Transparency: Boston City Council

Background

ONE Massachusetts is working closely with its partner, Common Cause Massachusetts, on efforts to increase transparency statewide. One ongoing effort is to increase transparency in the Boston City Council.

ONE Massachusetts Project Director Yawu Miller made the following recommendations:

  • A more user-friendly website with the budget prominently displayed and easily accessible.
  • The budget should be broken down into easy-to-understand pie charts.
  • Quantifiable performance measures for each department.
  • Searchable data. Allow residents to search for expenditures electronically rather than scrolling through hundreds of pages in pdf format.
  • Names of contractors and contract amounts should be available at the click of a mouse.
  • Easy-to-search information on tax revenues, including an overall breakdown of how revenues are raised. Information should include tax breaks given to developers and payments in lieu of taxes.
  • Detailed and easily accessible information on the budget as it’s being drafted, with clear information about how and when the public can give input.

The women and men who work for our city in most cases do a terrific job. From time to time there are instances of waste and fraud which make it into the newsmedia and undermine public confidence in government. The city must counter these negative perceptions by making information about its revenues and expenditures easily accessible and easily understandable.

More background information on Boston's transparency efforts is coming soon.

Meanwhile:

A Jan 31 Gobe editorial says Tranparency Begins at Home 

AFTER HIS recent election as president of the Boston City Council, Michael P. Ross promised to make the council and its proceedings more transparent. It was a welcome pledge.

And in September a ONE Mass Blog What does a transparent government mean to you? began to track the issue as a  problem that was beginning to rise to the top of a government reform agenda

 

How transparent is the City's website?

The City of Boston has posted three years worth of budget information on its Boston About Results site detailing departmental budgets. Mayor Thomas Menino says the transparency measure will help the city and its residents track the performance of its departments:

“Raising the level of transparency is key to ensuring the trust in government at a time when it matters most,” said Mayor Menino. “Making the information collected by BAR available to the public will help us continue to provide better and more efficient services to the people of Boston.”

In a Boston Herald article, mayoral candidates Sam Yoon and Michael Flaherty say the city's website could go a lot farther. Yoon notes that the pie charts and data don't tell the whole story. Yoon points to data on how many potholes the DPW filled with rely on the amount of asphalt used, not the actual number of potholes filled. Yoon is calling for a performance-based budget, which he says would tell the whole story.

 

 


Boston City Council struggling with transparency

The Herald reports that the Boston City Council is trying to figure out how to handle the presence of constituents hanging around at council meetings, or heaven forbid in the corridors as they discuss and vote on issue of the day.

An 80-page report the council takes up today recommends asking the Legislature for an exemption from the law that requires all cities and towns to conduct their business in public. An exemption would mean citizens have no legally guaranteed right to attend council meetings, or even receive meeting minutes.

“You may not have a right to speak, but you have a right to watch,” Pam Wilmot, executive director of government watchdog Common Cause, said about current protections under the law.

Get Involved

For more information on these efforts, please contact:

Yawu Miller - Public Policy Institute Deputy Director, ONE Massachusetts Director