City Council pays lip service to Increasing Transparency in Government

We have been pushing, even fighting , for a long time now to get more and better transparency in Burlington City Government (Administration, Departments, Sister and Owned Organizations, City Council, City Commissions and City Boards). Many people have been working on this in tandem. This push for transparency usually only shows its public head about specific issues such as Westlake, Appletree Point, Institutional Construction, etc.

We should be very gratified that all of our efforts and protestations have moved the City Council on Monday, 24 Mar 2008, to pass a resolution titled “Increasing Transparency In Government” unanimously. That is the good news and we should all thank the Council for passing that Resolution.

The not so good news is the Resolution is really a sop to everything we have been pushing to have. Even the method of selection of people to be on its Ad Hoc Committee to “develop recommendations” to “increase transparency” is flawed in the extreme. The point of transparency in government is to give the public ALL of the information a topic, pro and con, left and right, up and down, so there is nothing hidden. The next step is to have the appropriate part of government not only get public input about the topic, but also consider that input carefully and then vote as their conscience dictates. It is important for those of us not in government to keep remembering that the people in government are the ones that vote, not us, so while we deserve the information and have the right to give our opinions, ultimately it is up to them to vote or decide the way they feel they should.

Since transparency is directly for the public, there needs to be much more transparency and openness about how to organize the Ad Hoc Committee on Transparency than is in the City Council Resolution. The Resolution says the public will be represented by five people chosen by the Mayor and two chosen City Councilors. How much more controlled could the process be? Instead the process should be to go to the public and have them choose who their representatives should be on the Ad Hoc Committee. Since we have just had a citywide election, and are not going to have another one until November, our next most public venue is our Neighborhood Planning Assemblies in every Ward. Have each NPA elect two people to sit on the Ad Hoc Committee. That would be representative.

Then have the City Council nominate Councilors to be on the Ad Hoc Committee in open session and have the whole Council vote on who the two Committee Members should be. What could be more open than that?

Starting the Ad Hoc Committee with a good foundation is crucial to its success. Selecting its members any other way than by election would smack too much of a closed and controlled process.