Did Accountability Journalism Improve Belfast's Transparency?

I Asked The City Financial Questions. A response was received.

Transparency promised: I didn’t take them at their word

After the April 21 Belfast City Council meeting, where full transparency was promised, I reached out to City Manager Erin Herbig with a list of 27 questions about financial and governance issues.

That may sound like a long list. But I didn’t ask broad, long-winded questions. I separated questions into clear requests grounded in best practices, financial controls, and Belfast’s own Charter requirements.

I received a response. And I’ll be the first to admit it: I was surprised.

Granted, I did tell the City that I planned to report on the request either way. And to be fair, many of Belfast’s poor budgeting practices did not start under Herbig. She inherited very loose protocols. Some practices have gotten worse, though, and there have been no visible financial reporting improvements over her tenure.

Of course, this is also a performance issue for the City Council, and there is no doubt that it has abdicated its Charter compliance role. Councilors swear to carry out the duties of their office, and those duties are defined by the Charter.

Some may argue that certain provisions are outdated. Maybe so. But there is a process for amending it. If officials believe a Charter provision should not be enforced, they need to act on that too.

There is no legitimate argument that the Charter should simply be ignored.

Public Budget Materials

I asked if the full budget materials would be posted on the city website. The answer was yes. This is the only answer that was straightforward.

“All materials contained in the budget binder distributed to the City Council will be posted to the City website as budget exhibits. The budget binder includes 42 individual budget sections with supporting documentation that includes five years of expense and budget history, department requests, and the manager’s recommendation”

Salaries, staffing, and compensation

I asked a series of salary questions — concerning salary schedules by position, staffing histories, position changes, an organizational chart, and whether data would be presented in an easy-to-follow format so residents can track compensation growth and position changes over time.

The response described the budget as containing:

“detailed information regarding all municipal employees in each department, including their position, full or part-time status, hours worked, rate of pay, and years of service, except where disclosure is restricted by law.”

For salary schedule:

“Municipal employee wages are set by a scheduled salary and wage chart adopted by the City Council each year for non-union employees and two collective bargaining agreements for union employees.”

The response does not say whether residents will be able to see when positions were added, removed, left vacant, or moved from part-time to full-time, or whether an organizational chart would be included.

Salary schedules and collective bargaining agreements do not necessarily go directly in the budget. Many communities post these in easy to find places. Belfast does neither.

Historical spending

I asked whether actual expenditures and receipts for the past five fiscal years will be included, along with FY26 year-to-date figures.

The closest response was that the budget sections will include “five years of expense and budget history” — which could be anything from prior adopted budgets to limited expense summaries. It does not clearly mean actual expenditures, it does not include receipts, and it does not address year-to-date data. The terminology I used consists of well-defined terms, as understood in budgeting and finance.

I also asked how the City intends to cure a broader financial reporting gap. The Charter requires annual financial disclosure that includes a summary of services performed by departments, a balance sheet, and line-item reporting on receipts and expenditures.

That Charter question was not answered.

Capital decisions

The Charter requires a five-year capital improvements plan, revised and extended every year, showing timelines, how projects are to be funded or financed, and the annual costs of operating and maintaining facilities.

With the proposed projects such as a new Public Safety Building and City Hall B, the City is supposed to be laying out how much these projects are expected to cost, how they will be paid for, how much borrowing would be involved, what annual appropriations are being recommended, and how much the facilities will cost to operate and maintain.

A capital plan is not a wish list. Belfast cannot simply say it wants a new Public Safety Building and leave the funding vague. That’s the control the charter imposes.

If a project gets left out, the city is saying it does not plan to undertake it within the next five years. That is exactly what a CIP is supposed to prevent: ad hoc, non-budgeted decisions becoming the norm.

Financial position and accounts

I asked if the budget would show the city’s current financial position, as well as all operating, reserve, special revenue, capital, and TIF accounts — with beginning balances, current balances, and projected year-end balances.

No response was received to any of these questions. All five of the other communities’ budgets I reviewed prior to this article included this information.

If a budget fails to include these items, it is not possible to determine the city’s overall financial condition.

Think of “financial position” like a credit report: once all the pieces are together, it can be determined if the city’s overall picture is excellent, good, fair, or a flaming emergency. The last document that can answer this question is the City’s audit as of June 30, 2022 — too stale to be of use.

Reporting

I asked when the city will resume producing Treasurer’s reports, which are defined by the Charter, and how the city intends to cure the months or years of missing reports. The response essentially confirmed that the Treasurer’s reports were not pulling their own weight:

“Revenue and expense reports for all City operations and wastewater, in addition to tax and sewer collection, are distributed to the City Council monthly, to maintain Charter compliance.

The City of Belfast is in the process of updating its accounting structure to provide an accurate report by fund of all City operations effective July 1, 2026. This work is being completed by the Interim Finance Director.”

I saw the revenue and expense reports referenced. Notably the response doesn’t try to claim that these are compliant Treasurer’s reports, because the response only vaguely ensured charter compliance.

These reports are required to show receipts and disbursements for all accounts, expenditures made and obligations incurred during the prior month, a balance sheet showing the City’s financial condition, balances for all City funds, and the unexpended account balance of each department.

What I received contained one of those items: unexpended departmental balances. It contained part of another: some fund information, but not a complete list of active city funds. It did not contain the rest.

The Revaluation Fund is a clear example. The City used that fund this year to buy $139,000 in new accounting software. Yet when I requested the balances of all City funds, the Revaluation Fund was not included in the data provided, nor was the FEMA Storm Fund that was recently discussed in this publication.

The Revaluation Fund was created to pay for a full revaluation. Belfast did not conduct that style of revaluation in 2024. The Council has since used this account for other purchases.

Leadership

I asked about finance structure — when the city expects to hire a full-time finance director and appoint a permanent qualified Treasurer, and whether those appointments would include a public presentation of relevant financial qualifications.

The response:

“All hiring concerning municipal employees is conducted through standard operating procedures through the Human Resources Administrator.”

That is about as complete a non-answer as an answer can be.

I asked about contractor costs where these stand in for staffing roles: legal services, engineering services, wastewater superintendent services, and management consulting. The response indicated some or all of this may be in the budget.

Audits

I asked about the audit backlog and what steps are being taken to prevent FY26 from becoming another delayed audit year:

“All information concerning FY23 and FY24 audits has been submitted to the City auditor. The FY23 audit is scheduled to be received in June 2026 as our auditor awaits a peer review due to single audit requirements. We have requested but have not yet received a delivery date for the FY24 audit. Several remaining items for the FY25 audit are currently being assembled for submission. There is a shortage of auditing firms in Maine that has created a backlog affecting many municipalities, school districts and county governments.”

“Single audits” are more rigorous and apply once federal funding crosses certain thresholds. Firms that perform them are subject to peer review. The City’s response cites ‘peer review due to single audit requirements’ as a reason for delay, but does not explain how that review is affecting the timing of Belfast’s FY23 audit.

As of February 28, the City reported no expenditures against its audit line. That does not establish whether work is ongoing, but it does underscore the lack of clarity about the audit’s status.

The answer also excuses delay by noting a shortage. Every municipality is subject to market constraints. Rockland just received their FY25 audit, three years ahead of Belfast, so market delay does not explain Belfast’s position relative to peers.

Financial oversight

I asked whether the City plans to establish an audit committee, finance committee, or any kind of formal financial oversight, given delayed audits, missing Treasurer’s reports, and the lack of publicly reported actual expenditures.

The response I got:

“The City Charter does not include an audit committee or finance committee.”

That’s not an answer. I didn’t ask what the Charter says. I asked what the City plans to do.

There’s a difference between Charter-defined committees and committees the Council can create whenever it wants. Belfast has many Council-created committees already.

The City reviews its committee structure every year. The next review is May 5.

Executive session and compensation discussions

In Belfast’s FY26 regular municipal budget, about $9 million of $16 million is salaries and benefits. That’s 56% of all municipal expenses.

I have never seen the Council, in the past decade, discuss individual positions or their employment costs in the budget meetings.

The Council also holds executive sessions during budget meetings.

Maine law does not allow compensation, salaries, and employment costs to be moved behind closed doors during a budget meeting.

So I asked whether the City would acknowledge that discussing compensation matters in executive session during recent budget cycles does not conform to FOAA, and whether all compensation discussions will remain in full public view this year.

The response:

“The City Council conducts one executive session during each budget process to discuss employee performance.”

That answer does one thing: it defends the practice as legal, because employee performance is private.

Do I buy it? Not at all. Employee performance is an odd subject to take up during budget hearings. Budget hearings are about numbers, appropriations, positions, wages, salaries, and benefits, not evaluating individual employees.

And the second the discussion turns to dollars, it becomes a public discussion. So what purpose does evaluating employee performance serve inside the budget process?

It sounds like a justification retrofitted to make a compensation discussion look like a personnel discussion. And it is weird: the City discusses individual employee performance during budget hearings, but not individual salaries?

If salary costs are not being discussed in executive session, then they are not being meaningfully discussed at all.

The implications are not good either way.

The City promised transparency. On public budget materials, it gave one clear yes. On nearly everything else, the response either avoided the question, substituted a process answer, or confirmed that Belfast is still trying to build basic financial reporting capacity that should already exist.