Open meeting and records laws don't do much good when the worst abuses in government happen under cover far from any public scrutiny. Truth in Accounting Acts can help cure the disease killing state and local governments.

What good are open government laws when the most dangerous fiscal disease festers far from public scrutiny?

Even many governors and legislators do not comprehend how sick their states are because the denial and self-delusion used for years to fabricate “balanced” budgets is so ingrained they actually believe their own propaganda.

State and local governments owe trillions of dollars in debt that do not show up in the “balanced” budgets they present to voters. Those debts are getting bigger and soon will grow so large that, like malignant inoperable cancer, they cannot be excised. They will metastasize throughout state economies as essential services collapse, utilities crumble, contractors wither and debilitating tax increases stifle economic growth.

National Sunshine Week is a great opportunity to put a microscope on the compulsion of state and municipal leaders to hide the fiscal catastrophe they inflict on taxpayers and public workers until they are safely out of office.

The best way to shine a light on these wrongdoings is to demand passage of Truth in Accounting laws that force officials to at least understand how sick their states and municipalities actually are. Only then can we force them to reform.

Every citizen, public employee and honest elected official must demand that leaders own up to this practice, account how deeply into debt they are putting us and acknowledge the crippling costs in diminished services and increased taxes they force upon us to pay for their folly.

We can get some idea of how bad off things really are by checking the following sources: State Budget Watch; the recent Government Accountability Office report on false promises to public employees for retirement health benefits; and the Pew Center on the States report on the $1 TRILLION minimum underfunding of state pension systems.

Every state and municipal government must compile a Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR.) But those reports allow Supplemental Required Information (SRI) buried deep within hundreds of mind-numbing pages to list some of the big expenses officials keep off the public radar.

Check yours out. Links to all states are at Truth in Accounting and Pew. The GAO report includes 39 cities and counties. Others are available by searching the Web. If your fiscal year 2009 report is not filed yet, ask your top elected official why.  

Elected officials in states, counties, cities and towns all across America have used accounting ploys for years to fool the people and themselves.

As long as tax revenues increased even faster than a robust economic climate justified, officials could get away with inflicting ongoing spending programs on taxpayers and delusional promises on workers as if the summer of good economic times would never end.

Now an economic climate growing permanently colder reveals their fiscal weakness. As everyone watched and worried about the federal deficit, the state and local cancer grew hidden and unchecked.

Without immediate treatment it soon will be inoperable in many states and municipalities, and eventually in all.

No matter what they promise, politicians will impose crippling tax increases and cut essential services to pay for the misfeasance and malfeasance of decades.

They will sacrifice public safety, prisons, social programs, public health, roads, bridges, utilities and everything else they can to scare voters into accepting tax hikes.

True, many of them know not what they do. Others know but, like those with fatal illnesses, are in denial. A few know exactly what they are doing and cynically count on the dark shroud of public ignorance to hide their betrayal until after they enrich themselves and their friends and leave office with generous pensions and lifetime health coverage.

Now is the time for We the People to inform ourselves and take action before it is too late.

The first and best course we and truly dedicated, honest public workers and officials can take is to demand legislators pass and governors sign Truth in Accounting laws.

Democrats and Republicans recently introduced such bills in Illinois and Florida.

This fiscal illness goes beyond political party or faction or philosophy. Republicans, Democrats, liberals and conservatives all vigorously and wantonly gave us this disease.

They all must help open up government to cure it. Let the sun shine in.

 

Tags: Deficit, OPEB, pensions, states, Sunshine

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Blog. Comments are currently closed.