The Vice-President has taken the art of secrecy by declaring the office of the Vice-President, the unlikely fourth branch of government. Or as he spins it according to Jonah Goldberg, “Cheney argued that he’s immune to executive orders because he’s also the president of the Senate and hence a member of the legislative branch too. Not only is this a goofy argument on its face, it does nothing to restore executive authority. It’s not like the vice presidency was an outpost of the legislative branch before Watergate. Cheney’s argument amounts to a convenient rationalization for his own secretive style.”
Sal Corda, superintendent of the Norwalk Public Schools doesn’t go as far as that argument, claiming an exemption from anything. He simply took the a budget item, secretarial services for BOE meetings, and eliminated it. Why provide a public transcript record of your actions when you can avoid it. Corda is apparently a quick study. He must be busy figuring out how to make use of undisclosed locations more often, oh wait, he’s got the third floor of city hall, with its bunker of paper purchased for the next 5 years to hide behind. No matter.
Bruce Kimmel, in a past conversation, has said that this budget cut is wrong. Yet here it is surives, a testiment to the imperial legacy of Corda who beleives that we the people are not worthy of any explanation, any record, any transparecny in how he manages the $147 million budget.
Finally over in PTO land, they are waking up to the Corda rules. A letter appeared in today’s Hour:
Although we are aware that this budget season is particularly tight, we on the PTO Council feel that the elimination of the secretarial services at the Board of Education meetings for a savings of $6,250 would be a great loss for such a small savings. Most parents and taxpayers cannot make the actual meetings and rely on the verbatim minutes to get a clearer sense of what transpired at a particular meeting.
Although the meetings would continue to be taped, taping is not a useable, practical format for the public to access. The verbatim minutes are truly a vital service that catalogs the BoE actions, conversation and public comments. We hope that you will reconsider the removal of this service.
PTO Council Board Members
PTO Council of Norwalk
Stamford of course manages to get by just fine with transparency. Oh yeah they have a finance director. And they work with the city to obtain and manage grants and purchases. Norwalk, under Corda chooses to work in secret. And his crafty henchman Stuart Opdahal confuses project accounting by gross mismanagement and heavy slush fund filtering of monies. That’s why Jefferson school is not being maintained and improved upon, while other schools have empty class rooms and endless renovation projects that keep costing way more than they were budgeted despite missing key elements, hello, bathrooms.
All this happens because people choose to look the other way. Starting with many members of the BOE, who could at any point exercise the simple gesture of asking questions. Bruce Kimmel and Greg Burnett are the lone BOE members asking away. But 2 members does not shift the majority yet. We need more. Like a forensic audit of the BOE budget. Let’s see all the cards on the table for once instead of the lame top line figures that Corda gets away with. A forensic audit is a good thing for open and transparent governance. Remember Robert Wechsler, he of greater ethics reform? Wechsler is absolutely for forensic audits, a subject that he has been posting about for months on his blog about North Haven.
Corda cannot continue to operate in secrecy. It’s time for a forensic audit of the BOE finances and commitment towards open and transparent meetings, records of those meetings and budgets.
