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Pet therapy, plasma TVs and more finds from new budget database
Brett Mandel, who's planning another run for City Controller, has been advocating for the office to be more active and transparent for years.
Pet therapy, plasma TVs and more finds from new budget database
Brett Mandel, who's planning another run for City Controller, has been advocating for the office to be more active and transparent for years. Well, he deserves some credit for taking matters into his own hands, by putting online a database of city expenditures that he says accounts for the entirety of the budget from 2012. In addition to viewing individuals' salaries, you can also look at an accounting of expenses. Which tends to reveal fun facts, like that someone in the Public Health Department got an $800 office chair, or that the Prisons System bought a number of comfy-sounding seating options in the $560 range.
Or, as Mandel's press release puts it:
By using the Mandel for Controller Bulldog Budget, users can find out that:
· The city spent nearly $3,000 on a plasma tv last year
· The city spent nearly $4,000 on bottled water
· The city spent nearly $7,000 on "pet therapy."
· The city spent more than $400,000 on lobbying.
· The city paid out more than $2 million in breach-of-contract payouts
· The city spent nearly $4 million paying out cases involving "sidewalk falls."
· The city paid out more than $14 million after "civil rights" cases.
Put in some perspective:
· A police officer’s salary is about $45,000 out of the academy.
· It would cost about $4 million to end the fire department "brownouts."
· Last year’s real estate tax increase was enacted to raise about $20 million.
Mandel says if he wins the Controller job, he'll take it one step further: "[I'll] post all proposed city spending online for public review so we can collectively identify any questionable payments or expenditures that deserve enhanced scrutiny before approval. For example, we can halt expenditures in cases where invoices are being split to avoid competitive bidding and we can halt payment to vendors who are using scams to avoid minority participation requirements.”
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