First Selectman Timothy Herbst did not achieve his campaign pledge of identifying $1 million in operational savings in his first 100 days in office, and he misled the citizens of Trumbull in a press release on the topic issued this week, Trumbull Democrats said.

Herbst reached his 100^th day in office on March 16. A centerpiece promise during last fall’s campaign was that he would name a committee whose sole task would be to identify $1 million in “operational” savings in his first 100 days in office.

Any basic financial definition of the term “operational savings” assumes a reference to the operating budget, meaning year-over-year costs associated with the routine operations of town government and services. It would not include capital-projects spending, maintaining pension funds and bonding used to build schools.

Herbst, however, cites exactly those kinds of expenses among his “operational” savings. For example, he includes in his $1 million savings:  

• $350,000 in bonding costs for the cancelled town pool
• $54,000 in elimination of pension payments to ineligible retirees.
• $47,359 in reductions in the Trumbull High School renovation project.

These items, amounting to $451,359, are not part of the operating budget, and it is misleading to call them “operational” savings. For that matter, the money for the bonding of the pool was never spent, so it can’t be characterized as “savings.”

Herbst’s real number would be $610,290 in reduced operational costs for 2010, not $1 million. And it is actually much less, because the $231,285 reduction due to the elimination of nearly-free health benefits for school nurses and other executives is offset by a $1 per hour raise given to the nurses. On an annualized basis, a $1-per-hour raise amounts to $2,088 per nurse. Also, several positions that Herbst refers to as eliminated have already been added back to the budget by the Republican-controlled Board of Finance.

“The promise to find $1 million in operational savings implied that there were large parts of our operating budget that were unnecessary,” said Mary Beth Thornton, D-2, Town Council Minority Leader. “We are now seeing that almost half of the ‘savings’ listed include money that was never a part of our budget.

“Campaign promises that will actually increase our operating budget will need to be addressed,” Thornton added, “such as: How can our town finance an all-day kindergarten program and eliminate the use of portable classrooms when our Board of Education has seen dramatic cuts to all aspects of our school system?”

Added Steve Lupien, a Democratic member of the Board of Finance, “We applaud any efforts to achieve savings on behalf of the taxpayers. The disconnect for us is that the first selectman could have simply stuck with reporting the results he did achieve, rather than including items that so clearly don’t meet the spirit or letter of the original promise. What’s more, there is a troubling thread here that involves exaggeration and stretching of the truth.”

This campaign vow is just one of several that Herbst made that have not been kept in the time he promised. For instance, Herbst promised municipal budgets of 1 percent less than the rate of inflation. “During my first term, I will propose budgets that at the very least are commensurate with inflation, minus 1 percent,” Herbst said at his nomination-acceptance speech. Earlier this year, though, Herbst told the media that, “When I made that promise, inflation had been going up about 3 percent a year over the last decade,” he said. “No one foresaw the economy getting this bad.”

Not true. When Herbst made that speech, on July 27, 2009, inflation had been running at –2.1 percent for the year, according to Usinflationcalculator.com, which uses data from the Consumer Price Index published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  

For the year 2009, inflation tracked at –0.4, according to the same source.  

Herbst delivered a budget for Fiscal year 2010-2011 with an increase of slightly less than 1 percent—doubling the rate of inflation—and a projected tax hike of 1.9 percent.

Herbst also promised:

• To propose to Town Council in the first 100 days of his administration a ban on political contributions from those who have contracts with the town in excess of $5,000 to either local town committees or candidates for municipal office. He hasn’t.
• To develop within his first 100 days a financial ethics policy that will become part of the municipal code, to be followed by every department and every municipal employee. The status of that promise is unclear.
• To direct by executive order in his first week in office that all receipts and requests for reimbursement be reviewed by Town Treasurer John Ponzio. This order would apply to every department and every municipal employee, including the first selectman. The status of that promise is unclear.