Transparency
Transparency in Seattle is a series of symbolic gestures. The reality is the Seattle leadership forces the citizens to go through public disclosure requests or other extraordinary measures to access information that should be readily available. Seattle's leadership no longer values feedback from its citizens. Instead, we are told what the master plan will be. We are told where controversial programs will be located. We are invited to fake public meetings where paid advocates saturate the crowd and actively stifle legitimate concerns by the citizens. Even worse, the City leadership itself has no situational awareness of the actual real-time state of the city. They are continuously blindsided by costs overruns they should have known were developing.
As mayor, I will leverage transparency to reform the city. Every Seattle resident should have immediate access to budgets, contracts, and current status of projects and their costs. I am confident most Seattleites will be outraged by what they see and demand the changes we need to make this city great and fiscally responsible.
Solutions
- All contracts and budgets will immediately be made public and available for inspection by all citizens.
- Require all lobbyists and paid advocates to identify themselves in public meetings.
- Ban all Seattle employees from using private email to communicate reagrding the City's business.
- Citizens will be able to participate in the planning of their neighborhoods as well as participate in the discussion and planning for controversial programs
- Real-time project status will be made available to all citizens.
- Contractor performance grading will be made public.
- Police body cam and dashboard videos will be made readily available.
- We will streamline the public disclosure request process to shorten wait times.
