BRINKMAN: TRANSPARENCY IS KEY TO CONTROLLING SPENDING

(HOBOKEN, October 13) – Hoboken Mayoral candidate Nathan Brinkman, at an afternoon press conference, today rolled out a four-point transparency proposal designed to restore accountability to city government spending, as he released his income tax returns and challenged his rivals for the Mayor’s Office to do the same.

“One of the biggest problems we face is out of control government spending,” said Brinkman, setting up his proposal:

• Full transparency for all city government financial transactions, via online databases allowing access to a line-by-line version of the city budget;

• A comprehensive database of all city contracts, listing the vendor, the services provided, the terms of the contract, the length of the contract, and the cost of the contract;

• A list of all city employees, by name, job title/description, and compensation package, including health and pension benefits;

• And posting of all proposed legislation for at least 72 hours before the city council votes on it.

“Putting this information online, in a format that would be easy to access by the public, would have several immediate salutary effects,” Brinkman explained.

“First, it would remind city workers that they are the employees of the taxpayers of this city – that they are, in effect, employees whose bosses are, at any given moment, looking over their shoulder to see what they’re doing, and decide whether that service they’re performing is worth the money it’s costing. In this sense, transparency equals accountability.

“Second, it would remind city workers who have responsibility for entering into contracts on behalf of the city – whether it’s a landscaping contract, or a public employee union contract – that there IS a connection between those who consume the service and those who pay for it, and that those who pay for it are paying attention.

“Third, by posting the vendors’ contracts online, it would reinvigorate the element of competition in city contracting, as vendors who missed out on a contract would now have information on exactly what the winning bid was – and that would, over time, lower costs for city contracts, as vendors lowered their prices in order to win the contract in the next round of contracting.

“To some in this city, these proposals will be somewhat out of the ordinary,” Brinkman continued. “And I would be loath to ever ask somebody to do something I wasn’t willing to do myself. So, in keeping with my proposal that we post online, in an easily searchable database, the names, job titles, and compensation packages of all city employees, I am here, today, releasing my own personal tax returns going back to our LAST mayoral election, in the spring of 2005. And I challenge my rivals for the office to join me in becoming TRULY transparent,” Brinkman concluded.

 

(A COMPLETE COPY OF BRINKMAN’S PREPARED REMARKS FOLLOWS)

When I launched this campaign four weeks ago, I said I intended to run a positive campaign, based on the proposition that a good idea is a good idea, no matter where it comes from.

I said I believe that what unites us as residents of Hoboken is far greater than what divides us.

I said I believe campaigns should be about the future, not the past – and that they should speak to our hopes and our strengths, not our fears and our weaknesses.

I promised that ours would be a campaign that actually offers solutions to the problems we face.

And today, I intend to offer one of those solutions.

One of the biggest problems we face is out of control government spending.

One of the reasons we face this problem is what’s known in think tank circles as the “third party payer” problem – that is, the consumer of a service is not the person who actually PAYS for the service.

When this is the situation at hand, the costs of the service usually go up, and the value of the service usually goes down, because the pricing mechanism no longer connects the consumer to the payer.

Think of it this way: When you go to the grocery store to buy food for your family, you know how much money you can afford to spend that week on food, and you make your choices accordingly. If it’s been a good week, and in addition to your paycheck you won some money playing poker with the guys last Friday night, you might buy steaks and even a bottle of a nice wine; if it’s been a down week, and not only did you NOT win at poker, but you got the bill for your son’s orthodonture, you might have to buy Hamburger Helper and cheap beer.

But either way, you’ll find a way to get the job done based on the budget you have.

Government, unfortunately, doesn’t work that way. Because governments – even tiny municipal governments like ours here in Hoboken – have the power to tax, governments can decide what they want to buy first, and THEN worry about who’s going to pay for it.

So bureaucrats who are given the responsibility to spend money on behalf of the residents of Hoboken do so without having to worry about how much it costs – because THEY are not paying for it.

That gives them license to enter into contracts that they wouldn’t enter into, if it were THEIR money on the block – contracts with public employee unions, and contracts with vendors.

But this isn’t really LICENSE – it’s a charade, it’s a false sense of security, because ultimately, someone WILL have to pay the tab for all those services they’re providing and all those contracts they’re signing.

And who is it that gets stuck with that tab? We, the taxpayers.

That’s how it is that, according to the database compiled by the Gannett newspapers and available at APP.COM, seven of New Jersey’s ten best-compensated municipal public safety officials are found right here, in Hoboken – with their compensation packages paid for courtesy of the Hoboken taxpayer.

That’s how it is that our Chief of Police right here in Hoboken makes more money than the Commissioner of Police of that big city across the river – New York City.

Does that make ANY sense to anybody in this room?

The solution to this problem is simple – we must restore the connection between the person who is consuming the service, and the person who is paying for it.

I’m not saying every taxpayer in Hoboken should have an equal voice in deciding on the contracts into which the city enters – that kind of direct democracy, however ideal it might be in theory, would be unworkable in practice.

But here’s what we CAN do – we CAN shed sunlight on all the city’s taxing and spending decisions.

And I mean ALL the city’s taxing and spending decisions.

This is the age of the Internet, the iPhone, the net book, the BlackBerry.

We can watch television on our smart phones, and we can watch YouTube videos from anywhere.

We have 24-hour news cycles, and we have information overload.

But it seems the information we have too much of is the stuff we don’t need – and the information we really need is the stuff we still can’t get.

Why can’t we post, online, an easily searchable database of the entire city budget, line by line, so that anybody with a computer and Internet access can find out how his or her tax dollars are being spent?

Why can’t we post, online, all proposed legislation, for at least 72 hours before the city council votes on it?

Why can’t we post, online, an easily searchable database of all city contracts, listing the vendor, the terms of the service provided, the dates the contract will be in effect, and the amount of money paid?

Why can’t we post, online, an easily searchable database of our city employees’ compensation packages, listing their name, their job title, and the annual value, in dollars, of their total compensation package, including health and pension benefits?

Putting this information online, in a format that would be easy to access by the public, would have several immediate salutary effects:

First, it would remind city workers that they are the employees of the taxpayers of this city – that they are, in effect, employees whose bosses are, at any given moment, looking over their shoulder to see what they’re doing, and decide whether that service they’re performing is worth the money it’s costing. In this sense, transparency equals accountability.

Second, it would remind city workers who have responsibility for entering into contracts on behalf of the city – whether it’s a landscaping contract, or a public employee union contract – that there IS a connection between those who consume the service and those who pay for it, and that those who pay for it are paying attention.

Third, by posting the vendors’ contracts online, it would reinvigorate the element of competition in city contracting, as vendors who missed out on a contract would now have information on exactly what the winning bid was – and that would, over time, lower costs for city contracts, as vendors lowered their prices in order to win the contract in the next round of contracting.

To some in this city, these proposals will be somewhat out of the ordinary.

And I would be loath to ever ask somebody to do something I wasn’t willing to do myself.

So, in keeping with my proposal that we post online, in an easily searchable database, the names, job titles, and compensation packages of all city employees, I am here, today, releasing my own personal tax returns going back to our LAST mayoral election, in the spring of 2005.

And I challenge my rivals for the office to join me in becoming TRULY transparent.

 

 

 

Paid for by Brinkman for Mayor