Sunday, December 28, 2014
The headline should be considered a “friendly” warning to the Mahoning Valley’s public employees that 2015 will be the “Year of Transparency” — if Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, and we, the private-sector taxpayers, have our way.
Secrecy has long been one of the pillars of government, with elected officials and bureaucrats doing their damnedest to hide the people’s business from the people. Although there are laws on the books meant to provide easy access to public records and force officeholders out of their “hidey” holes and into the sunlight, barriers to full transparency are being erected every day.
Readers of this newspaper were given an up-close look at what transpires in government with the Youngstown Police Department’s in-house probe of a traffic stop in which the driver spit the hook on an OVI charge because his brother, a city police lieutenant, intervened.
Canada geese kill
Readers also saw a group of well- intended, but greatly misguided, individuals decide to euthanize more than 200 Canada geese and goslings at Mill Creek Park without first discussing the issue in public. There should be no doubt that the Mill Creek MetroParks commissioners have shattered the public’s trust, making the renewal of an countywide operating levy next year an iffy proposition.
To make matters worse, the commissioners violated Ohio’s open meetings law in the hiring of a new executive director and were forced to revisit the selection process after The Vindicator and 21 WFMJ-TV publicly took them to task.
The Youngstown Police Department and the Mill Creek board of commissioners are just the latest examples of public entities attempting to shield themselves from public view.
That’s why Ohio Treasurer Mandel’s initiative to make transparency the first order of business for governments at all levels has resonated with the press and with taxpayers who have long sought information on how their money is being spent by elected officials and other keepers of the public purse.
OhioCheckbook.com is what Mandel describes as “a cutting edge government transparency website that allows citizens to search, analyze and compare 112 million individual expenditures.” They have totaled a whopping $408 billion over the past seven years. That’s billion with a “b”.
But here’s the come-hither aspect of the initiative that will cause it to spread like wildfire:
“Our vision is to create an army of citizen watchdogs who are empowered to hold public officials accountable.”
Think about it: Millions of Ohioans on their computers clicking on every item of government income and expenditure.
Want to see which state lawmakers went on that junket to Hawaii under the guise of doing the people’s work? Click.
Want to know how much money Gov. John Kasich’s chief of staff earns? Click.
Want to find out what was served at the three-day conference for local government officials at one of the state’s exclusive resorts? Click.
In other words, every financial transaction conducted by the state is just a click away on OhioCheckbook.com. It’s certainly more entertaining and informative than Angry Birds.
Enthusiastic journalists
The launch of the website has been so successful and greeted with such enthusiasm by journalists that Treasurer Mandel wants to help the 3,800 government subdivisions in Ohio also become transparent.
And before some local government official with larceny in his heart complains about the added expense of putting all the financial transactions online, Mandel has an offer the official and others of his ilk can’t refuse:
The Treasurer’s Office will pay the cost of making local governments and other public agencies transparent.
Want to know what the mayor’s secretary makes? Click.
Want to know how much the township trustees from the snowbelt spent going out to sunny California to learn about cactus farming? Click.
Who’s on the public payroll and what qualifications do they have for their jobs? Click.
For private sector taxpayers, it’s a gift that will keep on giving.
2015 will be the “Year of Transparency” — whether local government officials like it or not.
But it doesn’t end there. The next target: the public pension system and the benefits paid to retirees. The pension amounts are now secret, but Treasurer Mandel agrees that those should also be open to public scrutiny.