Column: Besides loyalty, what budget outcomes does Bloomington’s city council want to buy?
On Wednesday, Bloomington’s city council is holding a work session to talk about budget priorities for 2025.
Here’s something to watch for: Will the city council start to apply the principles of outcomes-based budgeting to its own part of the budget?
Specifically, will Bloomington’s city council start asking: What outcomes are we buying with investments in our three full-time staff, and how are we measuring those outcomes?
Outcomes-based budgeting focuses on getting specific results and impacts, in contrast to more typical budgeting for governmental units, which allocates funds based on historical spending patterns and departmental needs.
Based on recent remarks by Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson, who was sworn into office at the start of the year, the city of Bloomington is on a path eventually to adopt an outcomes-based approach to budgeting, possibly for the 2026 budget cycle.
On its June 5 meeting agenda, the city council will likely have a resolution that would chart a course towards outcomes-based budgeting. Councilmembers ran out of time to consider it on May 15.
Based on a B Square estimate, using 2024 budget data and 2023 salary data, both from Indiana’s DLGF (Department of Local Government Finance), Bloomington’s city council budgets more for its own staff than any of the biggest 20 cities in Indiana, except for Indianapolis.
That’s an estimate computed by taking the personnel portion of each city council’s budget and subtracting the raw salary (not including possible benefits) of city councilmembers.
So it’s fair to ask: What outcomes is Bloomington’s city council actually buying with that relatively big budget investment?
One outcome that Bloomington’s city council appears desire: loyalty. The word “loyalty” appears exactly once in each of the big roughly 350-page “budget books” produced every year by the administration. The word appears in the section about the city council’s own budget, in the subsection on the city council’s legal support.
The activity description for the city council’s legal staff includes this: “Respect confidentiality and exhibit loyalty.” So it’s not enough to be loyal. The staff are supposed to exhibit loyalty.
It’s a curious thing to write down, because it suggests that some extra level of loyalty is expected, beyond what is inherent in the rules of professional conduct for lawyers in the state of Indiana.
How does Bloomington’s city council measure its expectation of loyalty? What other outcomes does the city council expect, besides loyalty?
Based on the job titles for the three city council staff positions, the outcomes that the council wants to see from all of its staff involve legal issues. The council budgets for an administrator/attorney, a deputy administrator/attorney, and a legal research assistant.
That contrasts with Fort Wayne’s city council, which also has three positions listed in the DLGF salary database—but only one of them appears to invest in an outcome involving legal issues. And based on the compensation, the legal position is half-time—something The B Square verified independently.
It looks like other city councils might get some of the outcomes that Bloomington’s city council gets, by using “professional services.” It’s not that common for the DLGF salary database to explicitly indicate that an employee works for the city council. Here’s the list that The B Square was able to extract.
Bloomington | Legal Research Assistant: $39,000
Bloomington | Deputy Administrator/Attorney: $74,000
Bloomington | Administrator/Attorney: $95,000
Fort Wayne | Citizen Svc Coord: $51,974
Fort Wayne | City Council Admin: $81,195
Fort Wayne | Council Attorney: $54,500
Hammond | Administrative Secretary: $50,404
Kokomo | Council Attorney: $32,299
Mishawaka | Council Attorney: $25,433
Based on that list, city councils in other places that employ an attorney allocate only a fraction of one position to that job.
When other city councils invest in outcomes involving organizational management for the legislative body’s work, or resident engagement on behalf of the council, they invest in an individual (a non-lawyer) who specializes in those topics.
There could be a historical misunderstanding that feeds the idea that all of Bloomington’s city council staff should support outcomes involving legal issues. That misunderstanding arises out of a provision of Indiana state code that says about city councils: “The legislative body may hire or contract with competent attorneys and legal research assistants on terms it considers appropriate.”
Here’s how the erroneous statutory interpretation goes: Because state code enables the hiring or contracting with attorneys and legal research assistants, no other kind of position is allowed to be hired by a city council.
Obviously, the city of Fort Wayne and the city of Hammond disagree with that interpretation.
How much legal work does Bloomigton’s city council actually need? What is the breakdown of legal work compared to administrative work by someone with the hybrid job title of administrator/attorney?
Based on the 2021 proposed budget, there was 1 FTE (full-time equivalent) worth of legal work to be done in the city council office. But for the 2022 proposed budget the legal activity for the council’s staff had increased to 1.25 FTE
Is there data and evidence that supported the 0.25 increase in legal work? How can it be that Bloomington’s city council apparently requires more than twice the amount of legal work that the city council of Fort Wayne does? (Fort Wayne’s 2020 census population is 264,000 compared to Bloomington’s 79,000.)
Here’s the B Square’s challenge to Bloomington’s city council for this year: Show us how outcomes-based budgeting would apply to the city council’s own staffing.
