Presbyterians have not received from officers of the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) an entirely honest account of the OGA financial woes. While the OGA claimed that its money problems are not caused by a downturn in per-capita apportionment collections, it turns out that the collection rate has hit an historic low—dropping roughly $1 million for year-end 2008, compared to 2007.

The slide in per-capita collections cannot be unknown to the OGA leadership. Those writing the budgets over the years have regularly planned for a certain amount of nonpayment of per capita assessments. For 2007, the budget expected $350,000 in per capita to be uncollectable. The actual uncollectable amount was 51 percent more than expected: $529,000.

For 2008, realists jumped the budgeted write-off for expected uncollectable per capita to $700,000, probably expecting that to be a safe guess. They were wrong. The year-end amount written off was $912,000, another 30 percent worse than expected. The drastic drop in per-capita collections certainly is known but not mentioned by OGA leaders.

The collection rate on the requests has dropped from approximately 98 percent in 2005 to 95 percent in 2006 to 89 percent in 2007 to 84 percent in 2008. In fact, according to a report given to the General Assembly Council in March, at year-end 2008, presbyteries had paid $1,002,749 less in per capita than they had at year-end 2007. In that year alone, withholding rose from 11 percent to 16 percent, a 45 percent increase!

General Assembly cost overrun

Likewise, in their explanations of the need to cut expenses in 2009 and 2010, OGA spokespersons have said nothing about a half-million-dollar cost overrun for the 2008 General Assembly in San Jose. Yet avoiding that cost overrun alone would have precluded any budget cuts for 2009.
 
The OGA has cast the blame entirely on the economic downturn ostensibly forcing the OGA to revise its budget for the second time in a row only three months into a 24-month budget cycle. From the explanations given by OGA, one is left with the understanding that the budget cuts being implemented are caused by a factor outside OGA leadership control:  investments gone bad.

It is true that OGA investments lost $1.09 million in 2008, and thus that money was no longer available to bail out deficit budgets for 2009 and 2010. What went unsaid, however, is that either of the two other factors mentioned above—per-capita collections or a General Assembly cost overrun—could equally be attributed as a sufficient cause for budget-cutting. In the same manner, if either of these two factors had turned out as charted, the budget cuts would not be necessary now, even given the general economic downturn.

Thus, OGA staff losing jobs, salaries being frozen and programs getting squeezed come as a result of per-capita withholding and General Assembly overspending. It is not the whole truth to attribute the need for budget cuts only to the downturn in the economy. “It’s the economy!” must have seemed a better excuse to engender sympathy, rather than the misgivings that might arise from an OGA admission that an increasing number of Presbyterians do not care to support the OGA and that the OGA did not adequately control expenditures.

Shrunken head

PCUSA leaders seem to regard per-capita payments as a head tax and believe local church sessions are required to pay the apportionments.  But the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission has repeatedly declared that sessions are not required to remit the per-capita requests from presbyteries, synods and the General Assembly.

Clearly, dissatisfied with the denomination’s direction, more sessions are withholding payment of per-capita and using that money for other purposes.
In the face of this hard data, however, Presbyterians received a contradictory message from spokespersons for the OGA:

• March 24, 2009: “Despite per capita receipts continuing at a traditional rate, the [budget] adjustment is necessary because of a drop of investment income experienced by others in the country and the church,” read an OGA press release about the coming meeting (emphasis added). The statement about per-capita receipts is rendered false based on the OGA’s own documents.
• March 26, 2009: “The budget cuts are necessary because the economic downturn has undercut the value of OGA’s investment reserves, said Gradye Parsons, stated clerk for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).” Thus wrote Leslie Scanlon in the Presbyterian Outlook. Scanlon found a reference to “two years’ worth of uncollectable per capita in 2008” in the meeting papers, but Parsons chose to attribute the problem solely to the economy.
• March 31, 2009: “The decision to revise the budgets was prompted by the effects of the current global economic crisis,” wrote Sharon Youngs and Jerry Van Marter in a Presbyterian News Service article.
• March 31, 2009: “Reductions are due to economic downturn,” read the subtitle on a similar OGA account of the budget cuts.

At its March 2009 meeting, the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly faced a $1.2 million budget cut for the next two years: $400,000 for 2009 and $800,000 for 2010. Had presbyteries paid the full per capita apportionments for 2008, there would be approximately $1 million extra sitting in the OGA coffers—an amount that would pretty well cover the loss of investment income and kill the need for budget cuts.

So why did the OGA pin the problem on a poor economy, which removed $1.089 million from use, but actually deny that withheld per capita had removed $1.002 million? The two amounts are virtually equal. Why was the OGA loath to tell the church that per capita pay-up is sliding precipitously? Indeed, why did OGA say just the opposite, leaving a false impression?

An overspent General Assembly

The cost of the General Assembly meeting in San Jose must have gotten away from those who were planning it. Budgeted to cost $2.387 million, the meeting ran $509,000 over budget, a 21 percent overrun. Facility costs alone were $366,214 over budget, an 81 percent overrun, accounting for much of the problem. Travel and per diem costs were another $161,000 over budget.

A General Assembly is an enormous undertaking, and everyone who experienced San Jose understands that it was an expensive site. There may be good reasons for the major cost overruns, should the OGA choose to explain them. However, the fact remains that the 2008 expenditures for General Assembly consumed more than half a million dollars that otherwise could have been spent to shore up a sagging 2009 budget.

Had the General Assembly not cost far beyond what was budgeted, at least the $400,000 OGA budget cut for 2009 could have been avoided, as well as part of the 2010 problem. However, the OGA chose to blame the economy and say nothing about the 2008 cost overrun. Why would OGA not point out such a major factor in the cash-flow problem?

Other budget matters okay

In other respects, the OGA appears to have managed its resources within budget for the most part. There was an 18 percent overrun in the costs of General Assembly–formed task forces, an expense the Assemblies seem all too eager to incur. The task forces were budgeted to cost $98,852, but actually cost $117,127. However, many other costs came in under budget, an aggregate of $227,899 or about a 3.5 percent savings. Salaries and benefits made up $4.99 million of OGA department expenses of $6.33 million.

According to former Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, the OGA has a track record of staying within budget. In March 2007 he wrote: “We have been good stewards of the resources entrusted to us, coming in under budget for the tenth straight year.” Again in 2008, the OGA did technically come in under budget. But that didn’t take into account going a half million dollars in the hole for General Assembly. Nor did that say how much better off the OGA would be, had it not come up $912,116 short in per capita collections.

What Presbyterians need from the Office of the General Assembly is much more transparency, far greater willingness to produce the whole truth, and a good, strong dose of healthy OGA self-criticism. With those in place and a rededication to supporting the Constitution and confessions of the church, confidence in funding the OGA might be resurrected.