I have decided to ask the Attorney General for an opinion on sub-section 4222.C of the new budget process. Here is my letter to Laura Marasco, Special Assistant Attorney General, at the Open Government unit:
From: Andrew Gilmartin <andrew@andrewgilmartin.com>
Date: Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 7:28 AM
Subject: South Kingstown's new budget process
To: "Laura Marasco, Special Assistant Attorney General" <lmarasco@riag.ri.gov>
I am hoping you might be able to help me or direct me to the appropriate office within the Attorney General's offices. The Town of South Kingstown recently adopted a revision to its town charter replacing the Financial Town Meeting with a new petitioning process. This is documented in [1]. I am now engaged in using this new process to have a Committee formed to make recommends for, what I am calling, Automatic Open Records. See [2] and, more broadly, [3].
When I read sub-section 4222.C in [1] I understood this to address the needs of citizen-lead budgeted initiatives. Yesterday when I applied for the official forms for a petition I found that the Town Administration's interpretation of this sub-section was quite different. Their reading is that I may request funding but not specify now that funding is to be used. This seems absurd to me. However, I am not familiar with the established legal perspective of this kind of budget process.
Would the Attorney General be able to offer and opinion in this matter? If so, I how do I begin the process of getting this opinion?
Yours truly,
Andrew Gilmartin
[1] http://www.southkingstownri.com/upload/TSK_tenative_budget.pdf
[2] http://southkingstownrinow.blogspot.com/2009/03/petition-to-establish-automatic-open.html
[3] http://southkingstownrinow.blogspot.com/
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
I do encourage commenting here and strongly hold that one should stand up for what one says. This blog is itself not anonymous because I stand up for what I say. To this end, anonymous comments are not permitted. Include your full name and email address along with your comment. I will use this information for confirm that you did post the comment.