Privately-funded citizens proved municipal corruption by auditing publicly mandated records.

Evidence

Confident that if the citizenry only knew the facts about government it would take the right steps, the three young men decided first to determine and disseminate such facts. Momentarily stymied by the refusal of notoriously corrupt Manhattan Borough President John F. Ahearn to show them his records, they began to check records that could not be hidden—the construction contract specifications that borough presidents were required by law to publish in newspapers—to see if the specifications were being followed. Construction workers began to notice the presence of young men in high collars, vests and bowler hats who spent whole days performing such inexplicable maneuvers as counting bags of cement. When the count was finished, the young men had discovered—and proved—that the city had, in collusion with favored contractors, paid for hundreds of thousands of dollars of supplies—supplies such as bags of cement—that had never been delivered. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 259

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the later reform arc where Moses-style technocratic solutionism claims that facts alone will fix government. — connects to: Line-by-line itemized budgets were invented to expose municipal corruption and let voters judge departments. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 262
• ADDENDUM: Independent good-government auditing as infrastructure parallels ‘Grafting & Growth’ theme of overlooked practical systems doing real work.

Broader Connections

• Line-by-line itemized budgets were invented to expose municipal corruption and let voters judge departments. #corroborates (0.85) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 262