Thank you Secretary Kirwan!
ONE Massachusetts has a commitment to work for a more transparent, accessible and accountable state and local policy-making process.Toward that end, Yawu Miller on behalf of ONE Mass submitted testimony to the Governor’s Public Integrity Task Force and Boston City Council on the importance of transparency in the policy making process.
It has become clear to us that public support for government increases when people know that their taxes are assessed in a way that’s fair and that the revenues our government collects are being spent wisely.
Whether you’re talking about the municipal level or the state level, information on budgets is often not easy to find.
Well, we opened Governor Patrick’s House 1 today to find on the front page the following:
The Governor's award-winning budget document comprises hundreds of pages of background and supporting materials, including:
• A description of the overall budget, the challenges faced in developing the budget and the solutions employed to meet them
• In-depth policy documents describing the proposals embedded in the budget
• Detailed historical information on budget levels and spending by department and spending account
The Budget Navigation Guide is designed to help users navigate the state budget and find the information most important to them. The Guide contains a brief explanation of the budget's contents, describing what information can be found in each area.
And the information is easier to find.
Now, all we have to do is use the information to advocate with the House and Senate for the kinds of reforms and repairs that are needed to support and sustain our communities and keep them healthy.
And figure out how to pay for them.
cross posted at ONE Massachusetts
There are outside sections which are really legislation as part of this budget, such as Outside Section 41 which would further impede and reduce reunification services to struggling poor families by amending G.L.c.119 by impacting line item 4403-5000 so that if a child is removed on an emergency basis, which only requires “reasonable suspicion of abuse or neglect” the parent or parents immediately can be cut from housing and services and family support services are drastically reduced or placed at risk. Unless one knows to check the outside sections, while this further sad attack on the most vulnerable is available online, it would be hidden.
Now can you figure out who cares enough about keeping families together with the necessary reunification services who can help find a champion in the House and Senate to fix it?
I don’t want to hear beyond a reasonable doubt nonsense. Probable cause and what would a reasonable and prudent person dois sufficient to put a child I foster care? Way too many children are killed and further abused because a social worker or whatever tribunal didn’t want to break up the family or there was some mitigation, or the mother swore she was off drugs and alcohol or she stopped seeing abusive boyfriend(s)/ girlfriend(s). Drug addicted, alcoholic, or mentally ill parent (s) deserve little to no consideration when it comes to child abuse. An adult (read anyone over the age of 21) can fend for themselves.
I would like to thank the executive branch for the outstanding job of illucidating how the taxpayers money is being squandered. The next improvement in state spending should be cost cutting by some secretariats(not all). Social services needs additional funding for a myriad of different reasons. They could also likely use some more efficient means of executing their responsibilities. The dept that overseas all state buildings needs to get their act together. This dept has been administered by hacks for years—no, decades and perhaps scores of years. The state buildings are falling down, not by lack of funding, but by incompetence. Someone told me not long ago that the old registry building on Nashua Street and the Suffolk county corthouse had hundreds and hundreds of individual window air conditioners rather than central air. Not only that, but the air conditioners were leased and the state still paid for air conditioners on the lease agreement that had not been functional for years. Swell. And last but not least–the department of public safety needs to find real jobs for the cops who have “make believe jobs” or allow the dept to attrit by 20%. Reduce the number of people who have cars (reduce the carbon footprint–save the climate and the trees and owls) and stop the scamming of fictitious overtime. The number of paid details needs to be reasonably reduced and the regulations regarding who gets paid, at what rate, and what service provide needs to be adjusted. The DPW needs to have a central purchasing agency for all equipment and they need to have a preventative maintenance program on their equipment ie sand blasting and painting of all plows and sanders every spring to prevent the equipment rusting into a heap of worthless junk due to salt corrosion.Ditto for the repair of equipment like trucks etc.
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p>Then we can take an axe to the outrage commonly known as the Boston City School budget. Millions and millions of dollars flushed down the crapper for not a failing school system, but a failed and irrepairably broken school system.
I encourage you to use this budget to find some specific line items that could be amended in the Houase or Senate that would instruct a specific department to stop a specific activity. And then share your proposals with your own Rep or Senator and convince them to offer your amendment. They are looking for ideas! You don’t even have to call it civic engagement if you don’t want to. (kidding)