South Tahoe provides answers to budget questions
On Sept. 29, Lake Tahoe News ran a story about the South Lake Tahoe budget for fiscal year 2010-11, which started Oct. 1. In that story a list of questions was posed to city staff. They went unanswered.
However, the city’s Finance Department provided answers to the questions on Oct. 8. Click on answers to read what the city has to say.
LTN will analyze the answers in the coming weeks as well as the more complete budget documents that were provided by the city. Those documents were only secured after much back-and-forth about what a public document is and when the public ought to be able to view said document.
LTN is striving to provide transparency about where local tax dollars go, the budget process, the reliance the city has on grants, as well as bring awareness to the difficulty there is in getting straight, timely answers from some city departments.
— Kathryn Reed
The city in general and the finance department specfically needs to operate from the premise that except for personnel records every document is a public record. There may be exceptions that are legally dealt with on a case by case basis, but the operating philosophy should be one of transparency. I would still like to see the finance department provide the public with all of the invoices for outside legal counsel for the past five years.
It’s not a good sign that you had to pull teeth to get the budget numbers. Initial hearsay was positive on the new City Mgr. Subsequent hearsay I’ve gotten has been negative. Now granted, I’m just talking about hearsay.
But the effort to keep the budget secret and complicated starts to confirm the negative hearsay and makes it appear that there’s not been a new, fresh change in direction?!
Go,girl!