City Reps. Canales and Limon co-sponsored item 21 on yesterday’s City Council agenda, which would have provided citizen oversight of $685,602,650 in general obligation bond expenditures, amounting to approximately $1.3 billion in principal and interest.
Unfortunately for the taxpayers, they were outvoted 6-2, which is a major defeat for transparency and accountability.
The Bond Overview Advisory Committee consists of nine citizen volunteers appointed by the Mayor and City Council with purview over the $473,250,000 Quality of Life Bond. The committee has provided critically important information to the media and public since its inception in 2012 but is scheduled to be dissolved in 2028.
Canales and Limon were hoping to extend its purview to the 2019 Public Safety Bond and 2022 Community Progress Bond, but now that is not going to happen.
City Manager Mack and Deputy City Manager Yvette Hernandez claimed yesterday that BOAC has been responsible for delaying capital improvement projects, which is absolutely false. There is nothing in the 2012 BOAC ordinance empowering BOAC to delay bond projects or take any kind of executive action.
Its only function is to scrutinize expenditures from general obligation bonds and provide feedback to the City. If Mack or Hernandez delayed projects because they went to BOAC with bond items before taking them to City Council, that was by choice and not a requirement. They can stop doing that whenever they please.
Their testimony yesterday prompted Rep. Fierro to speak forcefully against continued BOAC oversight of bond issues. He also stated his opposition to BOAC’s scrutiny of past bond expenditures, as if they should not be subject to the same oversight.
Rep. Fierro and the other opponents of BOAC should have listened to Rep. Canales, who read the three duties of the committee directly from the ordinance. Instead, they allowed themselves to be misled by Mack and Hernandez.
It is true that CFO Robert Cortinas provides quarterly updates to City Council on bond expenditures but that is no substitute for a citizen committee, where highly qualified professionals conduct their own independent analysis.
It is worth remembering that on December 10, 2019, under agenda item 19.1, an attempt was made to establish a Public Safety Bond Overview Advisory Committee but it was voted down 5-4, with Reps. Morgan, Salcido, Ordaz Perez, and Rivera voting “nay,” joined by Mayor Margo.
So yesterday was the second time City Council refused to provide proper oversight of its GO bonds.
We must conclude there is a reason why the City wants to dissolve BOAC and prevent citizen oversight of nearly $700 million in expenditures.
What are they afraid of?
We sincerely hope this City Council, which no longer includes Oscar Leeser, Brian Kennedy, and Joe Molinar, is not returning to the Dark Age of Margo and Gonzalez, when our City was in the grip of rapacious vultures intent on keeping the media and public from learning how they spent our money.
Please read this morning’s report by Adam Powell, the only other media coverage of this issue.