Shine a light on government

Proposed laws would help prevent another Bell

If you want to keep government honest - including the elected officials and bureaucrats in its trenches - then you need to keep it under a spotlight.

There's no better example of what happens when government operates in the shadows than recent revelations about the small, working-class city of Bell, where some officials treated the city treasury as a cookie jar.

There seem to be new disclosures daily from Bell. But awful as what went on there is, that city's officials unwittingly performed a public service. Their activities were so outrageous that it has sparked not only public anger but also legislative action.

One action is a bill before the state Legislature that would require all city, county and school district employees to report their compensation each year and have it posted on a public website.

Another bill would restrict the compensation employees of charter cities can earn. Bell officials, by essentially hiding what really was going on, persuaded city voters to turn Bell into a charter city, thus allowing some of the very shenanigans we're hearing about today.

Most of us wouldn't want our salaries out there for all to see. Indeed, there was a hue and cry from state workers a few years ago when the Sacramento Bee obtained salary information, developed a searchable database and posted it on the web.

That said, most of us don't work for public agencies funded by tax dollars. And the simple truth is, taxpayers have a right to know how, when, where and why their money is being spent. That includes how much public employees make.

It is easy to find out salary ranges for this public job or that. It is harder to find out the compensation of a specific employee. Without such specificity, the kind promised by the proposed legislation, it's too easy to hide what really going on.

We don't need another Bell.

Excerpted from www.recordnet.com