{"id":1281,"date":"2023-07-27T20:01:34","date_gmt":"2023-07-28T00:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/?p=1281"},"modified":"2023-12-10T21:45:46","modified_gmt":"2023-12-11T01:45:46","slug":"fake-budget-deadlines-will-not-increase-transparency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/2023\/07\/27\/fake-budget-deadlines-will-not-increase-transparency\/","title":{"rendered":"Fake Budget Deadlines Will Not Increase Transparency"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In his column this morning, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nj.com\/opinion\/2023\/07\/republicans-are-dead-right-about-this-secret-spending-by-democrats-moran.html\">Republicans are dead right about this secret spending by Democrats<\/a>&#8221; (subscriber exclusive), Tom Moran bemoans the annual ritual of legislators&#8217; slipping pet projects into the budget at the last minute (which is when it is always passed). Moran pushes what he says is an easy fix suggested by Peter Chen: require the legislature to present a draft budget by June 1. Chen <a href=\"https:\/\/www.njspotlightnews.org\/2023\/06\/stop-budget-groundhog-day-three-proposals-to-make-process-more-transparent-and-responsive-to-peoples-needs\/\">says<\/a>: &#8220;This would prevent lawmakers from waiting until the last minute to finalize and vote on a budget bill that they may or may not have read.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t believe it. Don&#8217;t get me wrong, I agree that it would be good to see a draft budget in advance. But if that draft is not subject to change, then we&#8217;re just moving up the deadline and, if it is subject to change, the last-minute goodies will be part of that change. While there are what I will call structural provisions that can help, they cannot guarantee good government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a democracy the only way to keep politicians in line is the threat of voting them out. This requires attentive voters with access to relevant information (the last part is &#8211; I thought &#8211; part of the role of a free press).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\" style=\"line-height:0\">Jay Bohn<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\" style=\"line-height:0\">July 27, 2023<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his column this morning, &#8220;Republicans are dead right about this secret spending by Democrats&#8221; (subscriber exclusive), Tom Moran bemoans the annual ritual of legislators&#8217; slipping pet projects into the budget at the last minute (which is when it is always passed). Moran pushes what he says is an easy fix suggested by Peter Chen: &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/2023\/07\/27\/fake-budget-deadlines-will-not-increase-transparency\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Fake Budget Deadlines Will Not Increase Transparency&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1281"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1283,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions\/1283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}