Editorial: Bloated budgets and the problems they cause

Cutting a city budget - particularly for a department that provides critical services like water and sewer - is never easy. But as difficult as the decisions are, our faltering economy makes them necessary. And, as the Fall River water and sewer department has shown, budget cuts are possible.

And since they're possible, they should be made permanent.

Faced with the loss of more than $2 million in anticipated water and sewer revenue because of Boston Beer Company's decision not to build in Freetown, the department was forced to cut its budget. The largest cuts were administrative - $707,000 scheduled to be paid to the city for overhead costs. (Although it's a city department, the utilities department is an enterprise fund, meaning it makes its own money through water and sewer rates, paying back the city coffers for use of the city treasurer, auditor, etc.)

That represents nearly half of what was budgeted for the "financing uses" for the water department and more than 25 percent for the sewer department. Other cuts were made to staffing, capital purchases, vehicle insurance, sludge disposal, etc.

While the utilities department should be congratulated for trimming expenses when faced with a shortfall, the size of the cuts - particularly to the bureaucratic expenses - begs the question why they were budgeted so high in the first place. They clearly weren't critical.

And at a time when thousands of residents can't afford to heat their homes or drive their cars, homeowners are foreclosing at record rates, and the economy is teetering on the edge of a recession, non-critical expenses should not be funded or budgeted.

When the economy turns down, everyone must rein in spending, and that includes government departments. Governmental entities need to remember that they don't have their own cash; that money belongs to the residents, and every puchase is actually made by taxpayers. Residents simply can't afford to pay for what's not necessary.

Over-estimated budgets are common in government bureaucracies. Departments will unnecessarily pad certain line items, then transfer the money to another line, allowing them to spend with less oversight. There's no indication the utilities department purposely overinflated its budget. But it was clearly supporting non-critical expenses that it was able to cut.

It's worth wondering whether the department would have looked at its budget with such a critical eye if the anticipated revenue from Boston Beer Co. had not fallen through.