Follow The Money, It’s Your Budget

Newtown’s budget for the 2011-2012 fiscal year has been quickly taking shape over the past two weeks with both the Board of Selectmen and Board of Education deliberating over preliminary budget proposals. The selectmen concluded their work last week, recommending a $38 million spending plan for town departments and sending it on for Board of Finance and Legislative Council review prior to a town vote in the spring. This week, the school board was working around snowstorms trying to finish up its consideration of the superintendent of schools’ recommended $71 million educational spending package. With nearly $110 million in play, Newtown taxpayers have a substantial stake in this process and may not want to wait until the last minute before the April 26 budget referendum to decide whether the spending priorities of their elected leaders reflect their own priorities.

It is not uncommon to hear from budget critics in the final days running up to the vote that town or school officials are once again trying to slip one by the voters, hiding wasteful spending in thickets of rhetoric about investments in the future, or otherwise deceiving taxpayers about Newtown’s financial facts of life. The truth is, however, that the budget process is an open book, thanks to our state’s Freedom of Information laws. The only people who may be deceived about public spending are the ones who decide to ignore the wealth of information on public sector finances that is available for their inspection.

This year, The Bee is offering some online assistance to those trying to keep up with the evolution of the FY 2011-2012 budget right from the start. Our new Follow The Money section at NewtownBee.com has assembled source files of detailed budget plans, PowerPoint presentations, and worksheets that the budgetmakers themselves use in formulating Newtown’s annual spending package. We have also included audio and video files, including relevant clips from town-produced videos of budgetmakers discussing the details of those source documents. There is also a full schedule of the budget sessions of the Board of Education, Board of Selectmen, Board of Finance, and the Legislative Council, and the budget-related provisions in Newtown’s Charter that describe how the process works. This new coverage supplements The Bee’s day-to-day reporting on the process.

In the next two months, as the Board of Finance and Legislative Council take up their respective reviews of the 2011-2012 budget, we hope to solicit specific questions from taxpayers for budgetmakers to answer in video responses that will be posted in our Follow The Money files. So if you have a question about the process or the budget itself, please e-mail it to editor@thebee.com with a subject line of “Follow The Money,” or mail it to Editor, The Newtown Bee, PO Box 5503, Newtown CT 06470.

 If you want the back room of local government to be visible, sometimes all it takes is the resolve to look into it for yourself. Consider this your invitation.