Editorial

With the pomp and ceremony expected at such events, the peaceful transition of power, albeit on a municipal level, took place Sunday at West Haven High School. Nancy Rossi became the twelfth mayor of the city since it transitioned from a selectman to mayor-council form of government in the 1960s. Rossi’s ascension to the third floor office of City Hall began with a whimper and ended with a bang as she befuddled the professionals and the pundits, and won both the Democratic Primary in September and the general election in November.

The cornerstone of her campaign platform was fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets. During her inaugural address, Sunday, the new mayor jokingly referred to her being a CPA – something she hammered every time she could during the campaign. With that out of the way, she told listeners the fiscal responsibility she preached will be put into practice.

“You may have heard I am a CPA. Tomorrow, I will be in my office bright and early and put in place a hiring freeze of all non-essential personnel and a spending freeze for all expenditures that are not required to deliver services to our residents. We will begin the process of auditing our cell phone inventory and fleet assignments. We will institute internal controls to make our government services more effective and efficient. We will look for ways to do our jobs smarter and at lower cost to taxpayers,” she said.

The financial health of the city – a problem going back to the 1980s – has eaten away at our tax base, created a dependency on state aid and outside, one-time sources of revenue, and promoted a fictitious budget-making system that gives overblown revenue estimates in order to balance with expenditures. The last four years have been a testament to the failure to accurately balance the two sides of the ledger, helping to make a 12-year problem (the operating deficit) worse. Indeed, it was the budget estimates and horrible miscalculations that deepened the hole the city is in to the tune of more than $16 million. But the previous administration is not the only culprit. It was a modus operandi that spans decades and several administrations.

While it is true the city bonded to pay off the deficit, the story is not over. Until we know what the last Fiscal Year’s audit shows, we don’t know what our financial status is. We can be back behind the eight-ball with a report written in red ink.

Mrs. Rossi has set a high bar for herself, and will be judged by the rules she set for success. She has also set herself up to be the bad guy, making the difficult decisions others have left for the future. The future is now.

During her address, Mayor Rossi said she hopes to improve transparency in government, making the taxpayers a partner rather than a spectator in the decision-making process. We hope that is true. We’ve heard these words before.

She is the product of a segmented Democratic Party that has played political “King of the Hill” for a quarter-century. Each faction that gains power promises more accountability. Very soon, however, the in-fighting produces not transparency, but insularity. Decisions become secretive and made by smaller and smaller groups of advisors.

We hope the new administration is able to break the cycle. We also hope the other factions in the Democratic Party will put the city and taxpayers first, rather than seek to subvert, and thwart administration policy. History shows something other than cooperation.

Mrs. Rossi has promised more fiscal responsibility and more transparency. Both are tall orders. We hope she can fulfill her promises.