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Cultural Council contract fails on accountability
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We had hoped that after 20 years working under an increasingly outmoded agreement, the proposed new pact between the city and the Scottsdale Cultural Council would have reflected the growing public concern for more accountability.
Such accountability should not only extend to the on-the-job performance of city officials, but also to those entities that receive large annual appropriations of tax dollars.
Regrettably, the proposal, to go before the City Council on Tuesday, fails in that regard.
Each year around $4 million of Scottsdale taxpayers’ money goes to the Cultural Council, a private entity which manages the city’s public arts programs, amounting to roughly one-third of its total annual budget. But the new agreement does not allow the public the right to have access to where exactly that tax money is spent and on what.
Not only does the public not know this, but under this new agreement the public may not ask.
The new agreement only allows “the city” the right to “inspect and audit the books and records of the Cultural Council from time to time upon 14 days notice.” Only city officials may see where your money is going.
Also, it requires “to the greatest extent possible, in keeping with the spirit of transparency and public disclosure, these policies and procedures shall align with the city’s policies and procedures on (ethics, open meetings, disclosure of documents and records retention).”
“Greatest extent possible” isn’t quantifiable. Moreover, the city’s lagging recent conduct regarding openness hardly qualifies its policies and procedures as standards for the Cultural Council’s emulation.
To its credit the Cultural Council has opened up many records and meetings to the public — records and meetings, that is, that it chooses to open.
But writing a better process of accountability imposed independently upon those spending tax dollars to achieve government goals is better public policy.
The City Council should amend the proposal to allow the public the right to inspect the Cultural Council’s books and records, and in far less time than two weeks. And it should specify in concrete language — avoiding references to “spirit” — what exactly is meant by transparency.
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