Convergence of fiscal chaos at CIty Hall

"For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,"

-- 6 Galatians 7

For eight years, Mayor Mark Mallory, City Manager Milton Dohoney and from time to time varying numbers of sycophants on City Council have sown a bumper crop of spending, debt and misplaced priorities.  And for eight years Mallory, backed by Roxanne Qualls, Laure Quinlivan, and Cecil Thomas, has been able to avoid the consequences of their bad behavior, by one-time budget gimmicks and sleight of hand.


This week, it all came crashing down on them, a convergence of fiscal chaos.

•  Moody's has made a major announcement with long-term implications for the City: that because of the abysmal policy of continuously under-funding the City's pension system (a Madoff-like Ponzi scheme), it will be down-grading the City's bond rating.
• The Streetcar is short $17.4 million in funding, meaning we must lay off more police officers and firefighters or raise taxes in order to fill the gap.  (This is, of course, only one of many overruns this project has and will experience.)
• The City is about to layoff hundreds of employees because they have refused for the better part of a decade to address their chronic problem of over-spending.

The clock has finally run out on them, and the day of reckoning is here.

Let them reap precisely what they have sown.