BUDGET CHALLENGED CHIRINOS, MENDOZA, TRY TO WING THE PROCESS; ENTRE LOS DOS NO SE HACE UNO

By Juan Montoya
With a June 20 deadline staring him in the face, Brownsville Independent School District trustee and budget chairman Jose Chirinos is looking more and more like a deer caught in the headlights.
Chirinos chaired the BISD budget meeting on Monday and by the nature of the questions he was asking, he doesn't have a clue of what he's supposed to do.
Ditto for BISD Chief Financial Officer Lucio Mendoza, whose last gig was at the Mission ISD and who ran deficit budgets the last three years he was there. Having to put together a balanced $500 million-plus is slightly different than patching together a budget that barely tops $150 million as did the Mission ISD's budget.
Now we understand that the BISD administration wants to lend budget-challenged Chirinos and Mendoza a hand by proposing that the district be allowed to dip into the $60 million reserve fund mean to provide the district with enough cash to operate at least 75 days against state and local policy.
Records indicate that although local and immediate sources of revenue, state program revenues, and federal program revenues increased at the Mission ISD every single year there from 2011 to 2013, and the total budgets for the three years were $140,755,000 (2011), $146,204,309 (2012), and $152,201,509 (2013), Mendoza managed to run a deficit each one of those years.
In 2011, the deficit was $416,747. In 2012, the deficit grew to $5,391,160. In 2013, his last year at the helm as CFO there, the district will have a $16,565,429 deficit.
Many CFOs like to say that these are not really deficits, but rather that these are "shortfalls" between revenues and expenditures that have been solved by a mere transfer from fund balance to the operating budget. We guess that you can put lipstick on a pig, but it will still remain a pig, won't it?
Mendoza is being aided in his endeavor by the likes of Chirinos, a former BISD Dept. of Transportation director whose stewardship of that department was mired in budget overruns in overtime compensation and overstocking of inventories, some of which had grown obsolete that they had to be thrown away.
A forensic budge put together for the district found that as head of transportation Chirinos managed to accomplish the following:
– Let's start with the little things. Chirinos kept something called an "Activity/Motivational Fund Account" in his budget which came from the profits of the vending machines at Transportation against BISD policy. That was put to an end with no accounting of the proceeds and the money now goes to the district's miscellaneous revenue fund like all other departments. It was, in other words, a slush fund.
The auditors found an inventory that kept steadily growing from 2007-2008 to 2010-2011, finally decreasing in 2011-2012, when Chirinos was gone.
* During those four years, the accumulated inventory increased by $325,868. It wasn't until Art Rendon took over in the 2011-2012 budget that it decreased by $277,749.
* Of the 3,841 parts with a value of $792,535 in inventory, approximately 698 items with a value of $89,144 had become obsolete. The parts no longer fit any of the buses on the district's fleet. The district had to eat the loss.
* The useful life of 46 tires worth $5,020 had expired. These tires could no longer be used or sold.
* Variances in the inventory due to "miscounts, theft, disposal or removal from inventory without corresponding record" totaled $16,092.
The auditors recommended that the department implement a "just in time" outsource method with vendors that would reduce inventory, and save warehouse space and costs. That "JIT" system is now in place.
When the auditors visited the Transportation warehouse in 2012 they found it stacked to the roof with and "excess amount" of miscellaneous office supplies that included three LaserJet printers still in the box that had been purchased in 2009 and 2010. Cases of paper clips, file folders, computer paper and other office supplies filled the sides of entire walls.
* Curious to see whether a sample audit of 200 fixed-assets would turn up any discrepancies, the auditors found that a camera worth $589, a battery backup worth $477, at least four radios worth over $300 and an external hard drive worth $263 were missing.
* During a 100 percent fixed-assets inventory, auditors discovered that 11 items totaling $100,377 could not be located in the department.
But it was the overtime budget under Chirinos that caused the most concern for the auditors. Until he left, the  overtime charges ballooned unchecked. When asked about it, Chirinos said that the unions (Ms. Ramirez's outfit) and the past administration prevented him from acting. Here's a breakdown by year:
                          Overtime Pd.                                 Increase                           Decrease
2008-2009        $2,142,468
2009-2010        $2,976,557                                  $834,089
2010-2011        $2,407,735                      (under Rendon)                             $568,822
2011-2012        $1,455,725                                                                           $952,009
It's already May 6 and there isn't a semblance of a budget in place. And in fact, even as rumors abound that the administration – under the goading of some trustees – want former CFO Tony Juarez canned, his skills as a PhD in accounting and years of experience putting together BISD budget is critical to the district.
Will some BISD trustees and administrators cut off their nose to spite their face?