Senator Lou Correa is hosting a town hall meeting today entitled “Transparency & Accountability: Pursuing the Public’s Right To Know,” from 1 pm to 3:30 pm, at the Board Chambers of the Rancho Santiago Community College District building.
Correa presented Senate Bill 501 (SB 501) on the Senate Floor in August. This legislative measure requires each officer or designated employee in local government to annually file a compensation disclosure form that provides compensation information for the proceeding year.
Unfortunately the Legislature did not pass this bill in time so Correa plans to bring it back in January, according to the League of Cities.
Locally, the City of Santa Ana quickly acted to post their executive and Council salaries, which you can read by clicking here, after the Bell scandal broke. Moreover, three Council Members actually started blogs this year in order to further communicate with the public, including Mayor Miguel Pulido, and Council Members Michele Martinez and Sal Tinajero.
Click here to read a Senate Briefing Paper provided by Correa’s office regarding the issue of Transparency in Government.
Here is the official press release from Senator Correa’s office, followed by the actual meeting agenda:
Click here to read the rest of this post.
Many people were there wearing suits and a lot of news type people with cameras filled up the entire room.
Their testimony was pretty damming for the local governments, The counties, cities and special districts.
A school superintendent gave a speech that the schools districts didn’t need any more oversight because their pensions top out at 245,000 per year. Another school promoter for the CSU & UC said that they have to pay their top people 300, 400 thousand or more a year with huge benefit packages.
A state senator commented right after these comments, “I don’t buy that.”
I sat there for 3 ½ hours listening to all that was said. This committee has a hard job to do, to come up with passable legislation that slaps down local governments that have run amok with an overwhelming sense of entitlements.
As far as I could tell, there was 3 members of the general public in attendance, all three from Santa Ana.