A Welcome Change in Transparency
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 7/26/10 @ 12:26 am - Filed Under City Council, Featured
The new deputy mayor, Beth Malloy, seems to have smacked some sense into Mayor Henry when it comes to transparency. Councilman Mitch Harper has been working with Malloy and also crafted an ordinance to require all city spending to be posted online.
the council this month unanimously approved an ordinance requiring the city to post all of its expenses online. The new law only provided an exception for employee compensation and did not mention economic development efforts. Yet unlike the consulting report, the Henry administration supported this effort.
Deputy Mayor Beth Malloy told the council the work can be done at little or no additional cost.
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Councilman Mitch Harper, R-4th, wrote the online expense bill for the city and said he was glad to see the support from the administration. He said it appears Malloy, who replaced Purcell last month, has been given the authority to take control of the city’s transparency efforts, which should make them professional.“She seems to represent something of a change,” he said.
Harper is being diplomatic here but I don’t think there’s any doubt that previous deputy mayor, Greg Purcell, was not a major advocate of open government provisions. He was an old-school bureaucrat who didn’t understand how technology has shortened the news cycle and that any effort at information control was futile and ultimately counterproductive.
While I don’t support the idea of a deputy mayor in general, it does appear that Malloy might be the person who can finally start giving mayor Henry some much-need good advice…
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2 Responses to “A Welcome Change in Transparency”
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So much is being made about the spending details. With the thousands of transactions taking place each month, how will anyone make any sense of it? I would prefer City and County (and all units of government) to submit timely monthly financial reports, showing how they are doing on budget and compared to the prior year. We don’t get anything now but an annual report issued 6 months after the year ends. I think Mitch Harper was pursuing this with the City last year but must have given up.
So agree, the details on the web site are all but useless because they don’t give any background information nor are they tied to overall budget details.
Transparency in name only, not informative in the least.
Feels like just another political football to talk about at election time.