Lo­cal gov­ern­ment should be about turn­ing con­stituen­cies in­to vi­brant economies, and that should not be a pipe dream but a re­al­i­ty, re­sult­ing from lead­er­ship, vi­sion, and the val­ues of in­tegri­ty and en­ter­prise. The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port did not tell us any­thing that we did not al­ready know about the lo­cal gov­ern­ment’s lack of trans­paren­cy in ac­count­ing for the tax­pay­ers’ purse.

They don’t pro­vide ac­counts, not be­cause of a lack of abil­i­ty to do so, but be­cause it doesn’t make one io­ta of dif­fer­ence to them if there is a dere­lic­tion of du­ty and fis­cal ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. In fact, no one in the busi­ness of gov­ern­ing the coun­try seems to care. The re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions are re­quired by law to sub­mit an­nu­al fi­nan­cials for au­dit­ing, and apart from the Ari­ma and Princes Town Cor­po­ra­tions, some have not filed any for 14 years, as re­port­ed by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al in the 2023 Ac­counts.

What is the stark re­al­i­ty here? Over the past 14 years, be­tween 16 and 20 bil­lion dol­lars have not been ac­count­ed for. This is not to say that mon­ey wasn’t spent on com­mu­ni­ty needs, but we don’t know the facts of that ex­pen­di­ture, nor do we know the ex­tent of any cor­rup­tion and whether giv­ing them more mon­ey can be jus­ti­fied be­cause there is no ac­count­abil­i­ty. This is an in­jus­tice to cit­i­zens. Fur­ther­more, where is the moral au­thor­i­ty to ask cit­i­zens to dip in­to most­ly emp­ty pock­ets to find prop­er­ty tax when the Gov­ern­ment has shown no con­cern over lo­cal gov­ern­ment neg­li­gence and lacks du­ty of care to cit­i­zens?

How can any gov­ern­ment threat­en to con­fis­cate cit­i­zens’ prop­er­ty over fail­ure to pay prop­er­ty tax­es when lo­cal gov­ern­ment doesn’t ac­count for bil­lions of dol­lars in ex­pen­di­ture? Lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties should be the heart­beat of our na­tion, vi­brant spaces for so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment where there’s a sense of place, of cul­ture, with cen­tres of learn­ing, en­ter­prise, and leisure, fo­cal points for qual­i­ty fam­i­ly life, in­no­va­tion, and spring beds of mi­cro and small busi­ness­es that form the bedrock of economies.

They should be places where clean and well-man­aged schools are at the cen­tre of com­mu­ni­ty life, where chil­dren get their first sense of be­long­ing be­yond the con­fines of their homes. They must be places tourists like to vis­it to cap­ture the essence of T&T, its cui­sine, folk­lore, cus­toms and tra­di­tions, his­to­ry, mu­sic, dance, and art—le cen­tre de la vie—where the Mac­com­eres tell hi­lar­i­ous ver­sions of com­mu­ni­ty life against the beau­ti­ful batik back­drops of a clean en­vi­ron­ment.

Lo­cal gov­ern­ment should sow the seeds of dili­gent, grass­roots lead­er­ship to in­spire pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ty in­volve­ment in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. Lo­cal gov­ern­ment lead­ers must take pride in nur­tur­ing the vast po­ten­tial and beau­ty of their com­mu­ni­ties, un­der­stand­ing the cru­cial role they play in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, and how well-main­tained lo­cal at­trac­tions are vi­tal to en­hanc­ing the ex­pe­ri­ences of lo­cal and for­eign tourists.

How could they in­crease rev­enues for their com­mu­ni­ties? In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, tourism has al­ways been a re­li­able al­ly. By beau­ti­fy­ing their com­mu­ni­ties, har­ness­ing lo­cal his­to­ry and in­ven­tions, and pack­ag­ing tours to Paramin, Ari­ma—the seat of our First Peo­ples—and the oil belt, to name a few. With smart and strate­gic pro­mo­tion, lo­cal gov­ern­ment should have the ca­pac­i­ty to stim­u­late com­mu­ni­ty busi­ness and di­ver­si­fy rev­enue streams in ways nev­er yet ex­plored. In­deed, lo­cal gov­ern­ment plays a vi­tal role in eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, im­prov­ing fis­cal health, while nur­tur­ing res­i­dents’ qual­i­ty of life, and pro­tect­ing pris­tine en­vi­ron­ments. They are the es­sen­tial mech­a­nism for de­liv­er­ing ser­vices re­spon­sive to lo­cal needs, pro­vid­ing on-the-ground lead­er­ship and ad­vo­ca­cy on com­mu­ni­ty pri­or­i­ties, and fos­ter­ing civic pride in a way Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment can’t. They must be ac­count­able to the peo­ple who trust­ed that they were putting re­spon­si­ble peo­ple in of­fice. It is the lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty that is the bane and pain of our so­ci­ety—at all lev­els of gov­ern­ment.

Es­sen­tial­ly, they should be staffed with com­pe­tent man­agers and lead­ers who have walked years on the man­age­r­i­al ter­rain of some field and can bring to bear knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence rel­e­vant to run­ning lo­cal gov­ern­ment. No one could be blamed if lo­cal gov­ern­ment is per­ceived as mere­ly cre­at­ing jobs for peo­ple, mak­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship a na­tion­al trait, and not be­ing able to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween im­pov­er­ished lead­er­ship and lead­er­ship that sets the stan­dards and val­ues by which com­mu­ni­ties grow and pros­per.

True, there are strong ex­am­ples of our peo­ple’s courage, en­ter­prise, scholas­tics, and oth­er tal­ents. But our present predica­ment of en­dem­ic crime, com­mu­ni­ty de­cay, and oth­er se­ri­ous so­cial and fis­cal prob­lems are self-in­flict­ed pains. Cit­i­zens feel as help­less about the lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty as they do about crime. In the ab­sence of ac­count­abil­i­ty for tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey, prop­er­ty tax is noth­ing more than state ban­dit­ry over which we have no con­trol.