April 1: Guillotine falls on openness call at County Hall
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What did
today's full council meeting at County Hall make of a
Liberal Democrat motion calling on the authority
to publish monthly statements detailing all revenue expenditure of
more than 1,000?
Did county councillors agree it would
be a step in the right direction towards greater openness and
transparency? Did the Conservatives have any different ideas?
Were they in agreement with shadow
chancellor George Osborne,who is urging all
councils to introduce ways of giving the public more information
about how their money is being spent? (In KCC's case, an annual
£2.4bn)
Was their a general agreement that
while the Lib Dems had got the right idea, more work needed to be
done on working out the fine detail and perhaps a working group
should be set up?
Sadly, we dont know. The Liberal
Democrat motion never got debated after a vote to extend the
meeting beyond its 4.30pm deadline to allow it to be discussed and
debated was voted down by the Conservatives.
I gather this has caused a few
ripples, with the Lib Dems particularly irate.
But the move to guillotine the meeting
was not universally popular among one or two Conservative
backbenchers, who had come prepared with their own alternatives and
were ready to contribute to the debate.
I havent seen the voting record and
who was in favour of curtailing the meeting to kibosh the Lib Dem
motion. But when it is published, it should make interesting
reading.
Maybe the idea is that the proposition
is something that County Hall is waiting for its new group managing
director Katherine Kerswell, who will be arriving
in July, to oversee the cultural revolution and the move towards
see through government.
After all, she has pioneered exactly
this policy at Northamptonshire County Council,
where she has opted for just such a system of regular publication
of council expenditure.
Read how they did it in Northants here >>>
Read the Liberal Democrat motion here>>>
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KCC has issued a detailed rebuttal to
its good friend, the Taxpayers' Alliance, which
has produced its latest Town Hall rich list and identified Kent as
the authority with the largest number of people earning more than
£100,000.
But I am still perplexed by KCC's
refusal to identify by name who its highest earners are.
You only have to go to the council's
own website to be able to identify the people who occupy senior
management jobs. So why bother with refusing to provide them to the
Taxpayers' Alliance?
Whatever party forms the next
government, it is something all councils will have to do under
various policy commitments they have made. Indeed, David Cameron
has gone further than anyone, saying it will be a requirement for
councils to name anyone earning more than £58,000 in their
accounts.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A word of
praise for Cllr Nick Chard (Con), the politician in charge of
Kent's roads, who admirably managed to answer a written question
tabled by the Lib Dems with a single word (the word was "yes"). A
refreshing change from the standard verbosity at some council
meetings.
If only his colleagues could have been
such models of brevity, who knows, maybe the Lib Dem call for more
transparency might have got debated after all.
Thursday, April 01 2010
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