Solution to SFPD money problems may lay framework for future financial sacrifices

By Elizabeth Pfeffer

June 16, 2006

The San Francisco Police Department's budget woes brought about by overspending on overtime can be remedied at least temporarily, Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda reported to the Budget and Finance Committee Wednesday.

By transferring $300,000 in unspent academy training funds and $625,000 of the Urban Area Security Initiative Grant - which is still pending approval - to salary expenditures, it's likely the police department will be able to complete the fiscal year in July with a balanced budget.

"We are going on the assumption now that those salaries can be applied to those grant funds," Zmuda warned the committee. "If that should change over the next number of weeks, that is if Homeland Security fails to approve that request, or if for some reason it cannot be done, then we will have to come back to the committee."

This solution was presented as an alternative to a piece of legislation introduced by Fiona Ma last month, to provide the police department with $2.8 million to fund overtime and increase police presence in crime hotspots.

The reason the supplemental appropriation has not been heard by the committee yet is because the Controller had to freeze operating spending at the police department in an effort to balance their personal services.

"It is entirely possible, Supervisors, that by year end they will have bills to pay and no funds from which to pay them and that liability will be transferred to next fiscal year," said Zmuda, in response to an assertion by Board President Aaron Peskin that the police department could survive without an additional $2.8 million.

The Controller's office is bearing the responsibility of handling this problem while the police department continues their search for a chief financial officer, which, according to Supervisor Peskin, "they so sorely lack."

"In some instances we have had a couple of candidates who have been offered the position and after negotiation the candidate had in fact withdrawn their application," said Zmuda, who has been involved with CFO recruitments over the past year. "The last recruitment that was completed about 6-8 weeks ago did identify two or three potential candidates, none of whom were acceptable to the police chief or her staff."

The police department refused to reply to several attempts to contact them on this matter and on the budget deficit.

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