TRANSPARENCY IN GOVERNMENT

TRANSPARENCY AT THE CITY VERSUS SHELBY COUNTY

I keep learning about government and the things I discover continue to amaze me. I recently complained to several City Council members that when they published an agenda on the internet and it contained a proposed ordinance, that the full wording of the proposed ordinance was not shown on the internet. For example, I have shown below two proposed ordinances that are on the agenda for the January 6, 2009 meeting.

11.        ORDINANCE to provide for Minimum Energy Efficiency in Rental Property, up for FIRST reading.

Ware                                     Ordinance No. 5292

12.        ORDINANCE to amend Chapter 2, Article XI, Code of Ordinance, City of Memphis so as to Change the Reporting Requirements for Small Businesses, up for FIRST reading.

Halbert                                    Ordinance No. 5293

 

I emailed this to Jim Strickland and he referred me to the City Council staff. They told me that the full wording was published in the Memphis Business Journal weeks ahead of it appearing on the agenda. I said that this was not satisfactory as it met the requirements of the law but not the spirit of transparency. (Remember the January 2001 pension resolution which slipped through without a remark). That will eventually cost the taxpayers millions of dollars in extra pension costs.

I complained again about Ordinance 5292 and 5293 which are on the upcoming agenda. I sent information to several city council members and the City Council staff person has agreed to change to procedure and in the future they will post all ordinances and resolutions in full with the agenda.

Then I checked the Shelby County website agendas and I find that Shelby County has been doing this since the early part of 2008 as they use the SIRE system. You can see this if you go to the following site. It is quite outstanding and includes also copies of public contracts.

http://agendapub.shelbycountytn.gov.

I then called the Shelby County Information Technology office and they told me that the system cost $400,000 and that the City of Memphis also has a similar system. Apparently they could have published all this information like the county but have chosen not to do so.

Take a look at the County system and then ask several questions.

• Why has the City of Memphis not given the taxpayers the same public information that Shelby County has done?
  
• Why have the City of Memphis spent millions on outsourcing their Information Technology to ACS whereas Shelby County has kept their IT in house and apparently done a much better job at a lower cost?
  

We need some answers to these questions and we need the full matching website information format that Shelby County is giving to their taxpayers.