New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie defended his failure to report any of his $95,000 annual entertainment allowance on tax returns, arguing the money isn’t income because he has accounted for it.
Just don’t ask him to make those records available to the public. Through his press secretary, Christie rejected New Jersey Watchdog’s request to disclose how he spent the cash.
Government-transparency advocates and tax specialists fired back.
“If it’s not public, then you’re not being accountable because it’s the public who decides whether or not you have a job,” said Bill Allison, senior fellow at Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit advocate for transparency in government. “I don’t know how they can be saying these are not public records and can’t be disclosed.”
“To hold your public officials accountable, you have to know what they’re spending money on,” said Sheila Weinberg, CEO of Truth in Accounting, a non-profit watchdog for fiscal responsibility in government. “The public has a right and a need to know.”
The full story is online at http://watchdog.org/212497/christie-expense-account-secret-2/.
1 comment:
Typical Christie behavior just like Stephen Massell
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