|
What you should know about your right to know.
by Greg Schmid
"The way to make a government responsible is not simply to enlist the services
of responsible men and women, or to sign laws that ensure that they never
stray," President Obama said, “The way to make government responsible is to hold
it accountable. And the way to make government accountable is make it
transparent so that the American people can know exactly what decisions are
being made, how they're being made, and whether their interests are being well
served.
-
Everywhere you look, government officials are talking about making it easier for
citizens to keep track of spending. Well, almost everywhere. Americans are being
asked to contribute more and more of their earnings to government, and they
demand to know where their money is being spent. The City administration, led by
Saginaw City Manager Darnell Earley, wants to remove property tax constraints
from the city charter to make way for even higher property taxes, but what will
he spend those new taxes on?
“Trust me” is the short answer you get from the City. According to the plan they
are selling, they are actually going to end up taxing us less if we remove tax
limitations. If you work for a think tank, or for the government, and have
unlimited time, money, and expertise you can decipher the long answer from an
unintelligible and unreliable “budget” that you can look at online next year
(Even this is a big improvement - in years past you had to stand at the city
counter to read it, or pay about $60 for a copy). Thomas Jefferson said, “The
price of liberty is eternal vigilance”, but he didn’t that mean every citizen
should be a CPA just to make sure they balance the public. It is too bad
citizens can’t just look online and see our proposed budget as it gets built,
and watch as the funds are shifted from here and there, as it happens, and
before city council approves it. It’s too bad you have to wade through reams of
Council minutes to see who voted for what spending, when a simple on-line
spreadsheet would make it easy to hold leaders accountable over time. It is
unforgivable that citizens can’t look on line and see every entry for
every city check that is written just
to make sure the city is not overspending, pulling pay-to-play government
contracting schemes, or engaging in nepotism.
True, a citizen watchdog can technically send a request, under the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA), but you might be disappointed. According to the law, the
government is supposed to send you the records within 5 business days of your
request. What you learn to expect to instead, after you make dozens of these
requests, is a notice that the city is extending for 10 more business days the 5
day period for response “pursuant to Section 5(2)(d) of the Act”. This form
letter from legal department gives no explanation, but you can read between the
lines and it doesn’t exactly say “Trust me”.
Once upon a time I asked for embarrassing state audit records in the weeks
before a city millage election. The documents were no doubt sitting right on the
manager’s desk, but the notice I got back delayed the response until the day
after the city election. How convenient! After you get the form letter notifying
you of the delay, you often get a bill too. You see, the city that can’t keep
its money straight is really great at calculating, to the penny, how much you
are going to owe for public records you already paid for. Consistent with the
proposition everything costs more when government is involved, you pay a 14 cent
copy fee per page. Then you pay postage, and also a huge labor charge. Once I
sent the city three separate FOIA requests, for different records, on the same
day. One came back with a demand for $15.42/hour, another for $12.67/hour, and
still another demanded $34.13/hour. There was no explanation why I was to pay
hundreds of dollars of labor time at different hourly rates. Some charges were
to pay to have the City Attorney review each document to separate so-called
exempt documents from nonexempt documents. You get censored documents, and
charged for the censorship. By the way, you have to pay up in advance before
they will even make your copies. Do you want to save money and paper by having
the documents faxed or emailed to you? Sorry, you’ll take what they give you,
and feel lucky they did not deny your request altogether. Want to search through
the computer information to see what is there before you buy? No, mere citizens
are not allowed to see the real data that city employees see and generate
everyday.
Are
these typical government responses? For example, during the time when the
administration was trying to smear the elected citizen’s charter revision
commission, I was looking for evidence nepotism between the City Manager Earley
and a certain former mayor, and for proof of illegal government spending and
undue influence in the charter election, so I could expose them. I asked for
things like inter-office emails specifically “pertaining to the proposed charter
revision” over an immediately preceding 20 day period ($425 was demanded despite
the fact that these could be located with a simple word search), city paid cell
phone records for Darnell Earley for a specific 30 day period ($139 was demanded
for 55 pages), and reimbursable travel and meal expenses for Earley for that
same 30 day period ($149.41 demanded). At the time, I received a ration of
verbal abuse from Manager Earley (if you have ever met him when things aren’t
going exactly his way you already know just what I am talking about). I
responded with, “It is unfortunate that this is how you choose to do business
with city residents. I had heard about this, but did not want to believe it.”
His response back to me was “Obviously, there are exceptions to every rule...”,
and then “I did receive your FOIA's. I'm not surprised by your requests, nor the
garbage on the related website. Yes, there are exceptions
to every rule.”
Would you buy a car from this man? Citizens don’t buy this kind of disrespect
from overpaid underachievers who come here just to use Saginaw as a stepping
stone on their way up the corporate ladder of government.
I want my money back! If this is the treatment I get from my city government for
investigating corrupt practices and overspending, I’ll plow my own street. (too
late – they already skip my street).
To make all monthly city check registers available to the public online, and to
give open access to budget development documents, in time for citizens and
council members to do their homework in advance, would pay for itself a hundred
times over – in actual savings - within the first
few days. It would help balance the checkbook, and would have a
deterrent effect on white collar crime, corrupt spending, and
"friends and family” hiring schemes that
resemble the rampant cronyism in former Detroit Mayor
Kwame Kilpatrick's city jobs administration. Look what happened when the
Detroit Free Press revealed that the Kilpatrick administration had an
unprecedented number of friends and family who had been given government jobs by
the mayor. None of them had complied with a city ethics ordinance requiring them
to disclose their relationships to elected officials. Saginaw has historically
been plagued with cronyism, but it wouldn’t continue if such disclosure of City
Hall relations was a condition to hiring, and was posted on line.
Can we afford to empower the citizens to exercise their Right to Know, free of
charge? We cannot afford not to do it! They print all this stuff out anyway, so
why not print a PDF file, email it to the Information Technology staff, and post
in on the official website for all to see immediately? A few extra minutes a
month and the City Manager could earn, or lose, our trust.
I’m guessing there is a reason why he keeps us guessing.
The Freedom of Information and Open Record laws, enacted at the federal level
and in most states, were a good start. Over the years they have become
unworkable, due mostly to the development of legal obstructionist tactics by
duplicitous government agents like City Czar Darnell Earley, and his in-house
legal staff. These technicalities are employed to intimidate citizens with
cost-prohibitive fees for searching, processing, and copying records or to delay
release of information until it is too late to use. Earley and others like him
have honed these tactics to a science by, on your dime, and they are part of a
big brother strategy to wear down citizen watchdogs one little guy at a time.
Most Talk of Government Sunshine “All Hat and No Cattle.”
Like president Obama, Gov. Granholm
started talking about transparency as soon as she came to power and said,
“Government transparency and fiscal accountability are defining principles of
Michigan state government. We continue to explore new opportunities for
expanding information through the award-winning Michigan.gov Web site.
She boasts the establishment of “an online, searchable database of state vendor
and contract information to increase the transparency of state contractual
activities." This was a baby step in the
right direction, but the promised
“State Accountability Portal”
shows
almost no specific details regarding who is actually getting the public's money
and how much they are getting. Mostly, she
has used it as an excuse to deny more thorough transparency requests,
like exactly who works in the governor’s office and how much you pay them.
Likewise, President Obama talks a good game, but treats Americans like
mushrooms: kept in the dark and fed on manure. Trillions of dollars of partisan
earmarks; more taxes; massive irresponsible spending of borrowed; he promised it
would not happen like this. Citizens were not given even one day to review and
expose the details before the bill is rushed through congress and signed by him.
“No earmarks” is now “constructive earmarks.” That is Pragmatism; broken
promises brokered like penny stocks.
When a newspaper made a FOIA request for
the names and salaries of the political appointees working for the governor, the
governor's office "would not disclose the salaries of her staff, nor would the
governor's office disclose the number of employees serving on her or the
lieutenant governor's staff." Last year, when asked to regularly post on a state
Web site the
names and salaries of state employees, the governor's office asserted that "this
level of detail provides little value to the taxpayer."
The official Missouri web site puts that state's spending data in a searchable
format and in great detail... including
the names and salaries of state employees. It is essential that a real
searchable database disclose the actual stakeholders of entities that get major
taxpayer dollars (from state and local governments), so that citizens can
cross-reference those grants and contracts to the searchable campaign finance
database to find the “pay to play” political campaign donations made to big
government officials by the titans of big business, and by big labor bosses
alike. Anything less is just window dressing. Republican House Minority Leader Kevin Elsenheimer claims to
be the first lawmaker in state history to post his spending online. His annual
office budget of $482,000, the vast majority of which is spent on salaries for
his staff (his report does not list a single staff name or salary). Secretary of
State Terri Land has the most complete expenditure report of any statewide
official, but it does not include public employee names and salaries. Attorney
General Cox has a clearinghouse of information that allows users to track how
Michigan tax dollars are being spent by the Attorney General's office.
Users can search the total amount the Michigan Department of Attorney General
spends on salary, benefits, rent, browse a detailed list of contracts, and more.
Cox is supporting bills that would require the Michigan Department of
Information Technology (DIT) create a user friendly “Track Your Taxes” website
for all of state government. Cox has encouraged the legislature and the Governor
to follow his lead and allow all Michigan citizens to see exactly where their
tax dollars are spent across state government, but his own website actually
lacks public employee names and salaries.
Shining the Light Most government websites spend your money on fancy pictures,
prepackaged budgets, and lofty slogans, but they don’t lay out the raw
unvarnished truth. In the information age “We the people” demand nothing less.
Public officials serious about transformational change in the way government
does business with real people should set an example and start with the
sunshine. Two brand new freshman State Representatives, Tom McMillin and Rep.
Justin Amash, already have websites providing a detailed picture of their
spending by posting names and salaries. Thanks to term limits, we get fresh
blood in office once in a while. Citizens legislators know that citizens just
need to know – now more than ever. Taxpayer’s are boss, and each of us should be
able to quickly look up who works for us and how much they are being paid!
Over a dozen local government bodies have gotten the message.
In Saginaw County, a citizen oriented
Montrose Community School
Board has posted their
school district Checkbook Register Report
on their internet site. So have a dozen other school districts:
Bloomfield Hills Schools,
Bullock Creek School District,
Chassell Township School District,
Clawson Public Schools,
Farmington Public Schools,
Oakland Intermediate School District,
Rochester Community Schools,
St. Clair County Regional Educational Service Agency,
Walled Lake Consolidated Schools,
Waterford School District.
Officials from the Romeo Community Schools and the
Chippewa Valley School District,
both in Macomb County, said they too will soon place their check registers
online for taxpayer inspection.
"Transparency" is turning into a cliché that means whatever a politician wants
it to mean, and many politicians only want to publicly reveal the stuff that
supports the official line. But what good government employees know, and all
government officials need to learn, is that if they want to earn the trust of
citizen’s they had better let the sun shine in. Only when all the raw data is
available, in searchable form, can citizen researchers really subject government
spending patterns to rigorous computer analysis. It’s only when you actually
crunch large volume of numbers that the actual patterns jump out at researchers
bent on finding the truth, not just posturing. Truth is what citizens need, not
just hype. We can take the truth. So to all government leaders: you need to back
it up with the actual facts. If you had done that all along you might have been
heroes, but now the very survival of our system of government depends on what
you do next. It’s your move!
|