Empowering an army of 36 million citizen auditors and watchdogs unleashed upon the $100 billion dollar California budget. That is the laudable goal of Senator Tom McClintock’s SB 1494 and Assembly Martin Garrick’s AB 1843. If enacted by the legislature and signed by the governor, these bills would require the State of California to put information about state expenditures on-line, including who was paid how much and which department authorized the payment. The bills are part of a nationwide movement. Similar legislation is moving forward in at least 17 other state legislatures. In 2006, U.S. Senators Coburn and Obama sponsored legislation that required the federal government to develop a database to track spending and the fruits of their labor can be found at www.federalspending.com.
The most important feature of SB 1494 and AB 1843 is that they call for the data to be available on the World Wide Web and subject to the power of digital technology. That will enable citizens to cut up and sort the data in a myriad of ways. For example, citizens can track spending for specific services over time or add up payments made to separate vendors who are controlled by the same parent company. Digital data will also enable enterprising civic watchdogs to cross-reference the information with other sources – for instance, linking information about contracts to data about political donations in an effort to shed light on the relationship between those that give to political campaigns and those that benefit from government action.
But this effort goes beyond simply empowering the masses and turning loose an army of citizen auditors. Distrust in civic institutions is at an all-time high. If one listens to the radio or reads the letters to the editor of our local newspapers, it is clear that the vast majority of citizens believe that government is crooked, broken, and run by and for the benefit of insiders. To those that believe that politics and policy making is a noble enterprise, it is depressing to see just how distrustful people are and just how alienated from their government they have become.
Transparency efforts like the ones being championed by Senator McClintock and Assemblyman Garrick help chip away at those poisonous opinions. Undoubtedly the posting of the State’s check registry on the Internet will lead to some embarrassing revelations. However, it will also, we believe, help shed light on the mundane actions and activities of government, demonstrating to the public that the majority of time government does work reasonably efficiently and that malfeasance and incompetence are the exceptions and not the rule.
Local government officials in San Diego would do wise to follow the lead of McClintock and Garrick and move to develop similar on-line databases.
It can come not a moment too soon. The City of San Diego notes, with almost no additional detail for the public, in its 2007-2008 budget almost $1 billion dollars on “supplies and services.” The City of Chula Vista’s FY 2007-2008 budget also does not provide detail for the $18 million in general fund spending on “supplies and services.” An on-line database regarding expenditures can help flesh out the details of these expenditures – helping citizens gain a greater understanding of how their tax dollars are being spent and empowering them to raise red flags about questionable spending.
In addition, local government should digitize and make available to the public copies of the contacts which cities enter into. The public has a right to know, for example, what entites the local government is doing business with, what kind of performance criteria are built into contracts and how government intends to monitor the compliance of its contractors.
Transparency is hard. It requires work and can be seen as a task which takes time away from getting “real work” done. Sometimes bureaucrats oppose such efforts because the expenses involved don’t seem to directly enhance public services. That view, we believe, is short-sighted because of the power that these reforms can have in helping to bridge the chasm between the government and taxpayers. Senator McClintock and Assemblyman Garrick deserve our thanks for doing their part in providing some financial sunshine and taking a small step toward restoring the public’s trust.
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