April roundup

Here are some stories to wrap up this month's transparency news. Thanks for reading and I hope you continue to find this blog useful for transparency news and information in Nevada and across the nation.

• Mixed grade for Gibbs from press corp. Overall? White House spokesman does something things right, others wrong.


• Washington Times on the relaxed labor accounting rules that will harm union transparency. See our previous discussion.


• We can put a man on the moon, but we can't list a Congress member's vote history on official government websites. Efforts are being made on third-party sites, but there is no reason this can't be done on THOMAS.


• Cato on the broken promises on Obama's five-day waiting period.


• Interesting post on transparency and paternalism in both the economic and political sense. Definitely worth a read.


• Update on the Ron Sims vs. Stefan Sharkansky legal battle. As mentioned before, Sims has kept King County residents in the dark on various public projects.


• NextGov on Obama's web presence so far. Shows promise but more needs to be done.


• Treasury Secretary Geithner released his daily schedules from January 2007 to January 2009. Maybe not intimately related to government transparency, but does give insight into the life of a Washington/New York insider.


• After twitter gained Oprah and Ashton Kutcher as users, who can possibly be left? Oh, that's right, the SEC. Seeing public institutions embrace new media is definitely a good thing.


• The public's satisfaction with government websites dropped slightly during the first quarter in 2009. TechPresident blames it on the overly inflated hopes people had on Obama's ability to transform the web presence of the federal government.


• ProPublica grades the first 100 days. The conventional wisdom seems to be that while efforts are being made, more needs to be done.


• And finally, a trio of Senators are demanding more transparency on the TARP funds.

Bird strike info to be open to all

In the grand scheme of things, releasing data on birds hitting airplanes is not as weighty as CIA interrogation memos. The release of such information, however, is always a welcome advancement of transparency in Washington.

The Sunlight Foundation Blog reports that the Federal Aviation Administration requested comments "on a proposed ruling barring the release of data on airplanes struck by birds in the Federal Register."

The public reaction? Overwhelming:

[Ray] LaHood, [Secretary of Transportation], whose agency oversees the FAA, said that public comments ran "99.9 percent" in favor of making such information accessible.

LaHood said that FAA efforts to keep information about bird strikes secret "doesn't really comport with the president's idea of transparency."

Agreed. And the much publicized landing of Flight 1549 in the Hudson River only further highlights the public's right to know. The FAA has agreed with public opinion and will release the data.

Are transparency efforts counter-productive?

I'd guess that most people who read this blog support the idea of increased government transparency. I'm pretty sure most people -- if you asked them on the street -- would also support increased government transparency.

But do transparency websites such as this one actually further the cause of transparency?

Good government activist Aaron Swartz argues in his post, Transparency is Bunk, that the traditional method of most transparency-minded websites doesn't actually serve the cause of transparency.

Instead, he says, transparency activists cajole and pressure public officials to give up records (such as employee salaries and contract amounts, as is done on TransparentNevada) and then allow easy access to those records.

The problem with this, Swartz argues, is that many "public records" are simply a "cover story" that obscures what is really going on.

The problem is that reality doesn’t live in the databases. Instead, the databases that are made available, even if grudgingly, form a kind of official cover story, a veil of lies over the real workings of government. If you visit a site like GovTrack, which publishes information on what Congresspeople are up to, you find that all of Congress’s votes are on inane items like declaring holidays and naming post offices. The real action is buried in obscure subchapters of innocuous-sounding bills and voted on under emergency provisions that let everything happen without public disclosure.

Swartz believes the solution is old-fashioned investigative journalism. Investigations that uncover the "cover stories" and break the scandals is what actually increases openness in government.

Although some of Swartz's complaints have merits, he misses on others.

Swartz says that merely having the data out there doesn't result in actual transparency, in which he defines as oversight or good governance.

In a strict sense, he is right. TransparentNevada, however, shows that getting the data out there is a huge first step.

After launching TransparentNevada it became clear that many fire captains and fire engineers were making "well over $200,000 a year, most if it in overtime."

Would this potential abuse of the overtime system have been noticed if the salaries were kept under lock and key? I doubt it.

Making the salary data available was a necessary first step towards increasing transparency and accountability in state government.

Update 5/4: Check out Evgeny Morozov's take on the issue.

Stimulus tracking won't be easy, study finds

The Government Accountability Office released a report yesterday detailing the potential problems states will encounter when it comes to tracking how stimulus money will be spent.

Despite President Barack Obama's pledge that the $787 billion in economic stimulus money will be subject to "unprecedented accountability," many state officials worry that they lack the resources to oversee properly how their share of the money is being spent, a report Thursday from Congress' watchdog agency said.

The study of 16 states and the District of Columbia showed that many simply didn't have a system in place to report how the money is being spent or were unclear on certain elements.

Does it concern anyone else that these states don't already have systems in place to track where they spend their money?

Pushing transparency in the Supreme Court

While the Congress and White House continue moving towards increased transparency, the Supreme Court isn't.

Texas Representative John Culberson (R-TX), though, wants the Supreme Court to open its electronic doors:

Seemingly energized, Culberson moved on to his main point, urging the Court to go to the next level of transparency. The justices had already talked about the occasional release of oral argument audiotapes, and of plans for an improved website. Culberson said there would be "no logical distinction" between what the Court has already done, and streaming the video of oral argument on the Court's web site Suddenly, dressed in high-tech clothes, the old debate over cameras in the Supreme Court had been resurrected.

Thank you Congressman Culberson.

The Justice's problems with increased openness appear to hinge on the idea that by opening up the Court, it diminishes the stature of the institution. This criticism rings hollow. Does C-SPAN diminish Congress? Does Obama releasing weekly messages online demean his office? Hardly.

In America, public officials' activities should be as open as possible, and the Supreme Court would be wise to embrace that ideal as well.

Secrecy serves no one

Out of Seattle this time, columnist Danny Westneat takes on the argument that sometimes issues of public importance are best debated behind closed doors.

So we had the spectacle Thursday of an aide to Councilmember Jean Godden, an ex-journalist, pulling a Seattle Times reporter from a room by her purse strap. Then the city attorney saying that meeting in private probably violates the spirit of the state's open-meetings law (you think?). Then the inevitable Friday-afternoon backpedaling and forming of review committees.

Because nothing screams "we care about your concerns and are working to fix them" like a review committee.

Why do some politicians feel the need to keep their discussions out of the public eye? "Privacy lets them speak openly. Close the door and they can 'talk freely and debate issues without being worried about how our comments will be interpreted.'"

Luckily, not all politicians feel the same. Washington Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown recently -- and openly -- commented on the possibility of instituting a state income tax. Agree with it or not, the important part is she didn't feel the need to hide behind closed doors before talking about it.

Her thoughts?

"Having a conversation about restructuring this tax system so that working-class families are treated more fairly is not a conversation I am afraid of having."

Rep. Hal Rogers: King of the Earmarks

Most people are against earmarks abuse in the abstract, but this piece will give you concrete examples of what kinds of abuse are possible.

Following new rules that govern the earmarking process, a spotlight has landed on KY-5 Representative Hal Rogers. Despite burying his requested earmarks deep in his website, orientated sideways and unsearchable, it becomes clear that Rogers wants little more than to "bring home the bacon" to his south Kentucky district.

Some examples?

Those requests include more than $40 million for programs that Rogers either created directly or are housed in Rogers' hometown of Somerset at the Center for Rural Development, a sprawling, state-of-the-art facility that locals call the "Taj-Ma Hal."

The National Institute for Hometown Security, a non-profit organization that Rogers helped create and has few staffers, is slated to net $15 million "to continue to provide leadership in discovering and developing community based critical infrastructure protections solutions."

That last sentence really doubles down on the buzzwords, doesn't it?

Rogers' earmark requests include $6 million to Somerset-based Progeny Systems to develop a biometrics-based submarine access control system, $8 million to the Outdoor Venture Corp., also in Somerset, for tents that can be relocated and reconstructed by two people in 20 minutes, and $16 million to the McKee, Ky.-based Phoenix Products Inc. for aircraft drip pans.

Progeny employees gave more than $13,000 to Rogers through his campaign and his political action committee, HALPAC. Outdoor Venture Corp. president James Egnew and his wife, Azalie, contributed more than $20,000 to Rogers' campaigns; Peggy and Thomas Wilson, owner and manager of Phoenix Products, have given roughly $15,000.

So in addition with mere waste, there also exists these "coincidental" connections between donors donating money and receiving funds. Sure.

It is nearly impossible to find Roger's list of earmarks on his website without this direct link to the list.

Obama announces Chopra as new CTO

President Obama, following up on a campaign pledge to appoint a Chief Technology Officer in his administration, has named Virginia Secretary of Technology Aneesh P. Chopra to the position.

The response has been pretty positive. Noted technology writer Tim O'Reilly had this to say about the nomination:

Chopra demonstrates a deep understanding of the idea that the government is an enabler, not the ultimate solution provider. From the list of initiatives above, you can see that Chopra grasps the power of open source software, Web 2.0, user-participation, and why it's better to harness the ingenuity of a developer community than to specify complete top-down solutions. In a conversation with me a couple of months ago, he expressed his enthusiasm for the idea of a "digital commonwealth," a recognition that technology can help us to come together as a society to solve problems and create value through common effort.

TechPresident says that the nomination is a great step forward for transparency.

Chopra's accomplishments include opening up state websites in Virginia so they could be more readily searchable by citizens. He also has expertise in healthcare technology, something which is undoubtedly going to be important in the coming years.

All in all this is a good development in the "Government 2.0" movement. Hopefully the promises become reality.

California launches a new transparency website

The Golden State has gotten a little less opaque. Less then two weeks ago California launched a new site with the goal of bringing increased accountability to top state administration officials.

How?

This site will increase the transparency of Governor Schwarzenegger's administration by making information regarding Statement of Economic Interests, Form 700 and Travel Expense Claim Forms readily available to the public.

Schwarzenegger issued the memorandum calling for increased transparency after reports surfaced via local newspapers of conflicts of interest and abuse of travel expenses by administration officials in early March.

Of course transparency advocates would prefer proactive to reactionary transparency, but more transparency is better than less.

Let's hope the site is taken seriously by those in the administration and its existence can be used to prevent and expose more ethical lapses issues in the future.

Collaboration, not competition, needed in transparency push

When a Governor issues an executive order promoting transparency, it is usually praised. Yet the details show that Colorado Governor Bill Ritter's plan to open up the state's finances may actually be undercutting transparency efforts.

A transparency project unveiled by Gov. Bill Ritter on Thursday would create a searchable database online so taxpayers could peruse the state's checkbook.

Unfortunately, once you look at the details of the governor's plan, it doesn't appear to be as far-reaching and useful as a similar proposal already in the state legislature.

Ritter's plan is to post information such as state credit-card expenses and other financial documents on a searchable and public website. In addition, it would show spending totals by department, types of spending and vendor.

However, Ritter's plan falls short of complete transparency in two ways. First, it only shows the aggregate spending levels, rather than detailed reports. Second, his effort undermines a stronger transparency bill moving through the state legislature.

Let's hope the governor's executive order is the start, not the end, of Colorado's transparency reforms.

Las Vegas Sun: Secrecy has no place in higher-ed

In the aftermath of the recent rejection of a bill that would of forced university employees to reveal sources of outside income, here is the Sun's take:

There is no reason why the public, which pays the salaries of university system employees, should be prohibited from finding out who else is paying for a professor’s talent.

Universities are supposed to be institutions that promote the free flow of information. They are not supposed to be shrouded in secrecy.

When public records aren't

An interesting counterpoint to Thomas Mitchell's experience of getting a look at public records.

Journalist and resident of Ruston, WA Ian Demsky sought to take a look at the Town Council agendas for March as well as a copy of the 2009 town budget.

He was told it wouldn't be a problem for the former, and he would need to fill out a public records request for the latter. He agreed and said he would be down shortly.

When he arrived he was then asked to fill out a public records request for the March agenda. Upon completion, a clerk said that he would be notified when the records were ready.

As it turns out, the office legally had five days to respond to his request. But, as Demsky notes, never before in his capacity as a journalist had he encountered such a delay for a basic request.

It struck me that to ask residents to automatically wait five days to even look at the previous month’s agendas from council meetings – documents that the woman who was initially helping me seemed to be printing out and holding in her hand while I was at the counter – was unnecessary.

A sad example of bureaucratic inflexibility.

The importance of whistle-blowers

The Review-Journal's Thomas Mitchell has another great piece on the importance of transparency in governmental institutions.

Earlier this month, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court decision that supported the Baltimore Police Department's firing of an officer who shared information with a newspaper regarding a deadly police shooting.

What sparked the conflict between the officer and his supervisors?

In the memo to his bosses, police Maj. Michael Andrew called for an investigation of the shooting, suggesting "officers had not exhausted all peaceful non-lethal options and that the department had unnecessarily placed officers in harm's way," according to the ruling.

Unable to get his concerns about the shooting heard, Andrew gave the memo to a reporter.

After Andrew turned over his memo to a reporter, the department launched an internal affairs probe, accusing him of giving confidential (Read: embarrassing) information to the media.

While the ruling has important implications regarding whistle-blowers' rights, a concurring opinion focused on something larger.

Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a former newspaper man, noted that newspapers are laying off staff, cutting budgets, and even going belly-up, all at a time when governments need scrutiny.

How will decreasing newspaper oversight and investigations effect government? Without a doubt "new media" activists will pick up some of the slack, but will they pick up all of it?

Many bloggers do what they do on a part-time basis and for little or no pay. In addition, the average blogger lacks the monetary resources and legal representation that many newspaper publications enjoy. For every Armen Yousoufian willing to spend $330,000 of his own money and 4,000 hours of his own time fighting for governmental transparency; there are untold thousands of activists who simply can't do the same.

While "new media" journalists are a vital part of our public discourse, as the judge in the case notes, bloggers and blogging often "remains derivative and dependent on the mainstream media reportage (and) the deep sourcing and accumulated insights of the seasoned beat reporter."

The sad fact is that newspapers couldn't get their act together to deal with momentous changes that have happened since the arrival of the internet. Hopefully they can figure it out, and figure it out soon.

Ralston on campaign finance transparency

Jon Ralston has a blistering attack on the rejection of Assembly Bill 82 by the "mensa crew" up in Carson City:

Money is not the mother’s milk of politics; it is a noxious potion that turns corrupt politicians into more corrupt politicians, that induces susceptible politicians to become unduly influenced politicians. It is like a polluting virus introduced into the stream, with the effect of the infection concomitant with the tolerance levels of those swimming in the body politic.

It is on these issues that even the most diligent and admirable members of the Gang of 63 lose any respect because their self-perpetuation gland seems to secrete an enzyme that turns them into an incumbent-protection cabal. And they are at it again.

Make sure to check out our previous discussion on campaign finance reform.

Sunlight before Signing: A Review

While campaigning, President Obama made a pledge:

Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.

And again, on the campaign trail:

When there is a bill that ends up on my desk as a president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government’s doing.

And how well has President Obama held up that pledge?

Of the eleven bills President Obama has signed, only six have been posted on Whitehouse.gov. None have been posted for a full five days after presentment from Congress.

I've discussed Obama's breaking of that campaign pledge before. Let's take a look back at the eleven pieces of legislation he has signed and how well (or not) he followed his own disclosure rules.

Of all of the bills, only the DTV Delay Act came close to meeting the "sunlight before signing" rules. It was "cleared for presentment" on February 4th and signed February 11th. It was actually presented to the President on February 9th. So, Obama gets the credit for waiting five days, although the clock should have started on February 9th to follow the spirit of his campaign pledge.

Four times, a bill was posted online while it was still in Congress. While this might meet the five days in some respects, doing this doesn't allow for visitors to see last minute additions.

Two bills were waited on for five days, but for some reason were not posted on whitehouse.gov, thereby breaking the campaign pledge.

Why is the President not following his pledge and giving the people a chance to review legislation before he signs it? The White House doesn't even seem to have a system for accomplishing it. Do they announce it via their blog, a press release, or a briefing? Should the bill be posted in PDF, a webpage, or in plain text? Should it be hosted on Congress' website or on the White House's website?

Another problem is that transparency is not something a lot of people focus on. Much like campaign finance reform, only those who actively follow it are disappointed when it is broken.

While the administration has been quite disappointing thus far, let's hope they get their act together. Just don't hold your breath.

HUD nominee no friend of transparency

Despite President Obama's pledge of making government transparent, his nominee for Deputy Secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development is no friend to the open government movement.

As King County Executive in Washington State, there were numerous controversies where Ron Sims tried to prevent transparency when citizens sought information from the local government:

Ask Stefan Sharkansky. A Seattle blogger and citizen activist, Sharkansky blew the whistle on election fraud shenanigans involving Sims’ office during the November 2004 gubernatorial election. He has fought since December 2004 to obtain public records related to gross errors in the county’s ballot-counting.

“What we’ve seen is not just a lazy agency dragging its heels to respond to document requests, but an organized effort to cover-up official misconduct and to obstruct justice,” Sharkansky stated in his suit.

But there is more. Armen Yousoufian, a former Boeing engineer, has been battling with Sims for 12 years to force him to obey public disclosure laws.

Yousoufian wanted access to government documents related to a sports stadium subsidy plan up for a vote in Washington in the summer of 1997. The records he requested at the end of May 1997 pertained to the fiscal impact of a massive tax-hike proposal to build a new football palace for the Seattle Seahawks. Time was of the essence: County residents were preparing to vote on a ballot initiative package worth $300 million on June 17, 1997. Boosters of similar “public-private stadium partnerships” had made dubious claims of economic windfalls that never transpired. Yousoufian – serving as the watchdog that Sims failed to be for his constituents — was absolutely right to question the numbers.

Yousoufian went to the courts to hold Sims accountable. He has spent $330,000 of his own money and spent 4,000 hours of his own time challenging Sims.

A lower court ruled in his favor, dinging the county’s obstructionism as “egregious,” but skimped in awarding him the minimum $5 a day for each of the 8,252 days that Sims’ office withheld the documents. The courts found “hundreds” of instances where Sims’ office deceived Yousoufian or refused to tell the truth. To deter future abuse, Yousoufian appealed for higher fines.

Is this the transparency Obama was talking about? Others seem to have a different — and more favorable — opinion of Sims. While he may of done some worthwhile things in some areas, his consistent disregard of transparency during his tenure in Washington may give Senators a reason to delay or deny his appointment.

Earmark disclosure varies widely

After much public scorn for the earmark process, Congress decided to clean up its act and established new rules on earmarks. Lawmakers can no longer "airdrop" earmarks into legislation. They are also required to post links on their websites detailing earmarks they requested. The deadline for Representatives was April 4th.

How did our esteemed Representatives do?

"The only thing consistent among the various websites is inconsistency," said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense. “Some lawmakers put a link to the disclosures right on the homepage, while others bury their requests under an electronic rock, forcing constituents to click through several pages under legislation, district initiatives, issues or some other general category.

The Hill does an excellent job of running through various House member's websites and seeing exactly how clearly they posted a link to their earmark requests. Taxpayers for Common Sense took it even farther and is keeping track of each House member in a spreadsheet.

Citizens should appreciate the efforts by those who followed both the letter and the spirit of the rules and did their best to clearly indicate their requested earmarks.

Fullest disclosures included those made by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) — who is a notorious earmarker — and even Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), who as the last freshman Republican to be sworn in this year is arguably the lowest-ranking member of the House.

As we've mentioned before, Shelley Berkley and Dina Titus both have declared their earmark requests. Dean Heller, as of April 9th, 2009, has not. Senators have until the end of April to post their earmark requests.

New York unveils Sunlight 2.0

Some encouraging news out of New York. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has released version 2 of their open government portal, SunlightNY.com.

Sunlight 2.0 features new data, a more user-friendly format, and innovative features to increase openness and accountability. The revamped Web site provides the public easy access to information on their tax dollars, elected officials, legislation, and other state business.

Congratulations to our transparency minded peers in New York for continuing to bring government business out of the shadows and into the light. We hope their success continues.

(Thanks FiscalAccountability)

Transparency in higher-ed meets resistance [Updated]

Back in 2007, UNLV officials rejected a Las Vegas Sun request for information about university employees who earned outside income. The Sun wanted the information to investigate potential conflict of interests.

Nevada System of Higher Education rules designed to inform UNLV officials about potential conflicts of interest among university employees earning outside income also allow officials to withhold that information from the public.

UNLV General Counsel Richard Linstrom cited those rules in denying a Sun request for copies of outside income disclosure forms submitted in the past year by faculty members and other employees.

The issue spurred State Sen. Terry Care to introduce Senate Bill 279 (PDF warning).

S.B. 279 states:

If a state officer or employee enters into a contract or other agreement to provide his professional services to a person or governmental entity other than his employer ... the state officer or employee shall file a notice of the contract or agreement with his employer as soon as practicable after entering into the contract or agreement.

Yet, as one might expected, the bill has met resistance.

Jane Nichols, vice chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education and James Richardson of the Nevada Faculty Alliance told members of the Senate Government Affairs Committee they were concerned companies won’t hire professors for independent work if that information is disclosed to competitors.

They then go on to mention that the university already has a "rigorous plan" to prevent conflicts although the records stay private.

Even if they have an outstanding system for rooting out conflicts of interest among their professors, there is no way for the public to know how "rigorous" their plan is if the public can't verify it for themselves.

Update (4/9/09): The bill was defeated in committee by a vote of 4-3 on Wednesday.

Transparency deters candidates from running?

Today, the Sun detailed the effort and opposition to making campaign finance reporting more transparent.

Why are some opposed to increased transparency? Too much work.

Defenders of the current system emerge, worrying that added requirements to report contributions would create more work for candidates. More work would scare away good candidates, they argue.

Nevada is 45^th in the nation when it comes to campaign finance transparency, according to campaigndisclosure.org.

What are some of the things candidates can currently get away with?

Candidates don’t have to submit their final contribution and expense reports until after early voting starts. Candidates don’t have to disclose how much money they have on hand.

One person can set up shell corporations to funnel an unlimited amount of money to a candidate, nearly anonymously. Campaign forms are regularly filled out by hand, which are often hard to read, at times suspiciously so.

The shell corporation idea sounds like something from a third-world dictator's playbook, not a mild-mannered housewife from Sparks.

Those candidates understand what they're doing. By submitting forms late and in inscrutable handwriting they know that people will be less likely to carefully analyze them.

But fear not! A compromise wafts though the stuffy, cigar smoke-tinged halls of the Carson City sausage making factory.

As for the requirement that candidates file forms electronically, legislators agreed but pushed back the start date to 2011, when many of them will be forced out of office by term limits. (Emphasis mine)

That's right folks. Some in the legislature love transparency so much they'll pawn it off to the next batch of politicians.

Here is the Sun's editorial on it.

Kundra brings promise to CIO role

If you follow the connection between technology and transparency, you've probably heard about Vivek Kundra. He is the former Chief Technology Officer for D.C. and current Chief Information Officer for the entire nation.

He is also a strong proponent of opening up government in new and exciting ways.

Government Computer News has an interesting article about him that sheds some light on how Kundra plans to open up government so it is accessible, transparent and advanced.

Kundra seems the most excited about "cloud computing" and open government data.

Cloud computing is using existing services instead of "re-inventing the wheel". Examples include using YouTube to host government videos or flickr to host images. Using what already exists is extremely cost-effective. As Kundra said, "'Government shouldn't be spending a ton of money setting up stuff,' when less-expensive alternatives exist."

In addition to cloud computing, Kundra is also focused on open government data. As I've mentioned before, open data is a cornerstone of a transparent government.

Using the example of what happened after the Department of Defense opened up its GPS coordinates, Kundra believes new industries could be born once all of the data locked inside government databases is open to the public.

Although this sounds hopeful, there are reasons to temper expectations. A week after being announced as CIO, Kundra's D.C. office was raided in connection with a bribery investigation. He was never a target of the investigation, but it definitely left a foul taste in the mouth of his supporters.

There are also many security issues that must be addressed when dealing with potentially private information. While a lot of the data the government collects is general in nature, all steps must be taken to avoid releasing data that contains personally identifiable information.

Let's hope Kundra can deliver on his promises of openness and transparency. We will be watching.

What is needed for government transparency?

At Government 2.0 Camp, a discussion was held as to what would be needed to constitute a successful transparency push by the Obama Administration.

They came up with an interesting list that included the desire for open data, a central repository for Freedom of Information Act Requests and how they're responded to, open meetings, open government research, and searchable, crawl-able, accessible data.

This desire for raw data, data that can be easily read and manipulated by computers, is a natural outcome of the growth of internet technologies and mashup culture.

When the government produces data that isn't easily readable by computers, it takes individuals a lot of legwork to read and understand it. But with the government as large as it is, a mere human can never fully grasp the reams of data produced by the government annually. That is why we must insist on getting government data in formats readable by computers.

While an investigative journalist scouring over piles of inscrutable data might be able to find some correlation between campaign contributions and vote positions, doing so might take months of tedious research. But add a computer into the equation and within a few hours somebody can program it to take all campaign contributions and all vote tallies and produce voting patterns in hours instead of months.

Consider watchdog.net. Taking Ron Paul's page as an example, you can see the aggregation of data from Project Vote Smart, Wikipedia, Congressional Biographical Directory, Google Maps, FEC, VoteView, GovTrack.us, and OpenSecrets.

With raw data in hand, there is no limit to what creative-minded developers/designers/activists can accomplish.

Pounding the Pavement: In search of union contracts

Thomas Mitchell, editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, details his time trying to get a copy of union contracts made with Clark County.

Most anticipate the worst when it comes to dealing with government employees and public documents, but Mitchell had a surprisingly straight-forward time getting the documents. The director of Human Resources, Jesse Hoskins, even gave Mitchell his personal copy when he could not find it online.

Overall, the entire ordeal seemed quite painless for Mitchell. Especially heartening is the fact that Mitchell made no mention of his position at the R-J, meaning all of this was done merely in the capacity of a private citizen.

Government officials are often (and most of the time, rightfully) criticized for their reliance on inflexible bureaucratic rules, but this shows that sometimes government officials recognize who they ultimately serve -- us.

Titus announces earmark requests

Dina Titus, Nevada's newest congresswoman, has become the first in Nevada to publish her list of requested earmarks.

The list totals about 40 projects for Southern Nevada and costs $100 million.

The earmarks include money for "green" investments, health care improvements, public safety, infrastructure investments, education, and others.

We applaud Congresswoman Titus for posting online the earmarks she is requesting. Regardless of your opinion on earmarks, posting their details online is a good development for transparency in Nevada.

Update: Here are Shelley Berkley's earmark requests.

I'll update this post to keep you up to date when the rest of the Nevada delegation posts their earmark requests online.

Obama makes limited transparency progress, still has ways to go

As we near the 100 day mark in Obama's tenure, how have his transparency pledges from the campaign held up?

Potential shown, but still a work in progress:

"The administration is showing wonderful potential, but so far it is only potential," said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning research organization. "Being transparent is politically tough. The habit in D.C. is to hold information as tightly as you can because information is power."

For instance:

• "Senior administration officials" demand anonymity when speaking to the press


• Obama's attempt to restrict communication between federal workers and Congress was met with resistance by open government advocates


• The CIA was not receptive to the idea of releasing interrogation memorandums left over from the Bush administration


• Congressional inquiry on who benefited from the bailout of AIG was rebuffed by Treasury secretary Geithner and Federal Reserve chairman Bernanke

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a strong ally of whistleblowers, protested that, "It makes you think the new era of transparency is over before it began" after the Obama administration issued a signing statement that allowed his administration to keep whistleblowers from talking to Congress when their testimony would be against the law or "otherwise confidential".

Still, Obama has his defenders:

Indeed, many advocates give Mr. Obama plaudits for setting a standard that Gary D. Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a nonpartisan government watchdog group, called a "night and day" difference from the Bush administration.

When he signed the $787 billion economic recovery package, his administration established a Web site, http://www.recovery.gov/, to track the money. Ellen S. Miller, co-founder of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington advocacy group, called the site "an amazing potential model of how information is made available to the public."

Mr. Bass would go on to say that it would take "at least a year to determine how well Mr. Obama was living up to his transparency pledge." Ms. Miller graded the President's transparency push "about a C". Notably, "in terms of the three things which the president has said he is most interested in — transparency, collaboration and engagement, they’re just not there yet."

It's true that the culture in Washington is not going to change overnight and it will take time for any efforts to make a difference. Yet one must also recognize that Obama has not always lived up to his campaign rhetoric, a disappointing fact, but a fact all the same.

County fined $145,000 for not disclosing records

A victory for open-government activists out of Washington state this time.

A judge fined Mason County, WA $145,000 for withholding information requested by Tahuya resident Harold Carey. Included in the judge's ruling is a $100 daily fine, the maximum allowed by law, as long as the county's not in compliance.

Carey requested two documents "related to a highway-corrector project and sewer systems." After a fifth email went unanswered from the county, he decided to sue.

Public-records officer, Becky Rogers, claimed she never saw the emails because "Carey's first e-mail request was included in a large group of spam e-mail she moved into the junk file, blocking future e-mails from the same addresses to prevent them from clogging her inbox." That's right folks, faulty spam filtering just cost Mason County $145,000+.

(Thanks Liberty Live)

"Read the Bill" amendment falls short

A few days ago, transparency activists were dealt another blow in their efforts to bring some accountability to public affairs.

An amendment proposed by Sen. John Cornyn to mandate "five days of public review of legislation before passage by the Senate" fell short by five votes.

The largely party line vote (with five moderate Democrats crossing the aisle) is supremely disappointing. The outcome of the elections in 2006 and 2008 was a clear reflection that the people want their public officials to be held accountable, and a way that can be accomplished is by simply allowing the people of this country time to read bills before their passage. Unless the Democratic majority realizes that and realizes it soon, they will quickly find themselves out of power.

Obama has already broken his promise to wait five days before signing legislation, and now it appears that the Senate is in no hurry to force a waiting period either.

(Thanks Sunlight Foundation)

Stimulus accountability lacking, according to Senators

We've touched on the creation of recovery.gov in the past. So just how is the effort being graded in Washington?

Not great:

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., noted that weekly agency reports on stimulus activities were not written or displayed in a manner that the public could understand. Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., expressed concern that the site made it difficult to search for contracts or grants. The site should have search capabilities similar to USASpending.gov, he said.

The disappointment is bipartisan but easily fixable.

Thankfully, the Administration seems receptive to concerns:

Earl Devaney, head of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, acknowledged that the site is a work in progress. He said the board is in the process of hiring an outside entity to conduct an independent review.

Something like this takes time, we understand that. Hopefully recovery.gov can live up to its goal of bringing transparency and accountability to stimulus bill spending.

State-by-State Sunshine Review

E!! found an interesting little resource for comparing transparency resources across the nation.

Sunshine Review's mission "is to create a place where regular people have the opportunity to breathe new life into the political system by demanding a transparent and honest government. Sunshine Review collects and shares information about government transparency, openness and accountability at the state and local level."

Beyond the main page, there also exists state-by-state transparency rankings of county websites. Currently Arizona tops the list while Vermont brings up the tail. Nevada comes in at a mediocre 31st place.

Nevada clearly has some work to do. Let's hope that in the future the Silver State can make it up higher on the list.

Lobbyists undermine transparency on closed-door meetings

Lobbyists are about as popular as seal clubbers, AIG employees, or Rod Blagojevich for reasons like this.

Earlier this year, Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna and State Auditor Brian Sonntag sat down with lobbyists of local governments to see if they could work out a compromise on the taping of the executive meetings, to ensure compliance with the state's Open Meetings Act.

As one would expect, the lobbyists agreed enthusiastically — to the meeting. And what was the outcome of this synergistic collaboration of transparency minded souls? A toothless, watered-down, useless piece of legislation.

The compromise? Only governments that a court already had found guilty of violating the Open Meetings Act would have to tape their executive sessions, which would allow a judge to check up on them if future violations were alleged.

That's right, only if they had gotten caught before would they to be forced to open up their executive session.

As bad as that was, it turns out that the lobbyists didn't even support the "compromise" bill that they had helped create. Create a powerless compromise bill, and then not even support it. Fantastic.

Not all lobbyists are bad people. Worthwhile groups exists that employ lobbyists. But this is the epitome of why lobbyists get a bad name. Let's hope Washington citizens can find a way to get executive meetings open and taped for the public's benefit. After all, the citizens do pay the bills.