Keith Burrowes, Chairman of the 2009 Commission of Enquiry into the operations of the Mayor and City Council has told Stabroek Business that he is currently working with the Council on exercises to correct irregularities in the current regime of rate payments which he believes could significantly increase the municipality’s revenue base.
In an extended interview with this newspaper on Tuesday, Burrowes disclosed that City Hall had accepted his recommendation that it pursue an exercise aimed at identifying urban properties that continue to attract the current $40,000 municipal rates in circumstances where these are currently being used as commercial premises and ought correctly to be attracting rates of $250,000. He said that he believed that such an undertaking ought to precede any move to undertake the property revaluation exercise which City Hall has been mulling for some time.
“I am positive that there are a number of persons who are still paying residential rates who ought to be paying commercial rates. If we can correct this we can broaden the Council’s revenue base even without a general increase in rates and taxes,” Burrowes said. According to the Commission of Enquiry Chairman the exercise can be expedited by engaging the courts in an exercise aimed at securing a listing of all of the businesses that have been established in the City over the past two years. He said that the listing could be used by City Hall to conduct “a physical verification” aimed at determining those commercial premises that are still attracting residential rates. Burrowes said that he believed that the effective completion of this exercise coupled with the revaluation exercise which he hoped would be undertaken with support from the Valuation Unit of the Ministry of Finance could increase the Council’s revenue stream by between “30 and 40 per cent.”
While the Council has continually attributed much of its failings to financial constraints Burrowes said that he believed that the Commission of Enquiry had been able to ascertain “the true causes of the problems facing City Hall.” Specifically, he singled out “a lack of consensus” at the level of the Council which he said had led to the really critical issues facing the municipality becoming clouded in political controversy; an inability on the part of the Council to properly assess the impact its investments and “serious management problems” that included a lack of understanding of what their jobs entailed “at the very top” at City Hall.
Limitations
“Frankly, the scale of the Council’s human resource limitations shocked me. I found, for example, that there was a clear absence of basic accounting and financial principles. There is an expectation that once you occupy certain positions you would, at a minimum, have some understanding of the issues which you have to deal with. I found, for the example that the Treasurer did not have an effective grasp of the financial operations of the Council. What you had in some cases was the blind leading the blind,” Burrowes said.
Meanwhile, Burrowes told Stabroek Business that much of his focus within the framework of the committee set up to implement the recommendations of the Report was on improving the capacity of the Council in the area of financial management. “What I have attempted to do is to focus on the issue of financial management. We now have a draft copy of the Council’s 2009 financial statements which will be sent to the auditors once the Finance Committee agrees to it at the level of the Council. Part of the problem with these statements in the past has been that the auditors have been unable to validate the information given to them. We are currently working with the Council and the Auditor General to have the balance sheet cleaned up. We have set up a general ledger for them and we are currently in the process of finalizing last year’s accounts. When the 2010 statements are prepared we should be able to reflect those adjustments. The hope is that within a year we should be able to enhance the financial accountability mechanisms of the Council to an extent that it will result in a clean opinion from the Auditor General,” Burrowes said.
Burrowes told Stabroek Business that current efforts to improve financial management within the Council will mean that “for the first time in the history of the Council they will have a budget that will address in a profound manner what the citizens can expect in terms of change. We have set targets which will enable us to qualify and quantify what we intend to do. If, for example, they plan to do ten miles of roads that will be reflected in the budget and at some stage the budget will be made available to the citizens which, in effect, will place the citizens in a position to hold the Council accountable.”
Part of the work of the Implementation Committee will also include the creation of a format for the presentation of monthly management accounts to the Council.
And the Commission of Enquiry Chairman challenged the oft-expressed view by City Hall that the answer to its poor service record lay in increased revenue. “While I believe that the Council needs to enhance its revenue base I do not necessarily believe that if this were to happen at this point in time it would improve the overall level of efficiency. If you cannot manage what you have now you are probably not likely to succeed if you were given additional management responsibilities,” Burrowes said.
Image
Meanwhile the Commission Chairman told Stabroek Business that he believed that the effectiveness of the municipality was also being hampered by its public image which had been affected by public concerns about the accountability of the institution. Burrowes said that based on the submissions made by persons who had attended the hearings he had found that there was a direct correlation between people’s disposition to making payments to the Council and their perception that the organization had been afflicted by a lack of accountability. “Most of the people who come to the hearings indicated that they felt that there was no accountability and to some extent they are right. The point to be made here is that where there is no confidence that monies that are being paid as rates and taxes are being properly managed people will be less reluctant to make those payments. The other issue of course has to do with the fact that many people perceive the Council as being unable to effectively discharge its responsibilities and this perception also raises issues that affect their willingness to pay”, he added.
And Burrowes told Stabroek Business that in order to compensate for concerns over the capacity of City Hall to effectively execute the requirements of the envisaged new regime of financial administration the Implementation Committee will be providing technical support to the Council in order to ensure that there is adequate capacity to ensure effective implementation. What we are also doing is developing a format for the submission of monthly management accounts to the Council. He said that the current mechanism for communicating financial information to the Council is part of the whole condition of “confusion” since it has no great value. “What this means in effect is that the Council is pretty much in the dark as to what exactly is the position with regard to finances. What are seeking to do is to professionalize the operations of the Council. We will be preparing user-friendly financial statements which will enable the Council, in a short space of time to, in a sense, take control of the financial management. At the moment there exists the notion that the Council has control in circumstances where it is often unable to determine whether the information that it receives is right or wrong. Part of the problem has been with the inability of the Treasurer’s department to provide accurate information,” Burrowes said.
Asked whether the support being provided by the Implementation Committee may not come to be seen as interventionist, Burrowes said that the role that the Committee was playing was all part of its mandate. “It really makes no sense in us ignoring the fact that the Council lacks the capacity to implement the changes that have been recommended. Our job is to ensure that they acquire the capacity so that whatever Council comes on board will benefit from an efficient system. On the other hand our mandate is very specific and it has been clearly established that at every stage of whatever we do the Council must be integrally involved.”
Range
Burrowes told Stabroek Business that when the range of responsibilities with which the Council is entrusted is carefully contemplated it becomes clear that fixing the problems of the institution is a critical undertaking. “The fact is that given the range of its responsibilities in terms of the general welfare of the capital it is far too risky not to seek to fix the problems. If we ignore the problems of the Council other people will have to step in to deal with the problems of the city.”
And according to Burrowes while there have been arguments that suggest that the government does not make any real contribution to the work of the Council the budget will reflect that this is decidedly not the case. “What we plan to do is to list and cost the services provided by the Council so that we can see immediately the sources of funding for those services. The Government of Guyana is a component in that process.”
Meanwhile Burrowes has declined to set a time frame for the completion of the work of the Implementation Committee. “It is a work in progress. Because of where they are now the situation will have to evolve. What we are attempting to do in the first instance is to deal with those immediate things that have a direct bearing on the immediate difficulties facing the Council. A lot of the change has to do with changing a culture. It is a long-term process because much of what is happening now has to do with the fact that things were being done in the wrong way over a long period. Change will not come overnight. It’s incremental but it has to be done,” Burrowes said, adding that the Implementation Committee plans to provide citizens with a weekly report on the progress of its activities.
And according to Burrowes the success of the Commission of Enquiry in establishing “a very good working relationship” with the Mayor and Councillors had done much to aid the ongoing implementation process. “The fact of the matter is that the problems of the Council were far too great for them to be on the defensive. We are committed to working with the Council to help bring about change but in the final analysis it is they who will have to both orchestrate and manage that change,” Burrowes said.
