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There's been a lot of talk lately about transparency in The Ville, especially in Metro government. Whether the calls are genuine, or just a way of scoring political points, I can't say for sure. What I can say is that while most people agree that transparency is a good thing. the Louisville version of it reminds me of Sally Rand: lots of stuff flying around, an occasional glimpse of what looks like real information, but in the end, only a big tease.

Let's take, for example, the current budget crisis ...

If you visit the Metro Government web site, it's fairly easy to find the revenue summary (PDF), which includes actuals for last year, this year's original revenue budget, the YTD (as of November, I think; doc doesn't say), and the revised projection for the year. Look at the bottom, and yep, it's a $20 million shortfall to budget. You can even figure out where the shortfall is happening: $14 million in employee withholding taxes, $3 million in net profits (on what?), and dribs and drabs throughout the rest of the revenue budget.

When you look a little deeper, though, you see that the current estimate for this year is almost the same as the actuals for last year. The shortfall isn't because we're collecting so much less; it's because our budget, passed only last summer, is $18 million bigger than the actuals of the year before. And the question that has been asked of the Mayor twice, and never actually answered, is Why?

Why, Mr. Mayor, did your budget people believe that we would be able to generate a 4% increase in revenue, when the subprime crisis was already well on its way, and the auto industry was in obvious peril? What led to the conclusion that as the country was obviously in recession, Metro Louisville would see an $18 million increase in revenue?

Here's the kicker: if our city leadership had decided to heed the warning signs and put in place a flat budget, we'd be looking at a $4 million shortfall, instead of $20 million. Even if they had decided to do just the rate of inflation and adopted a 2% increase, it would be a $14 million shortfall.

And when you try to find out where that extra $18 million went, the fans start whirling even faster. Go to the web site and try to find a comparative budget document showing last year's budget, last year's actuals, and this year's final approved budget. I can't find it. The only document I've found that comes close actually shows this year's budget to be smaller than last year's. There isn't a document, as far as I can tell, that shows expenditures that match the above-mentioned revenue estimate.

There's more to say on this (and I'm going to continue in a subsequent post), but the bottom line for now is this: this is our government, not the personal plaything of the people running it. (And that line includes Metro Council.) We deserve to be able to get as much detail about financial matters as we want -- not just summary PDFs. And we deserve answers to the "what were you thinking?" question. We're not trying to hang the estimators out to dry (at least, I'm not). We just want to know what caused the shortfall, and if it's as bad as everyone is saying. And, we deserve to see where our money is going, down to the last order for paperclips.

As for good old Sally Rand and her fan dance -- if you clicked the link above, you learned that she was famous for something else as well. Perhaps, in light of the current economy, we should bring back Sally Rand to perform her other innovation: the bubble dance.