Lower Merion Citizens for Responsible Budgeting (CRB)
Bipartisan Transparency Killed
March 11 , 2009
What could be more bipartisan than the issue of transparency? It promotes no value judgment one way or the other. An ordinance change? A budget enhancement? A budget reduction? Transparency cares not what side is taken, merely that it is done in the public eye.
On March 4, 2009, the Lower Merion Board of Commissioners, acting as a committee of the whole in the form of the Finance Committee, killed the concept of bipartisan transparency. On a motion to open the Ad Hoc Budget and Ad Hoc CIP committees to the public as required by the PA Sunshine Act, the Board voted NO.
They did it on a straight party line vote. And with shame I confess, my party, the Democrats, killed it.
Commissioner Gelber mourned the fact that it was a party line division. I echo the sentiment. But the real question is not why did the Republicans apparently vote as a block, but rather why did not one single Democrat vote for opening the budget process to the public?
We are a party that railed against the Bush administration for its secretive behavior. When VP Cheney attempted to justify secret energy meetings as a means to having “candid” discussions, we cried foul. Yet precisely those words, asserting the need for candidness in private, have been used by Democratic commissioners at recent civic association meetings and paraphrased on March 4th.
One wonders, “With whom are they afraid of being candid?” Not the public, it turns out. It’s the staff. They’re afraid of being lobbied by 400 Lower Merion staff!
Any issue with staffing implications, and that amounts to 62% of the budget, is potentially off-limits to public scrutiny. Your trash pick-up: public or private. Your police force: more or less. Your library staff: up or down. And on and on.
Last November, many believed the elections were a resounding response to the call for bipartisanship. I call upon the Democrats of Lower Merion to live up to that call with what may easily be the least partisan issue on the table: transparency.
Audrey Romasco
Haverford, LMT