Statement of the deputies, censuring the ministers of the interior and finance, August 10, 1877., the 10th day of August, 1877

Statement of the deputies, censuring the ministers of the interior and finance, August 10, 1877.

During the course of last session the House of Representatives submitted to the appreciation of the Executive a proposition for the augmentation of the salaries of public functionaries, at the same time diminishing their number. The Executive demanded the adjournment of the project.

This year the Executive inscribed in the budgets an augmentation of $100,428 in favor of these functionaries and employés, in conserving at the same time intact their number.

In short, the proposition for the expenses of the public service of 1877–78 amounts to $4,428,336. Of this amount the department of war and of the navy figures for the sum of $767,570, say $30,000 augmentation of the current expense? and this in contradiction of the most formal declaration of the Executive declaration, which was solemnly expressed in these terms in the message: “The army shall be reorganized on a plan which realizes two good things—an economy in the expenses and a solid military instruction.” This plan has yet to appear.

But the representatives of the nation were called on to give their concurrence to a much greater and more extraordinary surprise, to a conduct subversive of all that is serious in the handling of the people’s revenue. In fact, in addition to the total sum to which the budgets amount for the service of 1877–’78, say $4,428,336, the same secretaries of state have successively laid before the House of Representatives—

• A project of law on the administrative police, admitting an expense of $100,000, and consequently an augmentation, to be put in the budget, of $75,000.
• A project of law on the normal primary school, creating a new expense of $70,000.
• Borott’s project for the establishment of railroads, at $35,000 annual subvention.
• A project for a bridge over the Artibonite at $95,000, and this after it was ordered by the project that the bridge was to be constructed by contractors advancing their own capital for the funds payable the first year, $25,000.
• Stevens’s project of $210,000, of which the budgets say nothing as yet since the end of last year; the council of secretaries of state had consented to the renewal of the water-works, under the heavy condition of an indemnity of $30,000 in favor of the contractor. Then comes the unqualifiable omission to be repaired, viz, $60,000.
• A project of the superintendence and the inspection of schools, augmentation which amounts to $17,000.

Total $4,710,336.

Thus already the true, real figures proposed by the council of secretaries of state for the public expenses amount to $4,710,336, while, according to the law, the receipts cannot be more than $4,465,558.

Hence already the deficit is $244,778, more than double the proposed amount for the augmentation of administrative salaries. This is not all. The council of secretaries of state omitted the project of law augmenting the salaries of teachers, a project already voted last year by the House of Representatives on its own initiative, say $100,000.

Consulted by the Senate to know what were the views of the Executive as to buying or subventioning the theatre of Port au Prince, the Executive gave its opinion for buying it, and the chamber ratified the decision; hence a new expense of $15,000.

To the vote of the law which increases the emoluments o the judges, the secretary of justice added the proposition of the committee of justice to hereafter pay the substitute judges, thus making a new expense to be provided for, $35,000.

Total, $4,860,336.

In a rectificative budget the council of secretaries of state having exceeded the budgets in exercise by $243,743, ask that a half of that value should be taken from the sinking-fund created last year as the pledge of the numerous creditors of the state. Now as this is not possible, except by imperilling the good faith of the legislature, this deficit on the coming ordinary service must be provided for, viz, $121,871.

Total, $4,982,207.

In effect, then, the House of Representatives had to consider a financial situation created, so to say, by the pleasure of the secretaries of state. It finds itself in face of a receipt of $4,465,558, and of propositions for expenses amounting to $4,982,207, from whence arises the deficit of $516,649.

The concern for its duty, because the council of secretaries of state visibly failed in theirs, gave rise by its own initiative to the commissions composed of the commissions on the budgets of the House, of the Senate, and the council of secretaries of state.

Now, while the members of the Corps Legislatif were aiding by their most devoted and conscientious efforts the secretaries of state in renewing their budgets, so as to judge of the importance of their own projects in order to assign to these projects an order of priority which would at least be conformable to the public funds, these same secretaries of state, by an insertion made in the last number of the Moniteur, stigmatize with a visible and evil intention the patriotic labor of the Corps Législatif.

Well, is it not, then, these secretaries of state themselves who ordered the adjournment of their projects at the very time when they consented to work in concert with the legislative commission on this point, so as justly to know from their projects, jointly with those which emanated from the initiative of the members of Parliament, which might be most important, and consequently most admissible for the present?

In consequence, the House of Representatives by its deliberation of this day declares the conduct of the two secretaries of finance and of the interior anti-patriotic and blamable.

It orders that the present note be forwarded to the Executive to be put at the head of the first column of the Moniteur of Saturday, 11th instant.