She is the last person who should be supporting such legislation given the controversy surrounding whether she voted to allow her sister?s company to receive city contracts while City Council president. The city?s Board of Ethics decided against issuing a complaint against Dixon earlier this year without offering an explanation for its decision.

The city charter currently permits all contracts between $5,000 and $25,000 to be approved by the five-member Board of Estimates without multiple bids.

The proposed legislation would allow the City Council to raise the dollar amount for a non-competitive bid, among other changes.

Five thousand dollars may not be very much, but what would the new threshold be? $30,000? $100,000? Higher?

City Council Member and mayoral candidate Keiffer Mitchell proposes reducing the Board of Estimates from five people to three people. He would eliminate the two mayoral appointees, reducing the influence of the mayor, so that only elected officials ? City Council president, comptroller and mayor would vote oncity contracts.

That?s a good start. He also supports posting on the Internet the names of those companies with city contracts greater than $25,000 that have made political donations to those in city office within 30 days.

Why not post all contracts immediately, regardless of size and if companies made contributions? Doing so would make it easy to see if any companies are skirting public oversight by winning multiple bids falling below reporting requirements or are using their financial clout to win contracts. It would also be a simple way to see if the city is complying with minority contracting rules. Obscuring the bids only makes it harder to find out who holds city contracts.

The City Council should vote against the legislation and for a law mandating that all city contracts be posted online at the time they are approved. The same goes for every county council in the state. The only people it would hurt are those with something to hide.