Transparency needed in Prince William board of supervisors

Opinion

Trust in government at all levels has been falling for years. And it isn’t particularly surprising. We hear almost daily about politicians on the take, breaking the public trust for their own personal or political gain. Unfortunately, we let it continue year after year not only by re­electing those guilty of such practices, but also by not demanding more transparency and accountability from our elected officials. But that doesn’t have to be the case in Prince William County.

In 2008, I was selected to serve as the lone, at­large citizen of the County’s Board Audit Committee, a group charged with ensuring that staff are efficient and effective in complying with laws, policies and procedures. The board itself eliminated the citizen position from the audit committee before I had the opportunity to actually serve. This lack of government transparency is unacceptable. To date, the board consists only of the County Supervisors themselves with no input or participation from members of the community. This needs to change. If we as citizens are not invited to be part of processes such as this, and get the bad news along with the good, we lose the power to keep our public servants honest and focused on finding real solutions to the problems we face. As Chairman of the Board of County Supervisors, I will make it a top priority on my first day in office to restore citizen membership to the audit committee so that the public has direct access to compliance and efficiency audits.

But auditing the performance of County staff isn’t enough. The citizens of Prince William pay the salaries of the supervisors, and they need to be able to hold the supervisors themselves accountable. I’m committed to creating a local committee of private citizens whose purpose is to monitor Supervisors and report to the public annually on issues of transparency and conflicts of interest.

When Supervisors receive large contributions from donors who have business before the Board and then fail to recuse themselves on votes involving those contributors, that’s a serious conflict of interest. People shouldn’t have to spend hours digging through campaign finance reports to see the clear conflicts of interest brought up by big campaign contributions, we need a committee that brings that into the open so that citizens are able to hold their elected officials accountable. This committee will meet regularly and report annually, not to the Board, but to our citizens, sharing every instance where a Board member failed to disclose a conflict or acted in manner that wasn’t transparent or in keeping with the open, honest government we deserve.

Governing from the shadows and putting the interests of large donors over the needs of our people has no place in Prince William County. My promise is to not only act in the best interest of every resident of our community, but to put real reforms in place to protect us from those who would put their own interests ahead of ours.

*Rick Smith is running for Chairman of the Prince William board of supervisors.