Best Practice Questions Enable Taxpayers

To the Editor: 
Last week was Sunshine Week, March 13-19. Sunshine Week reinvigorates hundreds of news organizations, lawmakers, schools, libraries, civic organizations and others in creative and effective ways to question government on their decisions and how they spend tax dollars.
Why is this important to you?
Open government is transparent government.
In 1966, Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Freedom of Information Act, which has been amended many times. In America, this law gives us the opportunity to look into and request government records that affect our lives. We vote to place our representatives on local councils, townships and other forms of government to represent us. We should know what they have voted on, why they cast their votes, and how they spend tax dollars. 
Let us consider what is believed to be the largest settlement of an Open Public Records Act (OPRA) case in New Jersey, the Borough of Raritan has agreed to pay $650,000 to Gannett NJ to settle a lawsuit filed after borough officials denied a reporter’s OPRA request for electronically-maintained municipal salary information. The borough council voted unanimously last week to settle the litigation which began when Gannett NJ filed suit more than six years ago over access to employee salary and overtime information. The newspapers wanted the data in an electronic format in order to compare and analyze salary information among many municipalities.
Do you know your municipality salary information? You should. Salary, benefits and health care take the largest share of the annual budget.
In my municipality, the 2016 budget includes annual salary and wages totaling $6,600,375 including required contractual commitments. Since 2008, the number of full-time employees has been reduced in the overall workforce. This has been accomplished through attrition. However, the total appropriations for salaries and wages in the Current Fund budget are $205,725 more than in 2015.  
In the Fiscal Year 2011 budget, Governor Christie, in his “tool kit” proposal, included the Best Practice checklist to initiate reform efforts to improve transparency and strengthen accountability at all government levels in New Jersey. The Best Practice checklist provides measure and incentives for local municipal government to manage their budgets more effectively without raising property taxes. It is a checklist to enable officials at all levels of government to do a better job reviewing their existing services, programs, and workforces and setting budget priorities.
Taxpayers should understand the Best Practice checklist is for their guidance too. It is written in clear, concise language for the layman to understand. Cape May County municipalities should at minimum post their Best Practice checklist response on their website or have available for inspection at their administrative offices. A public meeting is required for review as part of the process.
One of the Best Practices is Question No. 42: Does your municipality make available to the public free of charge, either through an internet posting or on-site review, documents that show the current salaries of all personnel? A simple, powerful question for the taxpayer. The Borough of Raritan should have considered both the need for transparency and the power of the press.
James Madison, a founding father said, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
You and your neighbors have at your fingertips, the basic framework of questions assembled for you in the Best Practice checklist. You have the right to ask Best Practice questions, effectively setting politics to the side.
Be your own governor.