During the visitor's comments portion of the Hamblen County Commission meeting on February 19, 2009, I again asked that Hamblen County budget documents be made accessible to the public on the Hamblen County website.
I've been pushing for this from the time I served on commission in 2002-2006 and afterward. This time, there was a mini-breakthrough and a glimmer of sunshine.
Commissioner Nancy Phillips turned to Chairman Stancil Ford and stated she thought that the proposal was a good idea. She asked that the request be placed on the agenda for March committee meetings.
[While I was serving on Commission, Commissioner Phillips and I along with several others pushed to get a Hamblen Government website up and running. She and I also led the push for televising commission meetings. She has a track record of being a proponent of open government.]
After the meeting, Commissioner Tommy Massey came over and said that he, too, thinks this is a good idea. I asked him to please support this when it comes up in committee meetings.
Thank you, Commissioner Phillips, for getting this placed in committee for consideration. Thank you, Commissioner Massey, for expressing your support.
Sharing detailed information with taxpayers about how their taxes have been and are being spent should be a no-brainer. And making information like this available on the government website is a simple process of feeding papers into a scanner and then posting it.
It's time to open up and expand the local government-to-taxpayer information pipeline. As Larry says, when he's not working on cable repairs, Git 'r done!
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I'm shocked... just shocked that our county government won't publish what they've done in our name. They certainly don't want us to know what the agenda is in advance because then the slaves... err, citizens might show up at a meeing and make them justify their ham-handed style of governance.
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