Well, it’s that time of year again — budget season!
Budgeting has been characterized as one of the most delicate “balancing acts” that local officials engage in during the year.
Establishing and maintaining strong and transparent budget processes and practices should be a matter of concern for all county residents.
Unfortunately, it’s become too easy for local leadership to become so self-consumed – more interested in portraying themselves as the brightest bulbs in the sockets – than presenting a coherent, comprehensive concept of how your tax dollars are being spent.
In a community known for its artistic bent, it would be nice to see a proposed budget painted with a super fine detail brush as opposed to the “broad-brush” approach we are too often subjected to.
Mark Haveman, executive director of the Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence, suggests there should be “mathematical calculations behind every levy.”
What Mr. Haveman is suggesting is that budget numbers be clearly depicted and understood from their source and be presented and compared to previous years. “If the intention was to painstakingly ‘show your work,’ it would be elementary for members of the public to assign reasons for levy growth to the correct causes,” claims Haveman.
However, concedes Haveman, “In all our years, we’ve never seen a local government present a levy change this way.”
Might be because local officials don’t want taxpayers to “pull back the curtain and expose the ‘Wizard’ as a middle-aged man operating machinery and speaking into a microphone.”
Officials appear to find it easier to talk “around issues” rather than delve into the dogged details.
This may be where the delicate “balancing acts” fit in. It’s more like a
“dance,” similar to that performed by the predatory praying mantis.
“To some extent this will always be in the eye of the beholder,” acknowledges Haveman,
“but special government ventures can create undue taxpayer exposure.” Isn’t that the truth!
K. K. Mathew, former
Judge of the Supreme
Court of India – highly regarded for his scholarship and for his seminal contribution to the Constitutional and
Administrative law in India – held, “The responsibility of officials to explain or to justify their acts is the chief safeguard against oppression.”
Free-speech advocate, Alexander Meiklejohn, best known as president of Amherst College during the early years of the 20th century, instructs, “The final aim of the [town] meeting is the voting of wise decisions. The voters, therefore, must be made as wise as possible.”
A strong word of caution here, don’t expect that wisdom to originate with local officials. Fact is, even the MN state auditor’s research analyst advises, “I wouldn’t trust information that is self-reported.”
Meiklejohn concludes, “The welfare of the community requires that those who decide issues shall understand them. They must know what they are voting about. And this, in turn, requires that so far as time allows, all facts and interest relevant to the problem shall be fully and fairly presented.”
Lawrence Lessig, professor of Law at Harvard Law School and former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University concludes, “As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy.”
I’ll wrap this week’s column up by suggesting, placing trust in the process is less important than being able to place trust in those who control the process.
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works, as well as other topics. At times the column is editorial in nature.
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