Updated with more reporting from ENS
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Following its Friday evening hearing, the Program, Budget and Finance Committee voted to craft its proposed budget based on a 19% asking for 2013-2015. The Committee third hearing, on spending, will take place Saturday evening at 7:30 p.m.
ENS has reports: Program, Budget and Finance statement affirms 19% asking
The ENS story includes PB&F’s statement on its asking decision. “Affirms” in the ENS the headline refers to the PB&F’s earlier decision to use the presiding bishop’s proposed as a template. The PB’s budget is based on a 19% asking as was the budget from the Executive Committee.
Center Aisle also has a report on Friday’s hearing: PB&F Hears Call for Development Office, Larger Asking
Also check out Richard Helmer’s essay from General Convention, Structure and Budget: gaining perspective, in today’s Daily Episcopalian:
The Presiding Bishop’s budget proposal, which has become something of a template for the budgetary work of General Convention this year, projects annual revenues raised from the diocesan commitments of $24.5 million (annualized from page 1 line 2). Sounds like a lot, but after accounting for all those zeros, it turns out that for every $100 the average member of our congregation gives, only $1.50 ends up in the church-wide budget. That means over 98% of our local revenue goes to local ministry in our congregations and dioceses, and our local partnerships with ministry elsewhere in the world.
It strikes me as a startlingly small piece of the ecclesiastical financial pie to be battling over, and it reminds me that, for all of the talk about the need to “flatten” the structures of The Episcopal Church, we’re pretty flat already, at least in dollar terms.
UPDATE: ENS
“I believe that the votes in the House of Bishops yesterday were a protest against the manner in which the Episcopal Church does budgeting,” Lane [Diocese of Maine Bishop Steve Lane, who is PB&F’s vice chair] said. “The complaint is about the parallel process between the work of Program, Budget and Finance on the one hand, and the work of all the rest of the committees presenting resolutions to be funded. They go along side by side, and they only meet in the budget proposal, which leaves everyone dissatisfied.”