Both boards should share financial information

Dear Editor,

The situation is very much like what a husband and wife team face when there is a significant reduction in household income. In a healthy relationship, both spouses would sit down together, compare detailed lists of what each person spends and fairly and respectfully negotiate which items from both lists should be reduced or eliminated. The needs of all members of the family are taken into consideration during the entire process, and both parties recognize that a continued expense for one spouse necessarily results in a reduction in spending ability for the other spouse.

The school board's reluctance to develop a list of all programs and their costs is analogous to one spouse refusing to share their credit card statement with the other spouse. If one spouse refuses to discuss details, a couple's ability to come to a reasonable reduction plan is dramatically reduced. In addition to hindering logical decision-making, secretiveness often causes a rapid dissipation of trust, rising tempers and reduced communication. How is the open spouse supposed to tell if the reluctant spouse is spending the money on the electric bill or lottery tickets?

Reading between the lines, it appears that the school board fears that by sharing the details of its budget, [it] will lose the power to make decisions regarding spending priorities. So [it] decided to keep the details of [its] spending programs a secret. As a former manager at two Fortune 500 companies, I find this behavior unthinkable. In any well-run company, even high-level managers have to account for their budget and spending priorities. And you can bet that when the revenues of the company are declining, the scrutiny increases dramatically. When cuts come, managers not only detail what they are cutting, but also what they are going to continue to fund. Secrecy is not allowed because it undermines the very ability of the company to make wise decisions concerning the shareholders' money.

Going back to the husband/wife analogy, in a healthy relationship both parties have the responsibility to defend their spending priorities, and both parties have the right to question the other's spending priorities. Neither spouse loses power by sharing. Rather, they view the family budget decision process as giving them both the power to decide what is in the best interest of the entire family.

In the last election, I cast my vote for people that I thought would be able to bridge the gap between the two boards. I still believe that they can, and now is the time to do so. It is my hope for our elected officials that they will find a way to resolve our budget issues without anyone feeling that they have lost the ability to do the job they were elected to do. I challenge the school board to have faith in their counterparts and to share detailed data on all budgeted programs. I challenge the school board to recognize that [it has] both the responsibility to publicly defend the programs [it believes] should be maintained and the right to question non-school county programs.

I challenge the board of supervisors to give the school board the right to question non-school programs in the same manner that [it] questions school programs. In the end, the money isn't the "school board's money" or the "board of supervisors' money," it's one pool of money owned by the county citizens. Please make the best decisions possible in the interests of all of our citizens. Rebecca King Midlothian