Unlawful Behavior of the Framingham City Council: Part I

This is the first of a series of articles which will address behaviors of the Framingham City Council which are unlawful, unsound, or unsustainable:

1. Unlawful behavior includes repeatedly violating the City Charter and violating state laws in its approach to ordinances and the school district.
2. Unsound behavior includes systematically delegating its decision making responsibilities to the Finance Subcommittee, effectively eliminating a majority of the City Council from discussion and deliberation on key strategic and tactical issues.
3. Unsustainable behavior includes executing major financial and infrastructure policies, with no community buy in, which have eroded the city’s finances and capital assets year after year.

Framingham is entering its seventh year as a city, with a new City Council about to adopt new rules, a City Charter review in full swing, and the Mayor, in the second half of his 4 year term, shortly due to present his state of the city speech. Although it may not be obvious to some in the community, there are very significant problems facing the city, including a property tax revenue stream depleted by $30 million/year through systematically forcing property tax increases below average inflation, a rising city infrastructure maintenance backlog now estimated at $400 million, a stalled solar installation effort, eroding city management staff compensation, a lack of progress on expanding pre-K for 4-year-olds, and so on.

Approximately 70 articles detailing these problems have been published by this author since March 19, 2023, and can be viewed at:

https://framinghamobserver.substack.com/publish/posts

Given the pervasive nature of these difficulties, it seems reasonable to ask what the fundamental reasons are for their occurrence. Remarkably, all investigations lead to the inescapable conclusion that the behavior of the City Council is the fundamental source of trouble in the city.

That behavior is problematic in three ways.

It has been unlawful. It has been unsound, and it is unsustainable.

In the remainder of this article, the City Council’s unlawful behavior with respect to the City Charter will be the focus. A second article will focus on the City Council’s violations of state law. A third article will focus on the City Council’s unsound behavior, and a fourth article will focus on the City Council’s unsustainable behavior.

Let’s look at the City Charter violations.

The City Charter commands that a newly elected City Council ensure three officers are appointed: an Auditor, the City Clerk, and the Secretary of the Council. The City Clerk and Secretary positions are familiar and have always been properly filled. However, the Auditor position has never been filled in 6 years! There have been occasional rumblings in City Council meetings on how important the position is, but the salary for the position was targeted for elimination and then reduced substantially in at least one budget cycle.

Three times a newly elected City Council reviewed its rules and procedures, and decided to ignore the City Charter requirement that one of the first tasks of a City Council is to hire an Auditor.

It truly is amazing, given the importance of the position. Here is what the City Charter says in Section 8 of Article II: LEGISLATIVE BRANCH.

8. OFFICERS APPOINTED BY COUNCIL

a) Auditor: The council shall appoint an auditor to serve for a term of three (3) years and until a successor is chosen and qualified. The auditor shall conduct, or cause to be conducted, financial and performance audits following government auditing standards as promulgated by the comptroller-general of the United States. The auditor shall make periodic reports to the council in such detail and with such frequency as the council shall, by ordinance, by rule or by other vote, direct. All officials and employees of the municipality shall cooperate with the auditor in the performance of this audit function. The auditor shall have such other powers and duties as may be provided by charter, by ordinance or by other vote of the council.

This position, although governed by customary auditing standards, is not meant to carry out the annual audits of the city’s books which are generally handled by an outside firm. Rather, as the very broad job description allows, it provides a means for the City Council to deploy a full time staffer to gather financial and performance data from the city, create reports as directed by the City Council, and thus provide the City Council with the vital information it needs to make sure money is spent where it should be, and has the planned impacts.

The Auditor is the primary source of all the vital financial and performance intelligence which the City Council needs to do its job. If an Auditor had been in place from the start, back in 2018, the entire decision making trajectory of the City Council would have been altered.

Many outcomes would have been different, as shown in the following examples.

If the City Council had hired its Auditor, it would have been knee deep in all the financial reports it could ever have wanted, without having to beg the Executive Branch for anything. The City Council could have completely avoided its collisions with the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Louise Miller, if it had simply obeyed the law laid down by the City Charter:

1. It would have had the financial reports which it blamed the CFO for not providing.

2. When the City Assessor reported to the City Council Finance Subcommittee, in its meeting on November 20, 2023, that the new growth estimate of $3.5 million used to build the FY24 budget, needed to be revised down to $2.2 million, the Auditor could have reminded Councilors of the obvious fact that the budget was now missing $1.3 million, and the property tax rate would have to be increased to fill the gap. That would have prevented the City Councilor meltdowns which occurred in the December 4, 2023, City Council meeting to set the property tax rates, when some Councilors on the Finance Subcommittee claimed to have never heard about the $1.3 million problem. The verbal assault on the CFO in that meeting, over the $1.3 million budget gap, triggered her resignation.

The recent departure of a competent CFO was thus largely due to an unintended consequence of a City Council failure to obey the City Charter.

When Moody’s Investor Service alarmingly downgraded the city’s bond rating in July 2022, the Auditor could have been tasked by the City Council to look into the reasons for that and report back to the City Council with a detailed analysis of the problem, with options for remedies.

When a burgeoning crop of potholes drew a flood of resident complaints in the Spring, the Auditor could have been tasked by the City Council to look into the level of investment in road maintenance, the staff and equipment deployed etc., and report back to the City Council with a detailed analysis of the problem, with options for remedies.

There are many other scenarios where an Auditor could have played a vital role in ensuring that city finances and operations were on track.

But with no Auditor keeping watch, the City Council kept on flying blind.

The bottom line is that the City Council lacks the basic information its needs to do its job and it has arrived in that situation simply because it decided to ignore the City Charter.

One possibility to consider, which might be appropriate with the Charter Review Committee in full swing, is to take a look at ways to make it impossible for the City Council to avoid hiring the vital staff it needs.

When I lived in Newton, and served on the Newton School Committee for 6 years, I learned that the City Council had the City Comptroller as one of its charter appointments. In Newton, the accounting department reports to the City Comptroller, so that position must be filled.

Multiple times, when I was an elected official, the City Comptroller provided vital financial and performance data essential to understanding school-related projects in the city, such as the Newton North High School project, or the subsequent Angier and Cabot elementary school projects.

In its decision making, the Newton City Council relied heavily on the Comptroller’s reports on finance and performance, across all city government operations.

So, perhaps one of the charter change recommendations for Framingham could be to replace the Auditor position by a City Comptroller position.

Meanwhile, there is some stirring in the new Framingham City Council, with two new members and a sense of change in the air. Maybe when the City Council Temporary Rules Subcommittee finally meets, it might consider adding to its rules a new one: “The Framingham City Council must obey the City Charter and hire an Auditor”.

FLIGHT OF FANCY

Imagine a parallel universe, where the City Council was law abiding and well informed, and a capable, talented CFO, Louise Miller, was still on the job in Framingham.