Barry Allen’s Comments on
On Tuesday evening when the Council began the process of approving
$6.5M in new wage pacts with City employee unions, CM Yousefian
attempted to engage the other four Council members in a discussion to reopen
contracts. The silence was deafening. On Wednesday Vanguardians
published a paid advertisement showing how much 523 people were paid in 2007,
an amount that did NOT include the full taxpayer burden. See
ad here. Apparently the ad didn’t sit well with Mayor Drayman
and Council members Najarian and Weaver as mentioned
in a Thursday
article in the GNP There was no plot or conspiracy between Council member
Yousefian and Vanguardians.
Even though under section 501(h) of the Internal Revenue Code we could lobby
for a cause as many other advocacy groups do, lobbying was not involved as the
ad was reportorial being after-the-fact. One of the goals of Vanguardians is to educate the public as to the Accountable
Government issues. From the number of calls and requests for Vanguard Weekly
News, it appears that we fulfilled our educational mission to:
v Provide,
without bias, the timely dissemination of information and knowledge of
government activities to the community and elected officials
v Build, train
and empower a knowledgeable, aware and involved city-wide group to monitor the
integrity, performance and responsiveness of elected officials and each of the
city's departments
v Encourage,
by example, a community free to exchange facts and opinions on public issues by
facilitating open debate and discussion on the issues
v Demand
accountability, effectiveness and responsiveness from our government without
which there is a system out of control and ripe for corruption
v Make
government acutely aware there is a community watching, monitoring and
measuring their activities