BALLOT QUESTION #1: If you're a resident of Johnson City, TN, your August ballot will ask “Shall the Charter of the City of Johnson City be amended to allow publication of the proposed budget ordinance once at least ten (10) days prior to when the governing body will consider final passage of the proposed budget ordinance?”
Vote NO to Protect Budget Transparency and Our Ability to Comment on the Budget
This proposal would reduce both budget transparency and public participation in the budget process by eliminating advertisement of the draft budget the City Manager sends to the Commission. It instead would require the City to publish a single advertisement of the final budget, much later into the process: just 10 days before the Commission considers final passage of the budget.
If this referendum passes:
- There will be no requirement for the City to publish the City Manager’s draft budget when it is transmitted to the Board of Commissioners around the turn of May.
- The timeframe for residents to consider and comment on the Board of Commissioners’ budget ordinance will be reduced from roughly one month* to as few as ten days
- Advertisement of the budget ordinance could come after the first reading of the ordinance and a mere three days* before the final reading** of the ordinance.
- The public hearing on the budget could occur on the final rather than first reading of the budget ordinance, though the timing of the mandated public hearing would be left to the discretion of the Commissioners.
Should the TN State Code ever be revised to remove the mandate that draft budgets be printed in a local newspaper, our city’s draft budgets could be published in outlets that vary year by year according to the will of incumbent city officials.
The Commissioners insist they must make this change to avoid confusing Johnson City residents and to save money for taxpayers. The estimated cost of publishing the draft budget is $3500 annually from a General Fund of over $166,000,000 this fiscal year. We ask: Why not have faith in Johnson City residents and empower them to make decisions about how the City spends their tax dollars? There are more than monetary costs to consider in regards to this ballot measure.
Vote NO on Ballot Question #1 if You Believe:
- Residents should have a greater say in how their tax dollars are spent.
- The City Commission should be providing residents with the tools needed to participate in local budgeting rather than taking such tools away.
- Johnson City’s budget process should be written clearly into law, not left to the discretion of whoever holds city office in any given year.
- The removal of the public from the public budget is a greater cost than $3500 in annual ad expenditures.
Here Is a Breakdown of the Concerns About Ballot Question 1:
- Residents Will Be More Likely to Miss the Public Budget Hearing Entirely
This ordinance makes it more likely that residents will miss entirely their opportunity to weigh in on city spending. - Residents Will Not Have Time to Analyze and Comment on the Draft Budget
The budget ordinance for the current fiscal year1 was eleven (11) pages long and detailed City spending across twenty-one (21) different municipal funds. If this measure passes, the time that residents have to consider and comment on the draft budget will be reduced to as few as ten days. Can a reasonable person really say that ten days is sufficient time for Johnson City residents to weigh in on the proposed budget? - The Commission Will Have No Time to Act on Public Input
If the Commissioners receive public input on the budget only a few days before the final vote, it is unlikely they will have time to incorporate such feedback in a meaningful way. Should Ballot Measure #2 pass alongside Ballot Measure #1, the sole opportunity for the Commissioners to amend the budget ordinance based on public comment would be at the final (second) reading. By mandating the holding of a budget hearing during the first of three readings and requiring advertisement of the budget ordinance at least one week prior to the first reading, the current Charter language guarantees the Commissioners a longer window of time to revise the budget ordinance in line with public feedback. - This Proposal Will Introduce Arbitrariness and Unpredictability into Government Processes and Encourage a Passive Citizenry
A functioning democracy requires that citizens know how, when, and where they can get involved in civic affairs. By introducing large degrees of arbitrariness and unpredictability into the budget process, this proposal leaves citizens guessing where they can find important information and how they can have their say. It sends the message that the Commissioners have no interest in an active citizenry. The proposal would thus come with great cost to democracy, even as its supporters praise the $3500 ad savings. - Our Budget Will Be Shaped By Private Interests and Back-Door Deals
If our Commissioners don’t want this to be our city, whose do they want it to be? By reducing budget transparency and restricting residents’ ability to impact budget decisions, this proposal makes it more likely that our city budget will be shaped by private interests who wield their influence through hidden channels.
A democratic budget process must be transparent, predictable, accessible, and measured. Our city’s current budget process already leaves much to be desired on these points, and this proposal would only make things worse.
A Vision Forward
We envision a city in which the people have a meaningful say in the budgetary process and in which their priorities take precedence in city spending.
We want a Johnson City and a Northeast Tennessee where the well-being of all people is front and center, not just a few people with money and connections. We believe the people can and should be informed, involved, and impactful in the city budget. That requires more advanced notice of budget drafts, more events soliciting residents’ concerns, more effort by the city to inform the public of budget-related events, and, above all, more responsiveness of city officials to the concerns of working people.
Addressing the Arguments
They Say: The Proposal Provides a Cost-Savings for Taxpayers
Assistant City Manager Steve Willis and various Commissioners have insisted at various times and places that this measure is a good one because it affords the taxpayers an annual $3500 in cost-savings. Though we do not dispute that this proposal would take a modest cash expenditure off our city’s books, we would point out that Johnson City’s General Fund for the current fiscal year included over $166,000,000 in reserves and revenues1. And that’s just one of the twenty-one City funds under consideration! Are we really willing to trade away our ability to impact the city budget for a mere two-thousands of one percent (0.002%) of the General Fund?
We find the City Commission’s narrow focus on monetary costs at the expense of other types of costs to be both revealing and disappointing.
They Say: A Draft Budget Is Confusing for the Residents of Johnson City
City Commissioners have repeatedly claimed that Johnson City residents become confused when presented with a draft budget. Speaking at the April 4 Commission meeting, Steve Willis suggested that sharing early budget drafts “confuses the general public because they view that document and think that is the final document when in fact it isn’t.”2
We don’t feel the need to say much on this point. We believe our neighbors are smart enough to understand what a first draft is.
They Say: The Draft Budget Is All a Guess, and It Lacks Accurate Numbers
In the same meeting, Commissioner Joe Wise called into question the value of early stages of a draft budget by suggesting the draft budgets were full of “guesses.” We find this to be misleading, as the City Charter requires the City Manager’s assessments to be based upon previous years’ realities. There is a difference between pulling numbers out of the air and making informed projections based on prior experience. The City Manager is obligated by law to base draft budget estimates on what we know from previous budgets.
Since we believe Commissioner Wise is aware of this requirement, we have to wonder why he described the City Manager’s work as “guesses.”
They Say: Newspapers are Outdated, and Everything Can Be Accessed Online
At various times, Commissioners have supported this proposal by claiming that newspapers are outdated. According to this line of thought, lifting the Charter’s requirement to run the draft budget in a local newspaper would allow the City to move advertisement of the budget online should the relevant sections of the TN State Code ever be revised to grant municipalities latitude to publish draft budgets as they see fit. During the April 4 Commission meeting, Commissioner John Hunter directed his audience to the City website, where, he claimed, budget resources were freely available already.
Though Commissioner Hunter’s point, if true, would still fail to justify the passage of Ballot Question #1, we tested the claim that the relevant budget documents are freely available online. We found that the city’s website, as of May 17, 2024, still had no information about the ongoing budget cycle for Fiscal Year 2025. (Screenshot below.)
Until the Johnson City website posts the relevant documents in a timely fashion, let’s keep the existing requirement that the various draft budgets be published at a particular time in a particular way.
Note: We did find the proposed 2025 budget finally posted when we visited on May 25, more than three weeks after we expected it to be available. You can access it at Johnson City's City Budget Web Page
NOT-SO-FUN FACT: There seems to be some confusion among our Commissioners and some city officials as to the content of the proposal they have put on the ballot. At the April 4 City Commission meeting, for example, Assistant City Manager Steve Willis claimed roughly 48 minutes into the session that this measure would require publication of the budget ordinance ten days prior to “consideration by the Board.”2. When Commissioner Wise asked if Willis meant ten days prior to the first reading of the ordinance, Willis answered in the affirmative. This is wrong.
Whereas the current Charter language explicitly requires the City to publish its budget ordinance “not less than one (1) week before it is taken up for consideration by the board of commissioners,”3 the wording contained in Ballot Measure #1 is quite different:
“A public hearing shall be held on the proposed budget ordinance before its final adoption by the board of commissioners. A public hearing may be attended by all qualified voters and taxpayers and be heard in person or by attorney.
The city shall publish the proposed ordinance in a manner prescribed by Tennessee Code Annotated § 6-56-206 once at least ten (10) days prior to the final passage, by the board of commissioners.”4
In addition to removing the requirement that the City Manager’s draft budget be advertised around the turn of May, this proposal would peg the Commission’s deadlines for advertising its own budget ordinance to the date of the ordinance’s final passage, not its introduction.
We should judge Ballot Measure #1 by the words on the page, not how current city officials say the words will be used. In this case, the words simply don’t guarantee the timeline presented by Mr. Willis on April 4th.
* In recent years, the Commission has conducted its three readings of the budget at week-long intervals, not the standard two-week intervals of regular Commission meetings. For the current budget[1], that of Fiscal Year 2024, the draft budget was published in the Johnson City Press on May 25th. The first reading and public hearing occurred on June 1st, with the second reading on June 8th and the final reading (and passage) on June 15th. Were the Commission to follow a standard two-week meeting schedule, there would be a minimum of five weeks between publication of the draft budget and the final vote on the ordinance.
** This assumes that the Commissioners get their way with Ballot Measure #2, which reduces the number of readings required to pass an ordinance from three (3) to two (2).
