The following exchange suggests that Old School ways of governance have a certain amount of inertia. The CM was quick with the damage control. I don't think it's scandalous or evidence of shady doings, but it does reveal a partiular style of thinking.
Bob: I wonder about the, uh, publicity nature of those organizations we do business with. You know, people will get on there and just... you know, all this "the city does business with so-and-so." Are there effects [unintelligible] get in any trouble with that kind of thing...
Keffler [cuts in quickly]: Uh. Uh. I wouldn't know what that would be, but... uh, we, uh, I mean, we, you know, we, award bids all the time and so it's... it's a very public process. [CM pivots and changes the redirects the conversation].
I will leave it to the reader to decide if the leadership wants transparency or just the appearance of transparency. I hope for the former.
I am reminded, however, of most city "art" museums. They unintentionally give evidence that the city was less interested in art than they were about being seen as the kind of city that has an art museum.
I have heard a possibly-related beltway joke --
There are two things you must do to be a Senator:
1. get elected
2. get re-elected
3 comments:
I was at the meeting and have also reviewed the video of the meeting (see here). I do not believe that you need to have a concern about Councilman Macy's (yes, that's who it was) feelings about transparency.
You are possibly not aware that when cities or counties place their "checkbook" online, they have to scrub the entries first. For example, when Collin County two years ago put their 'checkbook' (actually just a spreadsheet) online, they first had to delete entries like court-ordered payments to battered women which the County oversaw - it obviously was not in anyone's interest to broadcast to the abuser any information about the whereabouts of the abused.
In the case of Richardson, the City has had to go through the same exercise. One thing they found that they had to remove were certain payments to businesses as part of an economic development agreement, where the City agreed in return for some consideration to rebate some or all of the sales taxes for a period of time. However, sales tax information is considered confidential by the State, and whatever sales tax detail that the State shares with the City, the City must agree to not make public.
Why would that be confidential? I assume this is because if you know the sales taxes collected by your competitor, you probably know to the penny what his/her gross sales were - which the State considers confidential for a private business.
Bob's example of businesses that the City does business with was a clumsy example (as Bill Keffler pointed out, the RFP process is quite open), but the underlying question is a legitimate question: is there some data that we shouldn't be releasing in the open checkbook? Whether the answer turns out to be yes or no, you have to go through the exercise of asking the question first.
I don't see any reason to read more into this exchange than that...
Bill
Of course you do not Bill.
Surprise, surprise! Bill doesn't think there is anything more than the superficial answer given. I am shocked!!
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