Public Employee Press

DC 37’s 2007 Budget
Union on solid fiscal ground

By MAF MISBAH UDDIN
Treasurer, District Council 37

This year’s budget — adopted in March — ensures that DC 37 will remain fiscally healthy while we continue to improve services for our 121,000 members.

The DC 37 Executive Board, which serves as the union’s budget committee, approved the 2007 budget March 21 after carefully examining the fiscal plan. The board also approved this year’s capital budget.

The $38.2 million operating budget represents a 3.8 percent increase over last year’s $36.7 million spending plan. We feel the increase is prudent as it is roughly in line with the rate of inflation over the past year.

The budget, which assumes our membership will remain at 121,000, projects that the union will have a deficit of $462,256 this year.

As the union’s chief financial officer, I frown upon budget shortfalls. But within the context of a budget of $38 million, this year’s projected deficit is miniscule, and we expect to cover it by the end of the year through additional income and/or savings measures.

Be assured that we will continue to follow the fiscal practices that have helped us control deficit spending in recent years and achieve budget surpluses. These practices have included greater day-to-day monitoring of spending and requiring prior approval of items costing over $2,000 and bidding on expenditures of more than $10,000. We have also succeeded in holding down spending on conferences and conventions.

Part of the reason for increased spending this year is that we will be dedicating more funding for the union’s frontline divisional services, which help members deal with job-related problems and the filing of grievances. The budget provides for five new division positions.

I am particularly excited about the board’s decision to support Executive Director Lillian Roberts’ request for $200,000 for organizing seed money.

21st Century Initiative
By allocating funds for organizing, we are working to fulfill the 21st Century Initiative, a mandate of our parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

At the 2006 AFSCME convention in Chicago, our members were among the nearly 3,500 delegates who supported the bold plan, which aims to fund organizing, bolster political action, develop a leadership institution and create an army of 40,000 full-time activists. All district councils in the country, including DC 37, will receive support for organizing from AFSCME, which is relaxing the councils’ financial obligation, amounting to $30 million over three years.

In its last issue, Public Employee Press reported that workers at MetroPlus, a health maintenance organization at the Health and Hospitals Corp., voted in February to become members of Local 1549 after a major organizing drive. The decision of these workers to join the DC 37 family is the first major demonstration of how we will carry out the spirit of the $60 million 21st Century Initiative at AFSCME, where we are working on identifying additional groups of workers who need union representation.

I would like to thank members of the DC 37 Executive Board — elected to their posts in January — for their conscientious examination of our budget proposal this year. Ordinarily we aim to have the budget set up before the New Year. But we decided to hold off on approving the budget until this year because we believed the new board should have an opportunity to scrutinize and vote upon the 2007 budget.

In addition, I want to thank the division and department directors for carefully preparing their budget proposals in consultation with me. Finally, we are especially grateful to have the professional support of the staff in the DC 37 Accounting Dept., who did the number-crunching necessary for presenting a responsible spending plan to the board. Preparing the budget is a complex and tedious process. There is not much room for flexibility, because nearly three-quarters of our operating expenses are devoted to personnel-related costs.

Capital budget
This year’s capital budget is slightly over $525,000. Presenting the separate spending plan is a reform that I introduced three years ago to improve the union’s long-term planning. In 2007, the capital budget covers a range of items including furniture, computer hardware, digital voice recorders, printers and digital mailing systems.

In a few months, we will prepare our midyear budget outlook, and I will report my findings to the DC 37 Executive Board and Delegates Council, which is the highest governing body of the union. I encourage union leaders and rank-and-file members to contact my office at 212-815-7675 with any concerns or questions about the economic picture at DC 37. In the meantime, I wish to assure you again that we are in good fiscal health and that we will continue to keep a close watch over the union’s spending.