Two Daytona Beach Shores city commissioners have resigned as the latest in a wave of local elected officials leaving before Jan. 1, when they face more stringent financial disclosure requirements.
Mel Lindauer, a Shores commissioner since 2016, told The News-Journal on Wednesday the new requirement − submitting what’s known as Form 6 − is “totally invasive” and serves no purpose.
Commissioner Richard Bryan, who has also served since 2016, said in his Dec. 21 resignation letter that he had another priority but added the Form 6 issue “affected the timing” of his decision.
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Many state officials already file a Form 6, including the governor and Cabinet, legislators, county council members and sheriffs. The forms require disclosure of the filer’s net worth and holdings valued at more than $1,000, including bank accounts, stocks, retirement accounts, salary and dividends.
Meanwhile in Norway every citizen can look up any other person’s tax returns. Income and fortune all neatly presented on a government website.
I just today learned that Finland does this as well. It took a while to consider, but it would help people to get paid fair wages, detect corruption, and to generally ensure people are more honest about their finances. Overall, it’s a very different approach to what it means to be in a society together.
I think this works much better in society with low inequality, or maybe for ones that got rid of most robbers, scammers, and fraudsters. But then again, maybe Finland and Norway are good in that regard and that’s great then.
Privacy is by and large the tool of the powerful to abuse power and privilege.
This swings both ways. Public information such as voting records, for example, were used to coerce, intimidate, and physically hurt innocent people in the past. I think it takes a mature culture/society to use public information responsibly and I don’t think we are there yet.
Then again, a ton of awful stuff happens in private already, so there needs to be a balance of some kind.
This sounded like a bad idea to me, but I can’t actually come up with a reason why, so maybe it’s not.
I can see why people would not like it from a privacy standpoint. It would never fly in America for everyone. For government officials? I like this one.
Had the exact same thought process.
The reason is it’s like a treasure map with multiple “x”-es for any burglar. While in the Nordics it’s not that much of a problem (though I did read once or twice stories of people who were repeatedly and uniquely targeted because they were somewhat richer than their neighbours and despite not showing off), in any country with a large, unsupported poor population and limited to none public trust…
It’s almost like places with honest and open financial records like that have policies that support less income equality and therefore less thieves exist there. What a concept.
I wouldn’t exactly say that, Nordic countries have extraordinarily high rates of theft/robbery/burglary compared to the rest of Europe despite the fact that most people report feeling more safe from said crimes. Usually rates of those kinds of crimes are mostly correlated with how “rich” a country is, for example most first-world western countries have pretty high rates of theft while the “poorer” eastern European countries have extremely low rates of theft (and certain other crimes like rape and assault) – it’s a pretty big culture shock to go to e.g. Tirana and see store owners just leaving €200 bottles of wine or jewelry or whatever on display outside the store without any containers, or women walking alone at night in secluded areas, because it’s so uncommon to get crimed that way.
I’m sure it has a lot to do with the post-communism and very high income equality in those countries, or maybe it’s because of extremely harsh punishment for said crimes under communism, but in the context of “richer” countries income equality seems not to be a big factor compared to how “privileged” or financially well-off the average person in the country is (in the context of the EU and America/Canada). But that’s just the culture you get when you center your economy around capitalism/corporatism for centuries and money is made the most important thing/the biggest measure of success.
Because you see it from your personal point of view. Seeing it from a government perspective it’s public money and should be easily identified. Also if I remember correctly, in Norway you have to identify yourself to get access to the data.
Because it could potentially subject you to a planned robbery? That’s about it, although I think it definitely depends on the place too. Norway likely doesn’t have to worry about that issue.
I think it’s because tax forms also contain information that definitely should not be available to anyone who wants it. Employer information especially - anyone trying to escape from an abuser really doesn’t want that info widely available.
You don’t have to reveal everything on the form.
I’m in favor of transparency, but this sounds like it was designed to put democrats in prison.
It only applies to city officials, not county or state, (more likely to be democrats) and has stiff penalties for any errors discovered during an audit.