Crum, Crummier Erode Our Trust

What else does the Spokane City Council not know about the budget it adopted Monday night?

That question hangs over City Hall like a sword in the wake of the council’s discovery that City Manager Roger Crum had tucked into the proposed budget a pay raise for himself and 15 other top administrators. He failed to tell the council about the raise. Council members learned about it from the newspaper, hours before the budget was to be approved.

In response, the council did the right thing - sort of. It suspended the administrative pay raises until a committee can discuss how such raises should occur. Instead of percentage increases, merit pay is a possibility.

But “merit” is not a word that comes to mind when administrators attempt to give themselves an unannounced, undebated pay raise in a time of layoffs, cuts in valued services and tax increases.

Crum’s maneuver treated the public’s elected representatives like chumps for the unelected occupants of City Hall.

Throughout the city’s budget process, Crum had a duty to get the City Council fully involved in his decision-making about pay raises. Not only did he assume in the budget proposal that the city’s unions would keep or win pay raises but he also decided it was only fair to give himself and other non-unionized administrators a raise as well. The council ought to be kept fully aware of all pay decisions, especially those in which Crum and his aides are in a position to feather their own nests.

But the council did not distinguish itself either. It ought to be so inquisitive and assertive that a city manager could never plan a quiet pay raise and would never even dream of doing so.

This year’s city budget was so tight that top city leaders needed to call loudly for sacrifice. But those in the very comfy $70,000-$90,000 salary range should not expect sacrifice from others without making a sacrifice themselves.

As things stand now, the budget attacks programs the public values: the DARE drug-education program, library staffing and a fire rescue squad. At last, after years of pressure, it also trims outlays for travel, cellular phones and consultants and it kills, sort of, the city’s International Development Department. It raises taxes. And it assumes pay raises.

What other budget-balancing options might have been considered if administrators had been as responsive to the public’s interests as they are to their own comfort and convenience? If the public had reason for confidence in the city manager and in the City Council’s oversight, that question would not leap to mind. But it looms large now, and for a restoration of credibility, the public can look only to those who take office on the council in January.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board