News-Record.com

You're really going to make an issue out of those bold words? Two paragraphs worth? A Wilkes County reference to boot? Puh-leez. That's really scraping the bottom of the barrel for a blog post, IMO. It's just an expression and I think you know it.

I hope it was just an expression, Sue. I have a lot of faith in Sandy's transparency. Margaret was really just being a little light-hearted here.

On the other hand, given government's proclivity to occasionally NOT release information on a timely basis, we always wonder. How we doing on that Homestead report? Or the investigations into the police department?

The issue about whether or not the coliseum's budget figures should be released AT THIS TIME revolve around the words "preliminary" and "unaudited." As a matter of accuracy, the city normally prefers to wait until these end-of-the-year figures have been officially verified by independent auditors. Nothing sinister going on here at all!

Aw, I didn't think anything sinister was going on. John is right. I was just joking around.

But Sandy, you do raise an issue I want to address: The city doesn't get to decide when the coliseum numbers become public record. The numbers are subject to public inspection the moment the preliminary document is created. Audited, unaudited - it doesn't matter. While the city might "prefer" to wait until the numbers are official, it is required to comply with the law and give the preliminary document to whoever asks for it.

In this case, that was me!

I'm with Margaret on this one. There is a tendency in local government to resist, delay and obscure access to public information. It may not be the predominate attitude, but it happens often enough that I think I'm correct in calling it a tendency and I'm glad people like Margaret are willing to fight against it.

Margaret and Roch,

I did not mean to imply I thought the city should withhold this type of information. We have an obligation to give accurate information (as does the N&R and other media sources).

There have been disagreements in the past between the coliseum and the city's financial department about correct financial reporting formats. If you will take a look at any of the coliseum's monthly financial reports, you will find a disclaimer at the top of the page that says "For Internal Use Only and Not Prepared According to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles." Thus, the city finance department routinely reviews the coliseum's reports before they are deemed "official."

I don't think anyone would want to publish information without the accuracy confirmed.

I hadn't planned on my "funny" little post to turn into a serious discussion on public records law. But heck, I'm game. It's not often I get to be a dork in print - well, that's not entirely true, but anyway ...

The law is what it is. And the law says any document created in the course of doing government work is public. That said, it seems the obligation is on the document's author to assure its accuracy, not the taxpaying public.

Our obligation here was to report the preliminary numbers in a timely fashion (which we did) and report that they are unaudited and subject to change (which we did).

If we applied your logic to elections, then no one would know who won the city council race until the Board of Elections certified (i.e., made "official") the results in the following days.

The law is what the law is and I'm all for transparency in government, just like I'm for accuracy. Do you at least agree that publishing preliminary numbers is good journalism? No matter how many times you write, "not official," the public won't care, after all, they "read it in the paper."

Sue:

Your hand-wringing about the accuracy of such information is a straw man in this particular scenario and a lot of similar ones.

Assuming a government does a competent job tracking its spending and intake during the year, revenue and spending numbers for any large department aren't going to be off by enough to change an evaluation. If an audit down the road does find something really earth shaking - say more than a ½ percent difference between the money officials thought was earned and spent versus what's in the bank – more than a month after the close of the books, well, that's probably going to be a news of a different sort.

On the other hand, if a government gets to decide when numbers are final and when information should be given out, well, in a bad year they could simple delay into obscurity.

The question is this: on balance is it more important to have every figure down to the last red cent accounted for before it becomes public or to abide by the principles of open government that allows the people to see both successes and problems and redress grievances?

You can probably tell which way the scales tip in my mind.

For perspective, keep this in mind: Every single government budget in this state - from the state government down to the smallest town and even the coliseum's own budget - is based in part on revenue and spending figures from a current year that hasn't ended before the governing body gives its final approval. If those numbers were that far off, we'd have budget chaos every year.

Mark and Margaret are right. Transaparency in government means that we (the media and citizens) get to look over the shoulders of those in our employ. They may not like it, it may cause anxiety that bits of information may be examined before they've had a chance to be scrutinized, but it is OUR information. There is no such thing as for internal use only -- that has zero legal meaning. (With a very few specific exceptions.)

Sandy, you know I have great respect for you, but this is one area where I think you err on the wrong side. Your comments above are a good example. Do we want possibly innacurate information? Yes, if we ask for it. That it, or any information, may be unofficial, inaccurate, incomplete, embarassing or too revealing doesn't matter. If our city government has produced it and we ask for it, the answer should always be "Here you go."