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.
(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!