By Jim Jaffe Santa Monica
Last Friday afternoon, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District quietly posted its final proposed 2006-07 budget on it Web site. But when you clicked on it, the following message popped up: “The resource is not found.” That’s been the story of their budget process all year — an illusion of transparency. After my call to the district, the electronic transfer was corrected by Monday afternoon. Earlier that day, the district had sent out another last-minute “press release” e-mail announcing the next board meeting agenda was online for June 29 without the courtesy of highlighting the importance of the public hearing item on the budget. Now you see it, now you don’t.
Consider the following timeline of the district’s latest procedural shell game: When the board agenda for May 18 was posted on the Web site, it included a discussion item titled “Preliminary 2006-07 General Fund Budget, pages 55-61z” but without the cautionary message that budget summary pages a-z were not available for electronic transfer, or how to access them. Subsequently, that meeting had to be adjourned early without any budget discussion. Now you see it, now you don’t.
Then, at the rescheduled June 1 meeting, the same budget agenda item was brought back, but failed to mention that the summary budget pages were only accessible in a separate PDF file on the Web site. Adding insult to injury, you had to stick around until almost midnight to hear the board’s first public discussion on the proposed $3 million deficit budget. Now you see it, now you don’t.
Things didn’t get any better for the June 15 board meeting. The revised summary budget documents did not make it online until I reminded the district offices of their latest glitch. But mysteriously, two of these informative documents did not get electronical-ly transferred with their “fix.” Unfortunately, the only consistent part of the process was another budget discussion starting around 11:30 p.m., seven hours after the board began its closed session. Yawn. Now you see it, now you don’t.
During the first, time-sensitive portion of the June 15 meeting when the board had a joint discussion with the financial oversight committee (FOC), the chair of reported something that says it all about the process: “We (the FOC) have not had an opportunity to review the version of the budget before you.” Later, another FOC member complained — for the third year in a row — that the committee doesn’t receive the budget materials in a timely manner making oversight almost impossible. Is anyone surprised that there are two more vacancies on the FOC? Now you see them, now you don’t.
Finally, since the district did not give the public hearing on the proposed 2006-07 budget a time-sensitive slot for the June 29 meeting, I wouldn’t rush down to the district offices on Thursday expecting to hear a timely final budget discussion. But with no live local broadcast of the meeting, you would have to wait to see the video replay of the district’s closing magic act. Now you see it, now you don’t!
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 29, 2006. Read the original PDF.