Back to the drawing board for Niles’ fiscal revival plan

For Niles city government, the third time wasn’t the charm – nor was the fourth, the fifth or the sixth.

Indeed, the large number of financial recovery plans aimed at lifting the yoke of state-declared fiscal emergency is getting to be ridiculous.

Niles has been under the thumb of the statutorily mandated Financial Planning and Supervision Commission since 2014, and in that time, former Mayor Ralph Infante and the current mayor, Thomas Scarnecchia, have tried to develop a five-year financial forecast for the city that shows a balanced budget each year.

The lifting of fiscal emergency will not occur until Ohio Auditor David Yost is confident that the city of Niles will be on solid financial ground for at least the next five years.

Thus far, the blueprints submitted by Infante and Scarnecchia have failed to pass the sniff test.

Last year, Yost, who issued the emergency declaration three years ago, blasted the administration for playing politics with Niles’ economic well-being.

“[You can’t] go on making decisions based on not wanting someone to lose a job,” the state auditor told The Vindicator. The comment came in the wake of Scarnecchia’s public pledge not to lay off city workers. Instead, he said he intended to eliminate jobs through attrition.

“I expect political leaders to serve their constituents and not their cronies in city hall,” Yost said. “This is not a labor versus management problem; it’s a political problem.”

Almost a year later, it’s still a “politician problem.” Scarnecchia just can’t seem to get his act together.

Another rejection

Last week, the Financial Planning and Supervision Commission rejected a sixth version of the city’s financial recovery plan.

So, it’s back to the drawing board for the mayor, who had this to say about the no-vote: “I’m quite upset, but we will work to do what the state requires of us.”

What the state requires is rather straightforward: provide detailed information, including costs, on the upgrading of the city’s 14 municipal buildings; and, submit a cost estimate for the hiring of an outside contractor to install more than 6,000 computerized water meters the city bought some time ago.

Neither one is a simple task, given the instability of the city’s budget.

City Council President Robert Marino, who sits on the state supervisory commission and voted against Scarnecchia’s recovery plan, echoed the sentiments of his colleagues when he said, “My expectation is that our needs have to be defined [in terms of costs] and what we can financially afford. I expect this information to be incorporated with known facts.”

Here are a couple of the known facts:

The evaluation of the 14 buildings is to be completed in a month, but an architect’s study shows that bringing only the Safety Service Center into compliance could cost about $1 million.

City council isn’t in a hurry to pass legislation authorizing the administration to seek proposals from contractors for installing the water meters. A third reading of the measure may not occur until mid-May, which means Mayor Scarnecchia cannot complete his revised recovery plan until that’s done.

But it isn’t just the failure of the mayor to submit an acceptable long-term budget that’s cause for concern.

Last week, state-appointed fiscal supervisors, who are responsible for monitoring revenues and expenditures, complained to the commission that some department heads and officeholders are not complying with requests to provide timely financial information.

One of the city officials named was Janet Rizer-Jones, the part-time treasurer.

Reacting to the complaints, commission Chairman Quentin Potter said he and his colleagues could seek a court order requiring compliance by any official ignoring such requests.

Scarnecchia, whose performance as mayor over the past year and three months has been uninspiring, at best, should make it known to everyone that cooperation with the state-appointed overseers is not a matter of choice.

The harsh reality is that state Auditor Yost is the only one who can lift the yoke of fiscal emergency, so it’s foolhardy for anyone in Niles to ignore the demands for financial information.