Leaders Of Ministerial Alliance Express Concerns Over Treasurer Elimination

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.

---------------

Dear Mayor Drew & Members of the Common Council,

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