Yesterday, most of Philadelphia was focused on the big debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. However, there was another debate taking place in our city and the issues discussed probably have more impact on the everyday lives of people in Philadelphia than questions about flag pins and Bosnian sniper fire. I'm talking about the public testimony heard by City Council yesterday about the proposed operating budget. Council heard more than four hours of testimony about recreation centers, taxes, libraries, after school programs, affordable housing, and a host of other issues.
I recorded the entire session and we should shortly have video available of all the testimony. I wanted to share a few broad observations about the proceedings while it is all still fresh in my mind. If anything, it reinforced a lot of the things I already thought about the need to make the process more open to the public.
First of all, it really does seem silly to have all of the public testimony happen at once. A better way of doing things would be to scrap the single hearing and allow members of the public to testify at the same time as department heads. It was pretty disjointed to have the Friends of the Free Library speak right after a bunch of people talked about taxes. If Council could hear members of the public at the same time as city officials, it would probably better inform the debate. The current way of doing things requires Council to absorb a huge amount of information from the public without any context. It also prohibits Council from using testimony from the public to inform their questions of department heads.
If it's not possible to allow testimony from the public during every budget hearing, can we at least move the hearing to the front of the process? Right now, ordinary people are only allowed to have their say after department heads and city officials already gone. That means that elected officials, the administration, and members of the media only have access to these important perspectives after most of the debate has already happened.
For example, a group of individuals from Tenant Union Representative Network complained yesterday about an apartment building that has repeatedly violated safety codes that are supposed to be enforced by L&I. It probably would have been useful to hear this information before L&I's budget hearing. That would have allowed Council members to ask the tough questions that need to be asked about why this department is falling down on the job. Instead, they only heard the information at the end of the process and won't be able to make L&I answer any public questions about why they haven't dealt with the situation.
The hearing was absolutely long (and boring at times), but there was something inspiring about seeing so many people come to speak their piece. It was an extremely diverse group and seemed to be pretty representative of the population of the city. We need to figure out how to amplify the voices of ordinary people and make the budget process more open.