income tax revenue since 2007, Mayor Bell said. Although this revenue has started to slowly increase, it is still millions of dollars behind prerecession levels, he said.

Mr. Finkbeiner criticized Mayor Bell for not doing more to cut spending on his own executive staff. He said higher-up administration officials should be taking pay cuts, furlough days, and reductions in overtime, as they did when he was mayor.

"There has been no sacrifice by the Bell administration from the top down," Mr. Finkbeiner said. "We sacrificed. We took money out of our paychecks."

Councilman George Sarantou, who chairs the finance committee, said Friday he called a meeting earlier this week with Mr. Finkbeiner's former finance officials and Bell administration staff to discuss issues related to the deficit, in particular the $2.8 million error alleged by Mr. McLean -- an accounting error related to home demolition reimbursements. The councilman declined to discuss details of the meeting until a report is released Monday, but said he doesn't consider the problem a "burning issue."

Mr. Sarantou said he would leave discussion of the $48 million deficit figure up to Mr. Finkbeiner and Mayor Bell. The mayor's spokesman, Jen Sorgenfrei, said no such discussion is planned.

Councilman D. Michael Collins, meanwhile, said he agrees with the former mayor's assessment.

"I reviewed the letter that came from former Mayor Carty Finkbeiner and I find everything he says in that letter to be absolutely accurate," the councilman said. "I do not feel that he embellished and I have said all along that the $48 million deficit was a myth."

Contact Claudia Boyd-Barrett cbarrett@theblade.com or 419-724-6272.

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