Did audit put fear of God into City Council?

There was a different feeling in the air Thursday night as Troy City Council members gathered for what may have been the most important meeting of their two-year term.

Just a few hours earlier, council President Carmella Mantello and fellow Republican members stood side by side at a news conference in the same room to unveil the results of an independent audit the council sought to get its own take on the city’s finances in the wake of a pair of blistering reports from the state Comptroller’s Office. If they expected better news in the report from the Latham accounting firm of Cusack & Co. than they received from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, they would have been greatly disappointed, as their audit echoed most of the state’s criticism of the city’s finances dating back to 2012.

Perhaps more alarmingly, however, was the blunt warning included in the Cusack report. While the comptroller’s reports were straightforward in telling city officials the possible consequences of their actions — or, more accurately, inaction — in addressing their findings, Cusack & Co. used a word that had yet to be uttered — at least publicly — in the six months since the first of those state reports were released, warning that if substantial changes aren’t made, the city could face insolvency, literally running out of money.

And as if that message wasn’t harsh enough, there was the subsequent warning to the council that time was of the essence. Contingency funds included in the city budget specifically to address unexpected expenses — such as January’s water main break in Lansingburgh or February’s sewer line failure and subsequent collapse of a section of Campbell Avenue — are woefully inadequate, auditors said, as are the fund balances within the budget that represent unspent money from past years. In fact, the auditors said the fund balance in the general fund is actually in the red.

Before they heard that report, the biggest fear expressed among council members and city officials in general was the state stepping in to take over management of the city’s finances under terms of a more-then-20-year-old agreement that helped bail the city out of a similarly dire crisis in the mid-1990s.

Back then, the city teetered precariously on the brink of insolvency and was bailed out only when the state formed what is called a Municipal Assistance Corporation to allow the city to sell more than $21.6 million in bonds to cover three years’ worth of deficits from 1993-95. While that money kept the city functioning, it saddled future officials — and taxpayers — with annual payments that will approach $6 million — nearly 10 percent of the current budget — before the debt is finally retired in the next five or six years.

It’s a pretty safe bet that nobody in city government — Republican or Democrat — wants to see a repeat of what may have been one of the lowest points in the city’s history, especially as it is in the midst of a resurgence that has brought both commercial and residential development across the river after decades of urban decay, and that fear may have been evident Thursday night. Gone were the combative exchanges between the two parties that had marked even the most benign of discussions since the new, GOP-controlled council was seated in January, replaced by calls for both sides to come together and work out a meaningful solution to not only overcome the latest crisis, but also to ensure it doesn’t happen again in the future.

But while such words have come from the new Democratic minority since day one, they were joined Thursday by several GOP voices, including the longest consecutively tenured Republican on the council, District 3 representative Dean Bodnar. And though it is yet to be seen if those words actually translate into bipartisan action, the attitude in the council chambers later that night offered at least some hope the council was moving beyond politics as usual and finally recognized the seriousness of the situation and the potential consequences of their actions.

Gone was the biting exchanges between old adversaries like President Pro Tem Mark McGrath, RDistrict 2, and minority leader Lynn Kopka, D-District 5, that were as much a part of most council meetings as the Pledge of Allegiance. Gone were the long discussions that focused almost exclusively on who was to blame for getting the city into this situation.

In its place — at least that night — was the seeming realization that — to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin — if they don’t hang together and come up with a real solution to a very real crisis, they will all surely hang separately, at least politically. Whether that sentiment will remain as they get into the nuts and bolts of fixing what certainly appears to be a broken system is anybody’s guess, especially when it comes time to at least consider the very real possibility of having to impose a mid-year tax increase.

For one night, at least, we got a brief glimpse at what this council could be capable off if it stopped running city government like its leaders were already in the middle of the 2019 mayoral campaign. Here’s hoping that sentiment continues, or the “winner” in that mayoral race may end up doing little more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic as the whole city sinks into fiscal oblivion and all hope that has accompanied the downtown renaissance of the past five years is washed away in a sea of red ink.