Does Tonight Mean Anything?

The City Council holds a special meeting tonight (after a meeting of its Finance Subcommittee) for some budget talk. It could be a turning point in how the city handles its affairs, or it could be an opportunity that passes and business as usual reigns.

The meeting is to discuss about $400,000 in cuts to the city's budget. Considering that's less than 1 percent of the city's budget, on its face this all doesn't mean much. But the politics of the night, and the relationship between the council and Mayor Dan Mylott, gets an airing tonight.

To recap: Over the last two years, there has been a growing unrest about the city's budget. The council wasn't happy with Mylott's budget in 2005, and couldn't quite work up the nerve to throw it back at him this year. In the last week, one of Mylott's chief department heads, Police Chief Edward Cronin, said he wasn't going to make requested cuts to his budget.

So tonight, you'd think, might be a time to bring it all onto the table. It might be a time for the council to wrest some of the budget control back from Mylott. It might be a time to add some accountability to the Mayor's Office on budget issues. It might be a chance for the city to reshape its financial workings and try to start digging out of the mess that has been created by costs outgrowing revenue increases. Might, might, might.

The council has aired its unrest, but up to now has been unwilling or unable to take the ultimate leap to making Mylott fully accountable. Councilors will claim their hands are tied by the budget process, which only allows them to cut, not add, to Mylott's recommendations. We'd like to have seen what would have happened last spring, if they had dismissed Mylott's budget and told him to redo it. Wouldn't Mylott have had to figure out how to create a compromise budget the council liked? Wouldn't that have included shuffling money around in some areas to increase some line items?

Yes, the council is limited in its budgetary powers, but up to now it has not been willing to fully flex its might. Could tonight turn that around? Tonight goes beyond this one issue. It goes to the heart of how the city handles and budgets its money, and it goes to the point of just how far the council is willing to go to get Mylott to listen to it.

At some point between now and next November, the gloves will come off between the council and Mylott. A councilor (or two, or three or more) is going to run for mayor. Or a serious candidate with support from councilors will get some help from councilors taking swipes at Mylott. It might be hand-to-hand combat tonight, but the battle lines might start being drawn.

Or, none of the above will happen. Instead of using tonight as a chance to make some long-term changes, the council might deal with the issue at hand, give Mylott a mild scolding (or less) and move on.