The following letter was submitted to city leaders this past week. Many of these leaders, and members of their congregations, attended the Common Council workshop on the Charter Revisions August 4th.
The elimination of the Treasurer position is one of 17 recommendations made in the Charter Revision Report currently being considered by the Common Council.
The elimination of the Treasurer position is one of 17 recommendations made in the Charter Revision Report currently being considered by the Common Council.
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As community leaders, we write to express concerns about
recent recommendations of the Charter Revision Commission, particularly the
recommendation to eliminate a vital taxpayer watchdog, City Treasurer.
The Treasurer is the voters' independent voice over fiscal
matters. The commission’s recommendation would significantly decrease the power
of voters in our community.
To start with, one of the most basic business practices is
that there should be two people signing off on spending decisions. In the case
of city business, we feel that at least one of those people should be directly
accountable to the voters for those decisions.
The continued relevance of the Treasurer position was, after
all, the key issue in the last city election for Treasurer. The issue was
covered and debated widely in the media. One candidate centered her entire
campaign on eliminating the office as unnecessary. In the end, your
constituents disagreed and did so by a wide margin.
It is strange and inappropriate that the Charter Revision
Commission would now be seeking to overturn the express will of the people by
eliminating this office. We strongly urge you to use your power to reject this
short-sighted recommendation.
To those who say the office has too little power, we would
agree — and encourage you to support efforts to increase the role of the office
and its ability to serve as a vital oversight over fiscal matters.
Some have suggested that the proposal is intended to save
taxpayers money. This seems implausible given that the same Commission has
proposed increases in pay for your respective offices that far exceed the
savings achieved by eliminating the City Treasurer position. Moreover, the
costs of fiscal mismanagement are potentially limitless, and only increase with
fewer checks and balances on the fiscal process.
For those reasons and more, we urge you to listen to the
voices of your constituents and reject the proposed Charter recommendation.
Sincerely,
Ministerial Alliance
NAACP-Officers
2 comments:
Why is this racial?
Sarbanes and Oxley, anyone?
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