Bernardo Watch: Follow the Money

One of the reasons we should support the Bernardos is their innovative business acumen, their top-flight fiscal management. Right?

Well, not so fast. It appears that the county is on the hook for nearly another $100,000 thanks to the Bernardos' incompetence (this was too good not to reprint the whole thing):

If you want to see how easy it is to be a fiscal conservative, take a minute to learn Bernardo Math.

First you take a $50,000 budget appropriated and adopted job (counsel to the Legislature) and cut it to $49,750, telling the newspapers you saved the taxpayers $250 because you prorated the pay for time actually worked.

Then you subtract $100,000 (10 Legislators @ $10,000 because the Legislature downsized from 33 to 23 members) and then you add in $59,000 for a new financial analyst and $25,000 for a new paralegal.

Then you add some miscellaneous raises including $4,030 to an employee hired on 6/7/2010, whose salary is now at $60,970, and then you add a deserved raise to minority counsel whose pay increases from $4,223 to $12,500.

Then you add a raise for the newly appointed confidential secretary who hasn’t even started work yet and bump that job up to $51,083. Now you do your addition and subtraction and wave your magic pencil and voilà!

With ten less Legislators in 2012 than in 2011, you have a department personnel budget of $451,030, which is – drum roll, please! – $89,203 MORE than the previous year. And that, my friends, is how Bernardo math works.

You got that right, Robin. Count the silverware!