TRANSPARENCY MEANS HAVING ALL THE INFORMATION BEFORE THE VOTE

Last week I wrote about the stealth tax increase for your solid waste fee which was passed in June 2008 and increased from $19.00 per month to $21.55 per month. I wrote to City Councilman Jim Strickland about this and other ordinances and complained that the agendas published by the City of Memphis mentions certain ordinances but does not give the actual wording of the ordinances. Jim is very good about responding on the issue of transparency and at his instance the City Council staff responded that the full ordinances are published in the Memphis Business Journal. Although I did not know that fact, you will see when looking at the file that they sent (a copy of this which I have attached) that they were published on 5/6/08 and 5/30/08.

While this meets the letter of the law, it does not satisfy the spirit of transparency. If you will look at the attachment you will see that there are three ordinances that affect your pocketbook. Ordinance 5261 raised your solid waste fee to $20.55 from $19.00 per month. Ordinance 5263 asked the property tax rate to be set to $4.01 per $100 (per the Mayor) of assessed value. This was later lowered by cutting the school funding. Ordinance 5264 got a unanimous vote to raise the pensions of City retirees by up to 3% depending on when they retired.

All of this information needs to be readily available to the public at the same time that it is available to the City Council. Just publishing it in the Business Journal and the Daily News is not sufficiently transparent to the tax payers who have to pick up the bills for the garbage and the pension increases. We need all pending ordinances and passed ordinances posted on the City website in advance of their consideration by the City Council and all final passed ordinances posted to a City website archive. The taxpayers need the same information that is provided to their elected representatives in advance of their votes.

Click here to read the ordinances that raised your garbage fee and increased your pension costs and who voted for the increases