Corruption is New Jersey’s worst-kept secret, and Paterson is its poster child. Pick a department and you will be faced with a plethora of cases of mismanagement, corruption and abuse.
In the Department of Economic Development, Paterson’s deputy zone officer was Jose Fermin recently arrested and charged with numerous second degree counts Crimes, including bribery and conspiracy. Fermin, who is responsible for issuing building permits in the city, is accused, among other things, of having sold forged documents to co-conspirators who have not yet been named. In a city where LLCs have bought up much of the city in recent years and residents have long complained about poor living conditions, this type of corruption is a serious alarm signal.
You would have a hard time finding an ethical component in the Paterson Police Department. I’ll save you time and name just two of his most egregious problems. The town of Paterson, ie its residents who pay the bills, spends about $1 million a year resolving misconduct lawsuits. This shouldn’t come as a surprise as the Paterson Police Department had no fewer than nine Federal indictments and convictions of its officers in just three short years.
Seemingly unaccountable to their constituents, city officials laugh at the bank.
Finance Director on March 14th Javier Silva scoffed at the public outcry as he leaned over his phone and laughed as the people of America cried out for justice Police killing of Najee Seabrooks. Told by community members to put down his phone and listen carefully, Silva giggled before being confronted by council member Mike Jackson.
If Silva is comfortable enough to laugh in the face of dozens of people demanding justice, what can residents expect from this Treasurer with a city budget in excess of $300 million?
Economic justice is an immutable part of racial and social justice. For this reason, racial inequality is always associated with economic injustice, a reality made so blatantly clear in Paterson. For example, the city allocates about $50 million of the city budget to militarizing the police force, while the city’s libraries and recreation and housing departments expect a few million dollars.
Economic justice has long been a forgotten element of racial justice. In his much-celebrated but selectively remembered “I Have a Dream” speech, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about economic justice and set out the campaign of the poor just before his assassination.
What would economic justice look like in MLK’s name and legacy for a city plagued by corrupt city officials?
Entry into participatory budgeting.
Participatory budgets, sometimes called national budgets/economies, is a form of direct or pure democracy. Participatory budgeting is based on the notion that the traditional democratic process is highly stratified and stagnant.
Porto Alegre, one of the largest cities in Brazil, introduced participatory budgeting in 1989. A city of 1.4 million people, it has relied on its own citizens to allocate a percentage of the city budget for more than 30 years. Unsurprisingly, this has led to an increase in funding for health care and social services across the city. Since then, numerous cities around the world have turned to participatory budgeting, including many here in the United States.
In 2022, Cambridge, Massachusetts completed its ninth cycle of participatory budgeting. The city of just over 100,000 committed $1 million to the process and approved funding for better bike lanes, water fountains and more other beautification projects.
New York City has been using participatory budgeting since 2011 several parishes in the city. Every year, the residents of these districts decide on the award of around US$35 million.
What would it mean to introduce participatory budget management in Paterson? In a city where real estate is being sold to absentee owners and corporate-backed developers looking to monetize the housing market at the expense of longtime residents, participatory budgeting would bring important economic decisions directly to the people rather than to government officials and their cronies.
We can imagine people choosing to divert more funds to libraries and recreational facilities, departments that now count for a meager 1-3% of the city’s budget. We can imagine Patersonians deciding to fund nonviolent crisis intervention teams the Paterson Healing Collective, of which Seabrooks was a member.
A common trend in participatory budgeting across the country and around the world is for communities to fund and support projects and resources focused on community nurturing, rather than more tax breaks for developers, the militarization of the police force, and pay rises for city officials.
Einstein defined insanity as repeating the same process and expecting different results. Expecting politicians to solve the crisis they keep throwing us into would fall under this definition. It’s time for participatory budgeting in Paterson.
GET THE TOMORROW HEADLINES IN YOUR INBOX
SUBSCRIBE TO
Comments are closed.