A Report on the Camden County Budget Hearing

Business as Usual for the Camden County Commissioners…

The April 2022 meeting of the Camden County Board of Commissioners was par for the course in most respects. There was no live discussion of the 100+ resolutions on the agenda. Via consent agenda, commissioners voted unanimously in support of all resolutions, moving around over $7 million of taxpayer funds in a flash. Most of the commissioners were silent throughout the meeting except to note when they needed to abstain due to conflicts of interest (those conflicts of interest were not explained).

…Except for that Half a Billion Dollar Budget!

The only thing that made this meeting exceptional was that it was the public hearing of the 2022 Camden County budget. Again this year the Camden County budget is close to half a billion dollars ($418,578,457.20 to be exact). I had a copy of the budget because I requested it. It is certainly not a centrally placed item on the county’s website. To locate it online, I clicked halfway down the page, on the “government transparency” link. This year’s budget was halfway down that next page, a good ways below information on the county’s Doggie Fun Day event.

The Public Was Missing But Were They Missed?

Despite the giant budget controlled by the county government, few members of the public bother attending or speaking up at these hearings. This year, I was the only one to ask questions at the budget hearing. It’s easy to blame the public for not showing up but more productive to consider what stands in their way.

In a perfect world, or at least a better functioning democracy, this is a job our government would undertake, making sure citizens felt well equipped for civic participation. A public hearing without the public in attendance feels like it’s missing the point. Some easy fixes could be made. The county could switch from Webex to a easier video conferencing platform like Zoom that doesn’t require downloading and passwords and with which more people are familiar. It would also be far more resident-centered to hold important public hearings in the evening, not in the middle of a workday. But the crisis of public participation runs deeper than that.

Finding the Right Tools for the Job

The South Jersey Coalition for Good Government, a multi-county grassroots group I am a part of, has recently been doing a lot of thinking about public participation in the local budget process, or rather the lack thereof. We hoped to take some first steps in demystifying the budgeting process for residents. We produced a short video to walk people through the budget process, hoping to provide a basic overview of budget format and terms. Together we drafted a list of questions any person could ask at a local or county budget hearing and hopefully get a better sense of politicians’ priorities and future plans. I asked these questions at the Camden County meeting and got what sounded like a stump speech in response from the deputy director who is facing a rare electoral challenge this primary as he runs for re-election to serve his thirtieth year on the board.

There Has to Be a Better Way

Having the information is essential. Having useful questions assembled is also essential. But the real fix would require a paradigm shift. Participatory budgeting would offer citizens a voice in how dollars are spent, what needs exist in their communities, what their communal future should look like. Participatory budgeting has been implemented in cities, government agencies and school districts. It can happen here, now. For those still unconvinced, consider this impassioned TED Talk by Shari Davis, head of the Participatory Budgeting Project.

Empowering People > “Vote Harder”

In the one party state of Camden County, all the county commissioners are Democrats. The main rallying cry of Democrats these days seems to be “vote harder.” We are told that to redress the problems in our democracy, the answer is to vote. Vote early. Vote by mail. Register people to vote. Getting them voting the same day they register. Sure. All of this is good but none of it alone will offer the real fix needed to alter the relations of power. Voting will get a candidate across the finish line or keep an incumbent secure but something more is needed to uplift great numbers of people and empower citizens in a lasting way, in a way that cannot be undone in an electoral cycle.

This is the Starting Place

A lot more work needs to be done to bring the public meaningfully into the spaces where decisions are made — decisions about land use, decisions about budgeting, decisions about any number of issues that impact people’s daily life. There is no reason to believe that power holders will voluntarily surrender the control they have over these decisions. That’s what organizing is for.

Citizens are not empty vessels. Even in machine controlled South Jersey where power is so tightly consolidated in the hands of a select few, citizens have intimate lived knowledge of the problems in their democracy. In my organizing with the South Jersey Coalition for Good Government, I’ve often thought of Paulo Freire, of his concept of popular education, of people sitting down together to exchange questions and ideas, to construct a shared framework for change together.

This is the work we are doing. We will be at it again soon. If you’ve read this far, why not join us there?