Tonight I participated in the first “Tough Times, Tough Choices” budget forum along with hundreds of other Philadelphians. I was really encouraged about how everyone came together for the common purpose and, much like one high-fives neighboring fans at the ballpark after a Ryan Howard homerun, participants were quick to develop an enthusiastic “we’re in this together” mentality with total strangers.

After hearing city officials discuss the magnitude of the City’s budget challenges, we broke into focus groups and tried to come to consensus on how to solve the City’s budget mess. Participants also were able to record two-minute messages that can be viewed on the web.

It was clear to all involved that the challenge to make the City’s ends meet is neither simple nor easy and everyone had strong feelings about avoiding cuts that would leave neighborhoods under served. My group was only able to agree on spending reductions and revenue enhancements to cut the budget gap in half.

But the major complaint — articulated in my group and echoed throughout the other groups — was that the choices presented to us were the City’s choices, not ours. For example, if we wanted to choose to reduce Police costs, we would have to choose to lay off uniformed officers and could not choose to manage personnel better to reduce overtime costs. If we wanted to reduce administrative costs, we had to choose to cut workers and could not choose to eliminate no-bid contracts. Similarly, on the revenues side, we could choose to increase tax rates, but could not call for the City to collect back taxes from tax scofflaws.

This is why it is crucial to have more budgetary transparency and why, as Controller, I will put the entire City budget online as I approve payments so citizens can see exactly where their money really goes — not listed by what agency’s spend, but listed by who is getting what.

Given the ability to examine each and every expenditure of public money, I am certain Philadelphians would tell their elected officials how they would reshape the budget so that we could invest in our common priorities without wasting money in so many ways.