Baltimore’s City Council is in the process of hashing out Mayor Sheila Dixon’s budget—and trying to find ways to undo some of the cuts the Mayor’s proposed.
At the same time, some serious questions have popped up about the city’s whole system of finances.
A few weeks ago, finance officials (surprise!) disclosed the city had $39 million it didn’t know about. Then, (surprise, surprise!) they revealed another “surplus” of $13 million.
It’s all good news, certainly, but shouldn’t we wonder how millions of dollars can go unnoticed?
In April, I did a story on Mayor Dixon’s city-owned cars (she has use of three of them) and on the line item budget for her office. In the course of pursuing a follow-up story, I filed a request with finance officials for documentation to explain several expenditures.
The city responded by saying two of the expenditures we asked about “were found not to be supportable with documentation and were not accurate.”
And, concerning another, the city replied, “no document exists to support the exact amounts.”
We’re still trying to get the information we seek but answers like that are certainly not what we and the public should expect. The city collects a lot of money from its residents, visitors, and customers. Is its accounting up to snuff?
