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BETHEA: Yeah. <br />YUEN: Had been a point of contention between the Council and the Mayor for <br />several years before, and that was a reason for trying to work on that. I agree with Bob that we <br />didn't -, the last Charter Commission didn't really solve that. And I don't know, again, with a <br />perspective of looking back on a few years, the same kinds of issues still come up between the <br />Mayor and the Council, and I think that some of that is just inevitable in a government involving <br />separation of powers and different power centers -. <br />BETHEA: Yeah. <br />YUEN: Looking to assert their own authority. The Charter should be as clear as it <br />can be, but there's always going to be some give and take on those things. So -, and I -, and <br />probably there are things that have come up in the last few years that are going to be part of the <br />agenda and part of what the public expects for this Charter Commission. <br />L' ORANGE: On the budget, I was very uncomfortable with it, and it seemed to me like a <br />timing thing. And the problem was that neither the administration or the County Council was <br />willing to give us any recommendation or to work together to work out a solution that worked. <br />And we didn't know anything about the subject, really. But you know you got to wait until the <br />State comes up with their thing and the timing seemed pretty short. <br />BETHEA: Tight. <br />L' ORANGE: Tight between the State budget and the other. But we didn't feel that <br />anybody, at least I didn't. We knew there was a problem, but we didn't know how to fix it, and <br />neither the Administration nor the County Council or the finance people gave us any <br />recommendations that we could -. <br />BETHEA: Exactly, because we didn't know, or the County wouldn't know what it <br />was going to get from the legislature until the legislature was over, you know, what was going to <br />come, so it was very difficult for the County to plan. <br />There was, however, and I don't quite have it in my grasp, another fundamental difference <br />between the counties, and that was how detailed the budget was, because that got into questions <br />of what was the authority of the Mayor to transfer funds within a department and this and that. <br />Do you remember that, Chris? And I think here we had a much more detailed budget than <br />elsewhere, which kind of tied the Mayor's hands. There was a difference between transfers within <br />a department and transfers between different departments. In other words, the Council could pass <br />a budget that is so detailed that the Mayor can't do anything; yellow pencils are $1,346 a month <br />or something. I remember that being something that at least it concerned me. And that raises one <br />question is that if -, for those of you who are like me and didn't have much of an understanding of <br />how the budget system works, I would really focus on trying to get as much understanding about <br />13 <br />