Trust, but Verify! (Part II)Trust, Risk, and Einstein

In our previous post on this topic, we looked at the broad issue of trust in government and the feelings of trust in Obama that have been widely reported in the run up to his inauguration.

Locally, the issue of trust has come to the surface as Mayor Einstein, in a interview with the local paper reflecting on his first year in office, lamented the questioning he and his administration have received, particularly related to the lakefront plan. For a more thorough understanding of these concerns, we refer to the comment that he submitted in response to one of our posts about the lakefront plan.

The Mayor’s comment posted to our blog, which you can read here, was in response to another comment from the highly engaged community leader Cynthia Hsu. Essentially, Hsu states that City Council must pass a zoning change on the lakefront--restricting residential and commercial development altogether--in order to prove to the public that they mean it when they say they do not want Building 12.

As Hsu put it, “It would go a long way to building public trust.” But, apparently, Mayor Einstein interpreted her to be saying “I won't trust you until and unless you make it absolutely impossible for anyone, at any time, to do anything that I disagree with” and he rejected that way of thinking.

Although we don’t agree with Ms. Hsu’s rationale for the zoning proposal, we also don’t agree with the Mayor's response to her position. After all, the history of the lakefront plan is not all sunshine and roses. Even the local paper, in its end-of-year recap of supposed ‘top stories,’ highlighted the irregularities in the planning process. On May 29, 2008 the headline read “Lakefront Committee: No Housing.”

That article detailed a meeting of the Quality Communities Planning Committee during which Bergmann Associates’ initial recommendations were reviewed and the committee clearly indicated that housing on the lakefront should be definitively ruled out as a lakefront development option.

Then, in August, the rest of Council, along with the public, got their first glimpse of the Bergmann plan that included-- front and center-- lakefront housing. Did anyone-- the QCPC, the Mayor, or the Council-- immediately and publicly question the inconsistency? No. Instead, it was given equal footing with the other plan components, those that the community and QCPC did find to be consistent with public values. Luckily, it seems that the idea was ultimately abandoned, but the point is that the process, even at the end stages, lacked predictability. Predictability is what you get when expectations match reality.

Predictability is also what a lot of people mean by trust, or want from government, and which might be the basis of trust. We refer, again, to the ideals of the Founding Fathers. They didn’t believe in blind trust for public officials, but they didn’t harbor a total suspicion of government processes. The keys to their system of checks and balances are: Accountability, transparency, and predictability. In other words, the public needs to know what decisions are being made, by whom, and according to what guidelines in order to either support or challenge the process. The Founding Fathers knew best of all that the ends don’t justify the means, and their focus was on producing a system of means that would yield appropriate and productive ends.

Accountability, transparency, and predictability require two additional characteristics: honesty and publicity. This is the commitment public officials must make to tell the public the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If any piece of the decision-making puzzle is missing, you have an environment that breeds distrust.

If, for example, someone tells you that they are going to make a decision on Tuesday, but when you show up Tuesday, you find that the decision was made the previous weekend and the change in plans was never announced, you’re not going to trust that decision-making process, and rightfully so, even if you agree with the decision that was made. For public officials to engender the public trust, they must develop and clearly communicate reasonable expectations, stay committed to meeting those expectations to the best of their ability, and be willing to be forthcoming and candid about any changes.

So, much of this hinges on public communication. And that’s where, as we have discussed in previous posts, the press enters the picture. The public must have access to information and public officials must have a means of accurately communicating with their constituents. A recent statement from the Democrat and Chronicle’s editorial board details their commitment to being ‘watchdogs.’ This is a necessary component of public trust in government. Everyone must know, public officials and residents alike, that information is available and verifiable.

We, at NoStrings, were distrustful of the previous administration (on both the National and the local levels)--with what we believe was good reason. After all, there was example upon example of back room dealing and misrepresentation, which leads us to conclude that these were not stray occurrences, but rather the standard operating procedure. The local paper was noticeably absent, or when present, unable or unwilling to do any meaningful follow up to verify that ‘official statements’ were truthful (or not). Our goal in starting this website was to bring accountability back. We know what happens when people--the media, the governing body, the public, trusts but does not bother to verify.

It’s not the case that the public should be openly suspicious of its elected leaders, nor should those officials require that the public simply ‘take their word(s) for it.’ Instead, it is a balancing act in which both parties operate in good faith, knowing that there is a predictable, accountable, transparent process by which decisions can be made, successes celebrated, and mistakes corrected. NoStringsGeneva is not part of the problem but part of the solution to trust in government.