Kamal Jain: What Integrity Means in Massachusetts

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Monday, July 29, 2013

Guest MINDSETTER™ Kamal Jain

For decades, Massachusetts state government bureaucrats and most politicians denied there was off-budget spending altogether, never mind that it might be significant. I spent years beating the drum and traveling the state showing people the audited financial reports which clearly showed that total state spending was only about 55-60% budget, and the rest was off-budget and never discussed.

So for each year when whichever governor and whatever heads of the legislature would stand up in front of the cameras and say with a straight face how difficult the challenges of the budget were, they were only talking about 55-60% of spending. They denied the rest.

The harsh reality

Thanks to my efforts and those of numerous others, and Treasurer Grossman picking up my message of transparency and putting the books online—and following through in large part—we now clearly see that total state spending is nearly $52 BILLION per year, or about $1 BILLION per week. And yet, when one looks at the state's online "checkbook" you can see that of the total spending, only about 72-73% is even categorized on the site.

So roughly 27% of $52 BILLION of spending of taxpayer dollars isn't even available for perusal by the taxpayers. Not transparent at all.

And of the 72-73% that is available, the ability to see where that money goes is extremely weak.

Not a pretty picture

Combine this with many administrative and procedural decisions that are made behind closed doors with no public scrutiny before, during or after, and you can see that Massachusetts does pretty poorly when it comes to openness and transparency.

Are we worse than Rhode Island?

I'd say that's a poor comparative test in general. That's like going into a bar and trying to choose the soberest drunk in the room to give you a ride home—not so good.

 

Kamal Jain, an IT and network operations specialist, was a candidate for Massachusetts State Auditor in 2010. He is a co-founder of Lowell Makes, a non-profit makerspace in Lowell, Massachusetts.

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