Taxpayers have a right to know how their tax dollars are spent, but for 12 years, Maricopa County taxpayers have been kept in the dark about where their tax dollars have gone while the county sheriff’s office has been under a federal monitor.
In a bid for government transparency, the Goldwater Institute is now asking the federal court judge to allow Maricopa taxpayers to see how their money is being spent.
Goldwater attorneys this week filed a friend of the court brief requesting the judge to reconsider a 2014 order that keeps the federal overseer’s spending confidential.
The brief comes as Maricopa County argues in a motion that continued federal oversight is no longer justified and should end. Federal oversight of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has cost taxpayers more than $30 million, according to the county.
The Goldwater Institute’s brief notes that over the last decade, the sheriff’s office has reformed many of the policies that gave rise to the federal monitor. “History did not end in 2014, and continued federal oversight of MCSO cannot be based on decade-old facts,” the Goldwater brief states.
The monitor in Maricopa County is a private company required by court order to file its invoices exclusively to the judge. The invoices are now off limits, even to government watchdogs. Goldwater’s efforts to obtain copies of the invoices have repeatedly been rejected, and the government refuses to explain the reasons for the secrecy.
In its brief, Goldwater argues that “it’s crucial that Maricopa County taxpayers be permitted to know where their tax dollars are going—and that’s hindered by the existing orders and continued federal oversight without a full public accounting.”
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