Once again the City of Natchez perhaps has followed the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law regarding the city’s annual budget process.

The budget is among the most important legislative functions city aldermen perform yet creation of the budget each year seems almost to be cloaked in darkness.

What should be an open and fully transparent project isn’t.

The first required public hearing on the budget last week was a bit of a farce because the public was invited to comment on a budget the details of which they were only provided shortly before the meeting.

We have long urged city leaders to use more care and more common sense in its budget process and sadly those suggestions appear to have fallen on deaf ears again.

The entire budget is public record, from the salaries and wages of city workers to the amount budgeted for office supplies. It’s the public’s money being spent, thus the public has a right to know details and an ability to ask questions.

An urgency to meet a deadline almost always exacerbates the problem. City leaders have a year to start planning the new budget, but we always seem to be absolutely down to the wire and under a gun to get it approved.

Natchez citizens deserve better planning and, most important, they deserve transparency and a full, and welcomed, seat at government’s table.