Park Finance Office (PFO) head Valentina Abeja’s days may be numbered.
According to a post on the gossip site headsNtales, Chief Archon Klarissa Kuttu is “not pleased” with some of the terms of Abeja’s past budgets.
In the post dated today, the site’s co-founder Hortencia Guacamayo quotes a conversation she claims to have had with a Park Finance Office employee, who says that Abeja has been under pressure since January to produce a budget that will defund tourism and extra-hortulanial trade (trade with those living outside The Park).
According to Guacamayo’s source, Abeja has resisted, even though she herself reduced the funding for both in her last budget.
“Abeja does not believe in isolating The Park,” Guacamayo says the source told her. But her resistance may prove futile because, according to the source, Kuttu has begun a search for a new PFO head who will follow her orders.
If these rumours are true, this will be the first time in Park history that a Chief Archon has interfered with a budget prior to its release. It’s been customary for the PFO head to prepare a budget and then for the Archons en masse to approve it, to request changes, or to send it back.
According to Park historian and professor Beatrice Zilonis, this action, if true, is unprecedented. And dangerous.
“We have never seen so much direct contact with the PFO head prior to a budget,” she told The Mammalian Daily.
Zilonis says that while there has always been some tension between the PFO head and the Archons, the Archons have never given direct orders to the PFO.
“It’s unheard of,” she said. “Since it’s the Archons who’ve appointed the PFO head, they’ve usually been on the same page. The budget has always been tweaked, either because of the Archons’ desires or the citizens’, but never at this stage. If this is true, this constitutes overreach on the part of the Archons, in my opinion,” she said.
