I have been asked to further elaborate about my views on Open Government. The following are portions of my October 2007 blog entry. As you can see, I have been advocating open government for many years.
Open Government is the ability of our township residents to have easy access to our local leadership, critical documents, and how our township operates on a daily basis. In other words, create a level of transparency between the Board of Supervisors, township operations and our residents.
Each of the critical service organizations (Police, Fire, and EMS) should make a yearly report to the township residents to improve our understanding of these critical services and how we benefit as a community from these dedicated professionals. Yes, I will broach the unthinkable -- broadcasting our Board of Supervisor (BoS) meetings on the local cable community outlet channels. At least, the Supervisors should web cast all its BoS meetings on the township web site.
Additionally, I believe we should have occasional Board of Supervisor, Planning Commission, and Zoning meetings on Saturdays to increase the visibility of these critical boards and commissions to our community. Town hall meetings should become a norm in our township not just a campaign slogan.
It is very important that we proactively reach out to residents to get ideas on critical township issues. If you have any ideas or comments about critical issues facing Forks Township, please share your ideas via our blog.
Get Involved –Every Vote Counts!
2 comments:
Mr. Billings, I appreciate and applaud your addressing my questions/concerns publically via your blog. I must say that it does say something about your character.
On your position regarding what you characterize as "True Open Government", your position gives the impression that you do not believe Forks Township currently has open goverment, or transparency between the Supervisors, operations, and residents. Actually, the manner im which you addressed this implies that you do not believe there is currently ANY transparency, yet you intend to create a level, which I also believe implies there currently is none. I again would appreciate clarification on this.
I do realize that you do continue by identifying certain operations aspects where you describe certain improvements towards transparency that you would like to work towards implementing, with broadcasting BOS meetings on local cable as an interesting concept, and once that I think could be a great idea to allow any resident of the area the ability to view the meetings either by themselves, or with their families. This in itself could be a great tool for allowing flow of information to the general public regarding the operations of our local government. It could also expose our children to the operations of a local government as well. Fantastic idea, and one that I would openly support.
However, I am still concerned by your implication that the local residents may not have access to our local leadership, critical documents, etc. I personally have visited our Township offices, and have been very courteously and quickly provided with information I have requested, including township documentation. If I recall, you wanted to push for lower costs to township residents for accessing and obtaining copies of township records for their own use. Is this what you are implying with the transparency of "critical records"? If so, I do not believe that charging a fee, or one that you believe to be higher than it should be to equate to lack of transparency to records or documents.
On that same note, your push for "True Open Government", which again implies that our current government is not, I do not believe is correct, on the same premise that we currently have easy access to our townships daily operations. If my understanding from your statement is incorrect, I would appreciate it if you could clarify your position on it. If you are referring to access to records, information, or other documentation from our Police or Fire Departments, I am curious why you believe this is so important that additional information be made available with these? First of all, I am not aware of ANY city, municipality, or other government entity where each individual entity would be required to craft additional reports, records, or information tailored to the residents of the are they serve, other than providing statistical information, yet WOULD be required to provide additional information to be used exclusively by the governing officials. Our Police force deals with certain business affairs that should NOT be made public. If there are issues within said department, that is why there are other safeguards in place such as internal affairs departments. I do believe that certain information, including budgets, budget vs. actuals, and certain other high level information should be publically available, and I do believe that information currently is. I do not see the benefit of adding additional reporting requirements to this, as it will only increase the amount of administrative time required by the Police Department, which COULD increase expenses, even marginally but would be an increase, AND would likely open up the department to scrutiny on every expense large or small. Any additional scrutiny would then cause additional administrative time and expense to either justify or remove said scrutinized expenses. It becomes a can of worms, as there will always be someone to scrutinize EVERY single expense.
As for asking the Fire Department for the same, I also see the same problems with your concept. However, as this department also currently has approximately 60 members who are strictly volunteer, I also believe there could be some confidentiality issues that could arise. Public records issues I do not believe to non-paid individuals of an entity, and this could cause some potential future, or even current volunteers to decide to forego being a part of the fire department if certain personal information could be made public due to the concept of "True Open Government".
Please feel free to respond to my comments, as perhaps my understanding or interpretation of your posts was inaccurate.
Regardless if in the end I agree or disagree with you, at the very least you have proven yourself to be a man of character, and I do applaud your "walking tour", although I have not yet had the ability to meet you in person in my neighborhood, but I also do applaud you for attempting to clarify your positions when asked. Whether elected or not, I do like some of your ideas, and either way I do think some of your ideas may be worth implementing for the good of the township. At the very least, thank you for that.
Post a Comment