Coral Gables Transparency: Lessons from Washington

May 12, 2009 Leave a comment

The openness community is criticizing the Obama Administration for not using outside participation and involvement in the formulation of its promised openness policy.

“It seems pretty absurd that they’re supposed to be working on recommendations for transparency, participation and collaboration, yet they’re not using any of those three things as tools,” said Gary Bass of OMB Watch, a nonprofit group that advocates more open government. “There’s something wrong about talking about public access — without the public.” (Politico.com)

The City of Coral Gables can learn from this experience by promoting greater openness, citizen participation and involvement to get more input on the bigger issues. It is not enough to have open Commission meeting. Rather community forums on big issues should be organized to increase community participation and interest.

Filed under Coral Gables, Florida

Coral Gables: Where is the Accountability?

May 11, 2009 Leave a comment

After reading the 2008-2009 Budget of the City of Coral Gables and a definition of accountability in the budget, I came across this definition of accountability from the Government of Canada

Accountability–The obligation to demonstrate and take responsibility for performance in light of agreed expectations. There is a difference between responsibility and accountability: responsibility is the obligation to act; accountability is the obligation to answer for an action.

The 2008-2009 Budget of the City of Coral Gables (p. 17) defines Accountability as “The budget is a tool legalizing public expenditures and to account for and control the use of public resources.”

By this definition, the Coral Gables City Government officials have failed to capture the essentials of accountability as an obligation of good government, whereby, the government both “demonstrates” and “takes responsibility” to the community, and that this accountability is obligatory meaning there is no choice but to provide the information. The responsibility of management is to the City Commission and to its citizens, residents and businesses who finance the budget with their taxes and fees. The Coral Gables Government does not practice good governance by regularly making available current budget execution information to its citizens. This could be done with the existing information system and internet website of the City.

Filed under Community, Government

The Coral Gables Budget Condition

May 9, 2009 Leave a comment

Citing a recent editorial of the Coral Gables Gazette:

It’s no secret why Coral Gables is now a financial basket case. Too many employees making too much money. In the current fiscal year, the average cost to taxpayers per employee is a staggering $121,519. The city gives its 865 employees $62 million in wages and an additional $43 million in benefits, including a $24 million pension contribution. This is simply unsustainable for a municipality with revenues of $143 million and dropping.

Hence the only solution for Coral Gables it so rethink its staffing, organization and program reach, reducing staff and freezing salaries for the foreseeable future.

Filed under Coral Gables

City Deficit “Discovered” by City Manager–What does that Mean?

April 24, 2009 Leave a comment

The new city manager of Coral Gables said that he “found” a current multi-million dollar deficit.

Coral Gables is more than $9 million in the red.

City Manager Pat Salerno said Thursday he discovered the $9.2 million deficit — about 7 percent of the city’s budget — last week and that he likely will eliminate jobs, among other measures.

What does “discover” mean in this case. Was the deficit known by the staff, the city Finance Director and others in the Finance Department, or was the fact “unknown” until the new city manager undertook certain analyses of the budget situation. In any case wouldn’t the existence of the deficit have been known by responsible city officials (based on the efficient computer system), the Commission and the staff have known it for many, many weeks. This suggests that the deficit was hidden from the new city manager since the very moment he was being interviewed for the job. Wouldn’t the issue of one of his biggest challenges have been discussed with the city manager during the interview and salary negotiation process. One would hope that this would have been the case.

One must conclude that a serious city fiscal deficit (7 percent) was known by one and all senior staff for some time and that it was withheld from public knowledge and knowledge of the new city manager for reasons there may have been at the time.

Filed under Coral Gables

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