WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO GET INVOLVED WITH THE BIGGEST EGOMANIAC JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL DRAMA GAME CALLED LOCAL POLITICS?

With the last budget retreat in my hometown of Richardson, TX  I  wrote, yet again, another long, multi-page letter to the City manager on several topics surrounding future revenues,  fund rotations and the future expenditures for the next fiscal year. You ask what a fund rotation is? It is the creation of a "public need" to set up another fund that has a reserve balance that compensates for the lack in other area and can be swept back to the general fund for undisclosed use declared General and Administrative needs.

What did I just say?

At 3pm before the evening public meeting, I sent a text to the current mayor and one new council member for a reason why no response when they were voting on the topic that night.  I  got a response from the City Manager, written in 3rd person (whatever that was about), and the majority of my questions were unanswered. Well, it was at the last minute.  Vote happens.  No discussion.  Nothing new here. This is politics in Richardson.  They tell you they are elected to hear what the citizens have to say, not to respond or have a dialogue on the record.  It is just not done!  Is that what politically incorrect means? 

So how did this all start?

I never had any interest in government.  None. Zero.  Zip.  No time/gotta life/yeah, I know I am supposed to render an educated vote, but..... Even though I had the most awesome grandmother in the world who worked with Sam Rayburn and was civically active ....NOPE, not interested. Or an amazing Mom who was the City Secretary/Manager in McKinney, TX when I was a little girl, and fired because she bore a second child. Nope, just did not care.  Newspapers were so great back then where everyone who argued something in public  became print! There is certainly enough taxpayer money spent on marketing and communications to the public.  Maybe that is why blogs today are so important as the pure media that has since  vanished?

My husband and I live on a cul-de-sac that has an island in the center.  There was a water box in the ground with a valve to attach a hose. Our sons and others made sure there was regular maintenance, like mowing, water and the occasional fertilizing . That worked just fine for oh, two decades when the City management decided to take over maintenance of the island . Within 3 years,  4 beautiful trees and nice grass became unwatered, 1 barely alive ash tree, and a trash dump with broken TV's, gross mattresses, and other trash and paper.  My neighbors were complaining about the City's lack of attention and the new set of rules that bordered on the ridiculous.

  I agreed to make a few calls. After all, people this day and age are reasonable and ethical 

  and  moral in my city, right? What a beating that couple of days were!  The trash department

 said they would clean up the trash, but the parks department would handle the water issue. 

  Oh, no parks doesn't handle water. The water department does . Water department doesn't

  have a clue what to do, so I was told to call neighborhood services.  Neighborhood services

  said to call parks department.  What a lovely journey through the city operations.

Finally, persistence got the assistant manager in parks to come out. He said the bottom line was all they were going to do was mow periodically.   If I wanted to get together with my neighbors here and put up $2000-2500 for water and half the cost of plantings we could have some esthetics here.  But, but, but....it worked just fine for many years having the neighbors care for the city property!   Surely, $2500 is a drop in the bucket to the millions and millions paid into the city coffers?   Besides it worked just fine until management changed the rules and said the city will maintain its own property.   And that is when he promptly told me I just didn't understand how the system worked. 

Needless to say, nothing happened as he said.  And this is what the island looks like after the City came out and cleaned up after the recent ice storm mess of Dec 2013.  What thrives and survives is what you put your attention to.  Lovely isn't it?

 

Back to the story........when you are determined to get a "reasonable" answer to an issue, what do you do?

So I decided to show up at a Council meeting to see what goes on and why operations appears to be so ineffective.  Very first meeting,  Feb 2005, I  was the only citizen in the room.  Just me out of 93,000+ in this city.  I must admit that truly surprised me.   Yes, yes....I was one of those people who lied to self and said "If they want to do the job, let them" kind of person.   I also now admit I should have never walked through that door .  I  was engaged!   And I could not get away until I spent five figures out of our pocket and finally  had to be honest with myself.  The realization my ethics and values could not process the reality of Richardson City Hall.   It is like smoking.  You know it is not good for you but you do it anyway thinking it can't happen to me. 

It just dawned on me this has been a 9 year journey!   Wow!  I got up for meetings at 6am.  People who know me get that mornings are not my friend, yet I got up every Friday morning

for a couple of years to learn more.   lol And then the monthly HOA/NA morning meetings

where the staff gives a short version of their work.  That was 7am Tuesday mornings .  Did I

mention I do not like mornings?    I spent every Monday evening at the work sessions and  

bi-weekly Council meetings. 

Next council meeting,  I met someone who had been attending for quite a while.  This person told me there were a couple others that caught on to the City's special ops and decided it was time to pay more attention.  I met a few more people who were a great help in giving me the background on issues that came up on the agenda.  I heard all kinds of stories of bias to downright theft.  Deep in my heart I did not want to hear that.   I truly didn't.  So, I thought a little old fashioned research would clear the misconceptions.  We are a reasonable and ethical group of people in this city, right?   It is just like a genealogy project my Mom and I had been working on for my grandmother.  No big deal.   Then I can go back to my real life, my work, my family and taxes.    

There was a DMN reporter who attended most of the Monday night meeting.  She was always taking notes.  When she wrote a story, I read every one of them.  I started to amass mountains of paper, so I bot a dozen 4in binders to start organizing and then cleared out a large lateral file drawer.  I was overrun with paper trying to get a handle on what these people did every Monday night and how it affected the people of this city.  You know, those 93,000+ people who were like me and do not pay attention unless something really dramatic comes up.  Like a sexually oriented business zoning area in the city!  Ha!

I kept wondering when the council members ever had time to be come omnisciently engaged and fully confident in making good decisions for the people they represent?  The council members would have a packet delivered to their doors on Thursday evenings of the information to be covered Monday night.  It was bad enough to be an accountant with a paper mass already, but all these documents to be an informed and responsible voter was over the top and definitely a full time job. 

My Mom was dealing with cancer at the time, but I sometimes could get her help looking at documents and strategize where to go next.  I think she was sometimes more amazed at some of the stuff than me.

It took a couple of years before I started to get a handle on the inner workings. There is so much data thrown at you in a very short period of time there is no way you can get some comfort in the "what, why and how" of any topic, much less develop any questions before the Council votes on anything.  Many things are presented on a "micro" level without the macro concept of why it is necessary.  I finally figured out this is not a process of asking for approval of the citizens.  It is a process of telling you what they have decided to do and how it is going to be.

When the auditor meeting came around again, I was not so flabbergasted at the lack of data.  You know you just get desensitized after a while and the "WTF's" becomes less dramatic.   Here is what the audit committee reported to us:

 

Out of an 11  page report, 2 pages tell you what happened in the prior year.  But do they really?

And they get an award for the CAFR too! It is a certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the GFOA. That is the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada.  

http://www.gfoa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76&Itemid=96

(Everybody clapping yet?)

  Who the heck is the GFOA and what do they know about the needs and requests by the       

  citizens to the local government through our City Charter?

  Going back to the 2 pages of the audit presentation, what does it tell you?

Can you tell anything about what the city's finances look like?  Do you know how much debt there is? Do you see the growth in city assets?  Do you wonder how much employee pensions cost? Can you tell how many employees and how much was spent on wages? Do you know what it costs to initiate the 2006 bond program? Can you see the number of funds the City has created and for what purpose? Do you know what records the auditors reviewed? Was there any notice as to whether the Council and management were over budget or under budget?  Does it tell you anything about that mountain of paper collected all during the year for all those important decisions?

We have to go to the City Secretary and make a request for the CAFR,  The presentation is just an overview.  No problem, right?  Cost is 10 cents a page.  Well, the idea that a presentation was done with very little substantive disclosure  was the beginning of my enlightenment on public transparency.   You have to pay for the actual information if you want to know what they do. 

Time progresses and I start asking more questions.   One Council member tells me I ask the "hard" questions.   OK.  What does that mean?  Let's see what management has to say.  The response received was it was not City Management's responsibility to educate me.  Hmmm.  OK.  This is going to be a bit more difficult task to get to the truth and learn the game of politics and public finance.  Let's see where I can go with this.  If I can learn with others, break down research, this will go much faster.  Or so they say. 

Then I really learned the caveats of an open records request.  Working genealogy with my Mom in the basements of courthouses around Texas, the staffs are great to help you.   But if you want to get into the "real business of the City, you are reminded that an ORR is for documents that already exist.   The will not create documents for you.   A couple of days after the meeting where the Council "blesses" the financial work they have done,  we can get a copy of the Consolidated Annual Financial Report (aka, CAFR).  This 200 +/- page document is the management and auditors statement on the financial results of the City.  Anyone can have a copy for $.10 a page.    Did I mention documents are $.10 cents a page?

Never in the news or any political meeting have I ever heard anyone speak of the CAFR. Everyone talks about budgets. As a veteran accountant, I knew the real truth is in the financials, uh CAFR.  Budgets change thru time.  Yet if you want to know what  really happens then read the CAFR.  At the same time you have to know what the rules of engagement are. The Texas Constitution, Statues, and the Charter are the rules,  Then there are various contracts and agreements along the way. 

And this is where the journey began.  There is so much that has gone on, this would be a volume of books,  not a blog.  But, let's see if I/we can break down public finance and management to the best of our ability with these goals in mind:

1)          Map the requirements in the City Charter and Local government Code to the activities and responsibilities of the Council and City Management .

2)              With the help of some friends, explain the hierarchy of law and why it is important. Texas Constitution trumps statutes trumps charters trumps ordinances trumps resolutions.

3)                Define responsibilities in an audit based on the criteria in the charter and local government

code.  Review  the letters of engagement as to what the independent auditors will do and not do.

4)                How do you read these mountains of financial pages? And how does the budget help you analyze the information.

5)               What happens when a deal does not go as planned? There is a rule of unintended consequences, but if you never adjust and correct, is it malfeasance?

6)               Stop electing "nice" over knowledgeable. These politicians with their own goals and professional agendas cannot lie to you if you are in the know. Votes matter if they are executed with clear and truthful information.   Good decisions are never made with bad data .

7)               Stop the "divide and conquer" mentality politicians used on all levels to garner leverage. When it finally dawned on me (yes my idealist core came into focus) We the People were no longer shareholders in this City, we are assets, I thought there would be others who would agree.   The Jr High antics became understood as a very useful tool.  Purposefully.   If you want exclusivity and power, keep the masses at bay by creating drama and then add in a dash of descriptive people bashing to create doubt, then this becomes reality. Then keep talking transparency but never completely offer it in any meeting or print. Transparency is a buzz word used as leverage.  We do not have to always agree with each other,  but we do have a responsibility to each other to recognize our position in the City. It is the collective who decides what policy we want our elected representatives to adhere to and protect.

Every issue has one outcome after the decision is made. These outcomes have no party or personality. They are just are decisions with specific results.  The CAFR is a snapshot in time that tells you whether the decisions made worked or not. It can also tell you whether they followed the rules of engagement or not.  We look to the Texas Constitution, the Statutes, and the Charter for guidance.

And this is where the  journey for this blog begins!