2006-05-15

budgets an' shit @ 9:54 p.m.

Waaaaaaaaay back in October of last year, my funder decided that they wanted their own support staff to help them with the grant work. But it was too late to include anyone in that budget since it wasn't theirs. Instead they played the shell game with my budget for their project and hired an admin assistant as what we call an affiliate. We hire them pay them, but they sit somewhere else off-site, is bascially all that means. So while she's on the main budget, she was actually hired for the grant.

So whenever a state budget goes through a major change like that, we have to submit an amendment to the states contracts office. But PFL said not to because it didn't change the bottom line and they didn't want to raise any red flags with the contracts office. Doing what my director said to do (bow to the clients), I did what was I was told. Didn't have the "don't do the amendment" request in writing, so there's a chance they could deny it ever happened and I could get fried for it.

But now, there's an issue. We're coming up short due to the fact that the salaries were off a bit in the original budget. More than a bit, really. But there's cash in other lines we can move so we'd be alright. We can deviate the budget at year end to make up for things, but this is way over the percentage we can move without question. No big deal, we just submit an amendment and everything's fine. The problem is we need to run the amendment by the funders first.

Director said she'd handle it, because there's been a load of animosity from them when they want to play this fucking shell game with the grant budget and we have to tell them HELL NO if we ever want to get $$ from the foundation ever again we will NOT fuck with their money outside of the very strict guidelines and NO it doesn't make one IOTA of difference that you don't agree with these guidelines; that's just the way it fucking is.

Although put in a far more diplomatic way, of course.

Then at the last minute, Sunshine backs out and tells my immediate boss in their weekly meeting to tell me to do it and "if [she] has any problems, she can just blame me". Mind you, still not copping to getting personally involved at all. Whatev. So I send an email asking to talk about it because I don't want to do this via email. They can get mad snotty via email. Alas, not going to work, they want to see the budget. I send it. They say it's going to need a revised workplan so I whip that up and send it over, too. Usually PFL is much much smarter than this, but in that last email, she actually stated word for word that they didn't want to red flag with contracts by doing an amendment. Ha. Gotcha. Now my ass is covered 100%.

Silence after that. PFL mentions it finally the day before we're set to leave for NOLA and says we'll discuss it after we return but still reminds me the reason they didn't want to do it in the first place. I say I understand but still point out that we're above deviation and Sunshine wants this, then leave it at that.

Boss asks this AM what the situation is and I say I'm checking today, as the deadline is fast approaching. She says if I get no reponse, we punt to Sunshine. I get a response; PFL says they'll bring the budget with them to our grant steering committee meeting tomorrow and if we get done before 5, we'll discuss it. GAH. There is nothing to dicuss. Here's the way it has to be if we don't want to get our asses fried. And it wouldn't even be such an issue now if WE'D FREAKING DONE THIS BACK IN OCTOBER.

So basically they will grill me and let it go at best; at worst they will throw up a wall and say that we can't do it and I'll have to punt to Sunshine anyway. In any event, it won't be pretty no matter what. At least I think it won't. Everytime we've had to do budget negotiations, it's never gone well even when we're able to arrange it the way we want. the last time they made us change it, it was-HELLO-FLAGGED BY THEIR CONTRACTS PEOPLE.

Idiots.

Wish me luck.