President Reagan once said - "tear down this wall."
This Board needs to say: "remove these curtains."
As they are preventing Department Managers from being present at budget hearings. Establishing a system of transparency is our responsibility, while accomplishing this we cannot exclude the right of the public to participate and collaborate in the budget process. Any level of openness that is interfered with only ensures that the public trust will be damaged.
How do we accomplish openness? By asking questions. Oh I forgot, you cannot ask direct questions of the Department Manager who is directly responsible for overseeing millions of your tax dollars, because they will not be present at any budget hearing to answer questions, by the Board or you the citizen.
If a report card were to be given today on the practices and policies of our budget hearings, discussions, planning, and implementation of those hearings what grade would you give the Board?
Could we require that the City maintain and make available financial data online, in an easy to read format? Yes. Will we? No.
Quickly rather than slowly we need to achieve a method of measurement that would articulate the relationship of spending decisions to successful outcomes.
Identifying smart practices of budgetary overview has already been achieved by the Clark County School District with the procedure called "Open Book" which is a financial portal that provides to the public a comprehensive overview of its spending habits.
This kind of transparency leads to an increased level of accountability and promotes the concept of unity, by establishing collaboration with citizens who now can finally access (online) and understand how their tax dollars are being spent.
STEP # 1
We fundamentally need to have our budgets presented to the Board by Department Managers in a comprehensible easy to read format that allows citizens to effortlessly understand just how their tax dollars are being collected and more to the point, how they are being allocated and spent.
STEP# 2
Repeat step #1 until it has been accomplished.