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December 7, 2010 by
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The , our ally in transparency, is currently featuring a blog of mine on the :
A closer look at the requirements makes it clear how easy these requirements are to shirk, and how much they leave out. Consider the fact that they don’t include a lot of what “lobbying” is: influencing legislation. Lobbying disclosure laws do not take into account “grassroots lobbying,” which includes urging citizens to contact their legislators to support or oppose legislation.
Click to read the full blog, and read others posts on the while you’re at it.
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November 10, 2010 by
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Elections are over, and as we head towards 2011, I’m wondering which elected officials will be taking a stand to implement transparency.
Literally, I’m wondering, because I can’t find the information anywhere. Here are the few leads I have found:
Obama and Biden continue their trend of showroom transparency. Earlier this week, Biden to discuss stimulus transparency, and the irony did not escape us. Also a new graph showing the Obama administration has not followed through with its promise to “,” posting less then half of them online.
I did manage to dig up a list of and transparency pledges from the United States House & Senate, though I suspect they are incomplete.
But what about at the state and local level? Do you know of any officials who campaigned on transparency and plan to implement it in the new year? We’ll be discussing this and other 2011 predictions for transparency this week during and I’d love to hear your thoughts.
If you do know of any newly elected officials and their transparency promises please leave their names in the comments. Thanks!
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November 5, 2010 by
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Prosecutors on Thursday filed new charges against Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo. Rizzo is one of eight officials accused of misappropriating $5.5 million of city money to pay their own salaries. Rizzo pulled in $787,637 a year as city manager of , a Los Angeles suburb with a population of about 40,000.
said the court needs to appoint a monitor who can observe the city government’s actions and “give the citizens of Bell transparency.” Brown also subpoenaed testimony from the small city of Vernon, whose officials reportedly raked in similarly high salaries.
Four of Bell’s five city council members made $100,000 a year for their part-time positions. Rizzo and seven other city officials, including former Mayor Oscar Hernandez, face charges several allegations regarding mismanaged funds and conflicts of interest.
Brown called Bell a “city in crisis” and said the appointment of a monitor would help restore transparency and trust in the city government. One council member has resigned, one is still in jail, and two others have been recently released from jail. A Los Angeles grand jury indicted former city manager and utilities director Donal O’Callaghan on three felony counts of conflict of interest and misappropriation of public funds. He made $785,000 last year.
Brown’s attempt to fix the situation shows he’s aware of a problem. But instituting a monitor for Bell after the problem is late, and the important issue to address is how to prevent these things from happening in the first place. What really needs to happen is that puts the locus of openness on the government. Rather than the LA Times having to dig up information on exorbitant salaries after officials waste millions of citizens’ dollars unethically, future Bells can be prevented. For example, the State Comptroller responded to Bell by posting the in the city and county levels.
Sunshine Review on the Bell pay scandal:
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November 1, 2010 by
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According to a , citizens give governments failing grades on transparency:
The White House earned a 46 on the study’s 100-point scale for its efforts to be transparent about what it is doing; federal agencies overall scored a 40, and Congress was at the bottom with a score of 37, nine points below the White House score.
Citizens were asked to rate governments on three aspects of transparency:
*The thoroughness of information disclosure
*The speed with which it is released
*The ease of accessing it.
The third question is worrisome. The question is “” and it is being measured by how easy it is to access government information. That is basically a way to answer the question of transparency with the definition. I also wonder if the scores attained by governments aren’t more indicative of general approval of the governments, and less reflective of transparency-centric feelings.
Still, this is a problem governments need to worry about. If governments are making serious efforts to engage citizens and make information available, but citizens aren’t aware of it, the result is the same as if these efforts weren’t made. The appropriate response is for governments to evaluate their open government initiatives, and to make sure these are conspicuous enough for citizens to be aware of them.
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October 28, 2010 by
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exist in every state to ensure that citizens have access to public officials’ decision-making gatherings. But do these citizens also have a right to actively participate during these meetings?
That question would be up before the … if the Court would agree to hear it. But it wont.
From the :
“The in March rejected claims by two citizens, one now deceased, that Pensacola’s Community Maritime Park Associates had violated Florida’s open meetings law by refusing to let them speak.[...] The Supreme Court on Oct. 13 also declined to take up a similar appeal from a 1st District ruling in a case involving the Alachua City Commission.”
What do you think? My first impression is that citizen participation is the spirit behind open meeting laws, and that local governments should welcome citizens that want to be engaged. But should the law demand that governments mandate that public participation be allowed?
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October 27, 2010 by
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Watchdogs are turning off their laptops and changing their titles to “Poll Watchers” while taking posts at their nearest polling stations. At least two organizations have emerged to address transparency and accountability during the voting process.
- has embarked on the “Election Transparency Project,” which asks voters to fill out several questionnaires (I prefer “citizen audits”) on their experience before, during, and after they’ve voted, down to what voting machine model was used. This effort is launched by several electronic voting experts in an effort to collect and compare nationwide data on the voting process.
- was launched in to train poll watchers and pursue reports of voter fraud in the county.
Catherine Engelbrecht, who works with True Vote, will be sharing her experiences and knowledge of voter fraud with us this Friday at 2pm EST for .
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October 26, 2010 by
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Attorney General Marty Jackley, a Republican, and Democratic challenger Ron Volesky agree that is important in South Dakota.
According to the Rapid City Journal, “Both candidates for South Dakota attorney general give an above average grade.” Sunshine Review, on the other hand, grades the South Dakota state website as a “B” on information disclosed on the state website; counties get an “F.”
Of course, it’s campaign season, so each candidate is trying to out-perform the other. The open government discussion in the state is turning out to be an “I can be more transparent than you” standoff. Both candidates agree that the should be stricter. Incumbent Jackley stated he would consider legislation that would allow open meetings complaints denied by states attorneys to be appealed to another venue, such as the attorney general.
Challenger Volesky, playing off of that consideration, proposed a third party to deal with such complaints.
For more South Dakota and FOIA, see the state’s (FOIA) and make sure to check out .
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October 18, 2010 by
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South Carolina Republican has open government for South Carolina on his sights. Stating that the state suffers from closed government and is “among the most secretive in the nation,” the Senator wants to change this.
Unlike many transparency promises from politicians, the Senator has concrete plans for how to approach openness in South Carolina. As far as legislative transparency goes, he would promote legislation mandating on the record voting for every vote taken by either chamber of . He would also promote stricter disclosure requirements for lawmakers in reporting their income.
Davis also wants all taxpayer-funded expenses at the state and local level to be posted in an . The checkbook would be maintained by Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom. As far as the cost is concerned, it “would be paid for many times over by the savings” that come with expanded transparency and accountability.
Davis also sees what we’ve been saying: providing open records at exorbitant costs is akin to not providing the records at all. The effect is the same: the public is kept in the dark. He state “information the taxpayers pay for should always be freely available for them to inspect.” This is the section where Davis’s open government plan is a little more vague. Besides “enacting reform,” it is unclear how information will be free to citizens. Merely stating that can prove to be an unfunded mandate, where local governments need to comply to providing information for free without having allotted resources for the fees associated with searching for, preparing, and delivering the records.
Still, the Senator’s commitment to transparency is laudable. Sunshine Review state website at a “B” for the amount of information disclosed, and South Carolina get a combined grade of “D.” Obviously, there’s some room for improvement. Davis’s steps for transparency are a great place to start.
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October 13, 2010 by
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Is usability essential to transparency efforts? My answer—you bet it is. One of the most common questions I receive from volunteer writers is how long they should search a website for a checkpoint on our . I tell them that if they can’t find it within a couple of minutes to mark the point as a “no.”
And let’s be honest, most citizens won’t give a website more then 10 seconds to satisfy their curiosity before they’re clicking back to Google. This is why I was so excited to see that conducted a on the business portal, asking questions like “Contact an elected official about the issue.”
I would love to hear of similar tests being conducted at municipal levels. Questions like “Where is the current budget?” would go a long way towards satisfying watchdog citizens inquiries.
And if any municipal governments are looking for usability test volunteers, I’d be happy to help get this trend started.
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October 8, 2010 by
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The Cincinnati City County held a closed door meeting last week to discuss important spending motions. The process is being described as “.”
One newspaper is taking matters into its own hands. The Enquirer is suing Mayor Mark Mallory and the City Council, to pass allocations for the $20 million a year in casino revenues set to start in 2013.
Apparently, Mayor Mallory has been conducting “round robin”, meeting with small groups of council members to avoid the formal label of “meeting,” which would make the get-togethers public records under the law.
This isn’t the only case of closed meetings in Cincinatti. Other important funding allocations have been decided at .
More on Ohio open government:
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