– News about Quincy Massachusetts from Quincy Quarry News.

At Large Candidate Anne Mahoney
A Committee to Elect Anne Mahoney photo

At Large City Council candidate Anne Mahoney proposes the first actually serious proposal this election cycle.

In what has to date been an utter snooze of a local election cycle, at Large City Council seat challenger Anne Mahoney has proposed the first substantial proposal of this election season.

Her proposal: that the City of Quincy opt to use but short money out of a near two million dollar bond issuance request by the Koch Maladministration for information technology spending to put the City of Quincy’s spending online for all to see via Open Checkbook.

Open Checkbook is software that was developed for government use to open up its books to the public who fund the local government as well as others.

Open Checkbook has been used by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts since 2011 as well as implemented by Boston, Braintree, Brookline and many other municipalities in the Commonwealth as well as in as well as by states across the length and breadth of the United States.

Reasons for Candidate Mahoney’s proposal surely include the fact that during the era of the Koch Maladministration the City of Quincy’s annual budget document made available to the public is by far the shortest as well as least detailed budget provided by any larger town or any city in the Commonwealth.

The lack of facts is a stubborn thing
A City of Quincy image

What little actual budget data are provided are distilled down to a but thin fifty-seven pages of equally thin particulars in Section II of the City of Quincy’s just short of three hundred million dollar Fiscal Year 2018 budget which only includes roughly two-thirds of all local governmental spendings.

And as for Sections I and II in Mayor Koch’s so-called budget, such is the sort of fluff that would likely be hit with the grade of F if they were used to stretch out a term paper so as to (barely, ed.) meet a specified length requirement.

How thin are the data? 

Shortcomings include no detailing of actual spending, only the approved spending requests, on anything spent by the Koch Maladministration. 

Similar missing is any mention of any supplemental appropriations provided over the course of a budget year to City departments that could not hold to their original budget allowances.

Further, other than listing of individual single person positions within the budget (e..g, the mayor, department heads, etc.), there are no projected headcounts, much less actual headcounts, of employees in any of the budget line items that are slated to pay multiple employees’ salaries noted in many of the City Budgets submitted by the Koch Maladministration.

Do not look behind the curtain
A Facebook photo

Also missing in the core budget data is any listing of the total amount of outstanding city debt at the time that each budget was submitted to the council for its review and approval.

If debt data were available, local taxpayers would surely be horrified that local municipal debt owed by the City of Quincy, meaning local taxpayers, has more than doubled during the era of the the Koch Maladministration.

In short, one cannot help but suspect that Candidate Mahoney’s call to but make transparent city spending as have many other municipalities across the country have already done will all but assuredly not be favorably received, much less undertaken, by the Koch Maladministration unless imposed upon it all but at gunpoint.