Dear Fellow Carsonite:

If elected as your Carson Councilmember, I will bring to the City a way of doing the impossible: saving money in these days of sharp budget cuts while at the same time maintaining and improving city services for all residents. My plan will also ensure fiscal honesty and accountability in city government, and help to restore residents' eroding faith in the honesty of City Hall.

The idea is a simple one, yet I believe it would be extremely effective. I have been promoting it since 2000.

This is my proposal: Post all the city government finances to the Internet on a daily basis. I believe this would effectively root out waste, corruption and fraud. It would bring all the city's financial dealings into the clear light of day.

City residents would be able to see at a glance how much revenue the city generates, and how it is spent, from the biggest expenditures down to the smallest. People would be able to find out, for example, how much the city receives from those dreaded parking tickets, and how this revenue is spent.

Posting the finances would also, I believe, prove extremely popular with you, the voters and taxpayers, who are sick of the misuse of taxpayers' money at all levels of government, and the secretive systems that make such abuse possible.

In the Post the Finances system, each city department would be responsible for posting its finances to its section of the city website. My website, www.postthefinances.com gives more details of the system, and of my efforts in promoting it.

More than three years ago, the Carson City Council considered requesting, at my urging, a feasibility study for Post the Finances. The Council voted against it, for no good reason.

In doing so, Carson missed its chance to become the first city in the nation to post its finances.

However, I will continue to work to ensure that the issue comes before the Carson Council again. I want to ensure that this vote is reversed.

I have also approached many of the leaders of California, including Governor Schwarzenegger, but no one has yet had the courage to come out in public support of this proposal, although I have received many private words of encouragement from influential people.

It seems that everyone is waiting to see who will jump first, but no one wants to be the one who takes the plunge.

What Post the Finances needs is a visionary leader who is prepared to break out of the pack mentality and initiate a bold new system that will eventually take all government accounting, from city to state and federal levels, into the twenty-first century.

I am that leader.

I am certain I can do this.

The logic behind it is irrefutable: government money is taxpayers' money, so every taxpayer has a right to see, in detail, how that money is used. Up until recent years, such a goal has been impractical, but with the coming of the Internet and the huge leaps in information technology that have taken place in the last few years, what was formerly impossible is now easily possible.

So why not vote for me as your Carson Councilmember, so I can enact Post the Finances right now?

I will initially work to implement Post the Finances in just one city department. This will let the public see how it works and get people used to the idea. Then, after the initial sample, when the Post the Finances system is installed, all departments can be converted to the same system.

I have the confidence, experience and leadership skills to take up this challenge.

As a civic leader, I have the welfare of all our city's residents at heart.

With Post the Finances, I can give you, my fellow residents, a gift that will long outlast my tenure of Council office.

I have thought long and hard about the Post the Finances idea, and have campaigned for it vigorously.

I am confident it can stand scrutiny.

Respectfully,

Steve Mozena

 

Mr. Mozena will COMBAT WASTE AND CORRUPTION by having the City post daily to its Website all revenues and expenditures, as well as contract bids, to root out political favoritism. Also, to thwart any fraud, all legal settlements against the city as a defendant would be open to public scrutiny on the Web. 

Mr. Mozena has been tirelessly promoting this idea at all levels of government for a number of years. 

For Carsonites, Mr. Mozena will have "open books," "open door" and an entirely "open government." See www.postthefinances.com.

Click here to see Sample Finance Posting
The sample is for a sample state but it can be
posted the same way with the city of Carson as well