Presidential candidates have entire teams of people to help them figure out what to say, when to say it, where to say it, and how to say it.  It's true that they my occasional flub their lines, but they never say something without a reason.  Senator McCain is no different in his promises to make the executive more accountable.  Could this be an example of "trickle up" sensibility?  More to the point, could it lead to a "trickle down" effect?

Obligatory cute subhead aside, these are the words of New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.  He spoke of the results of an of his action to "initiate a formal review of the approximately 6,000 legislative member items which will be contracted this year and seek to recover any misspent funds."  That the Attorney General decided to launch this initiative bespeaks how predictable the results were.

Of some 3,800 items reviewed, the Office of the Attorney General rejected nearly one third.  Cuomo also reported that of the 6,500 member items approved in the 2007 budget, 2700 items have no been submitted for approval.  That is well over one third of the approved items.  As Cuomo pointed out, this raises questions about the motive behind these items.

Last week I wrote about the Missouri Accountability Project, which is another great step towards allowing tax payers to know what's going on.  With over six million hits in just a few months there's no doubt that people are interested.

Efforts that promote transparency are focused on prevent fraud in the first place.  Cuomo said, "It's also possible that the review and the scrutiny and the certification are having a positive affect and that would be a good thing."

What does this have to do with McCain?  These examples show that efforts towards greater accountability are and have been underway at the state level.  Here it is the Executive that will be playing catch-up.  One might argue that McCain's concerns weren't related to any budgets, but that's taking the narrow view.  Any improvement in the level of government accountability is a positive move that will eventually force a similar change in other areas of government.

With figures like $2,840,000,000,000 floating around, it's no wonder that the focus is often on how the government spends money.  And those $2.84 trillion are "just" how much the government is expected to spend in 2008 on goods and services at the local, state, federal and special-district levels.  $2.84 trillion in procurement this year.  That's a figure that takes some getting used to.

Next year that figure will be even higher, recession or no recession.  This is why more and more businesses are turning their attention to government contracts.  That, in turn, will mean many more bids will be submitted for these contracts and more businesses will have a lot to lose if they don't win with their bids.  The makings of a perfect storm if the accountability infrastructure isn't in place to successfully handle this eventuality.

Accountability has been on the agenda at the state and local level for years and now it has finally "trickled up" to take it's place in the agenda for the next president.  Now that McCain has started the ball rolling there will be little chance that Obama, especially with his platform for change, or Clinton can avoid it.  Since there's nothing like a sore winner in Washington to share the misery, there's some hope that this may yet develop into a "trickle down" to those who still think accountability is a problem only the private sector has to contend with.

In the end, remember Missouri's example.  Passing laws is meaningless unless tools are put into place to give them a practical value.  6.1 million hits (and counting) can't be wrong.

 

Sincerely,