Why public employee salary information matters

Did they think they'd get away with this?

Bell, one of the poorest cities in Los Angeles County, pays its top officials some of the highest salaries in the nation, including nearly $800,000 annually for its city manager, according to documents reviewed by The Times.

In addition to the $787,637 salary of Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo [...] Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia makes $376,288 annually, more than most city managers.

[...]

The district attorney is investigating Bell over the hefty compensation of its City Council members -- about $100,000 a year for part-time positions. Normally, council members in a city the size of Bell would be paid about $400 a month, Demerjian said. (Emphasis mine)

The city manager, mayor and council members all initially defended their exorbitant salaries, claiming they were just being reasonably compensated for efficiently running their city.

Unsurprisingly, the taxpayers of Bell didn't buy that excuse. The council members soon agreed to a 90% pay cut:

City Council members in Bell unanimously agreed Monday to give up their controversial $96,000-a-year salaries and instead draw $673 a month — a 90% decrease.

What instigated these salary cuts and sudden change of heart in the city's politicians? Salary information obtained under the California Public Records Act.

This is just another example of why public record laws are necessary to ensure that local governments are run honestly. Without information empowering the public, these officials would have continued to draw exorbitant salaries.

To prevent this from happening in the future Bell (and every other town in America) should create a website dedicated to tracking public employee salaries.

Here is a video of protesters demanding the resignation of all involved:

Ensign emails handed over to investigators

The "drip drip drip" of the Ensign scandal turned into a slow trickle last week as Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) handed emails over to investigators looking into Ensign's role in securing a lobbying job for former aide Doug Hampton:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has turned over e-mails to federal authorities investigating Sen. John Ensign’s extramarital affair with a campaign aide, the latest sign that the criminal probe into the embattled Nevada Republican is picking up steam.

Coburn told POLITICO that he is cooperating with the Justice Department in the investigation of Ensign, and says he’s willing to submit himself to an interview with the FBI or Senate Select Committee on Ethics, which is conducting a parallel investigation into whether Ensign broke Senate rules.

"We’ve given them everything they wanted," Coburn said, referring to the Justice Department.

One area of interest for investigators is Ensign's role in securing a meeting between Allegiant Air -- one of Hampton's clients and whose CEO is a big financial backer of Ensign -- and Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. If it is shown that Ensign helped arrange meetings for his aide-turned-lobbyist it could be a violation of federal "cooling-off" restrictions.

We'll be sure to let you know how it turns out.

Rangel to face House ethics trial

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) will face a public trial before the House ethics committee for his role in violating a "range of ethics rules."

A House investigative panel has found “substantial reason to believe” that Representative Charles B. Rangel violated a range of ethics rules, dealing a serious blow to Mr. Rangel, a Harlem Democrat, in the twilight of his political career.

The finding means that he must face a public trial before the House ethics committee, the first member of Congress to be forced to do so since 2002, when Representative James A. Traficant Jr. was expelled from Congress after a corruption conviction.

Rules are rules and if you break them, you must face the consequences. If Charlie Rangel broke the rules, he should face the appropriate punishment.

Transparency delayed is transparency denied

Troubling:

For at least a year, the Homeland Security Department detoured hundreds of requests for federal records to senior political advisers for highly unusual scrutiny, probing for information about the requesters and delaying disclosures deemed too politically sensitive, according to nearly 1,000 pages of internal e-mails obtained by The Associated Press.

[...]

Career employees were ordered to provide Secretary Janet Napolitano's political staff with information about the people who asked for records — such as where they lived, whether they were private citizens or reporters — and about the organizations where they worked.

While political staffers never appear to explicitly deny requests, their involvement certainly delayed the process:

E-mails obtained by AP do not show political appointees at Homeland Security stopping records from coming out. Instead they point to acute political sensitivities that slowed the process, a probing curiosity about the people and organizations making the request for records, and considerable confusion.

It appears the Obama Administration along with the Department of Homeland Security wanted to be kept informed of any potential "headaches" that could develop from responding to information requests. The irony is that this now revealed policy has resulted in a headache of its own.

Why don't governments realize that this kind of information will always get out? They should have followed the standard FOIA procedure and not made this stupid directive.

Even after the AP called them on this policy, they "modified" it so that political staffers can still review records three days before they're made public but the releases don't need their final approval.

Which is still nonsense. Political staffers have no legitimate need to "monitor" FOIA responses.

Secretary Napolitano should get rid of the entire policy.

Picking up the slack

The Nevada News Bureau reports that Nevada's Open Government website still doesn't have the ability to search through contracts approved by the Board of Examiners:

Nevada’s transparency website, where taxpayers can go to examine details of spending by state agencies, still does not include a critical component that would make the information more useful.

Budget limitations have put a plan to put contract information on the site in a searchable format on hold, said state Budget Director Andrew Clinger.

In the meantime, contracts approved by the Board of Examiners at each meeting are being posted on the Department of Administration’s website, he said. Because the information is in a PDF format however, it is not searchable, Clinger said.

In an effort to pick up the slack, TransparentNevada has been posting searchable versions of the contracts since January.

No, journalism does not need government help

Should journalism be left to the free-market? Columbia University president Lee Bollinger says no in his Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Bollinger argues that newspapers and broadcasters provide "essential information" required for citizens to make informed decisions about their government. Therefore, when newspapers and broadcasters go out of business, we -- the American people -- lose more than just another company, we lose the "essential information" they provided us.

For that reason, to ensure the American people always have that "essential information," the government should step in and help fund journalism.

I encourage you to read his op-ed in its entirety. While it presents some interesting ideas, his ultimate solution is misguided.

The biggest mistake Bollinger makes is equating "journalism" with "newspapers and broadcasters." While people may think they're synonymous, they are in fact very distinct things. Journalism is simply "the investigation and reporting of events, issues, and trends to a broad audience." Newspapers and broadcasters, on the other hand, are mere mediums for journalism. Journalism will always be around because it will never be exclusively tied to one medium.

So while his piece is titled "Journalism Needs Government Help," it should really be called "Newspapers and Broadcasters Need Government Help." As bad as it has gotten for newspapers and broadcasters -- and no one is denying that it is bad -- journalism per se is doing just fine. It will continue to thrive in blogs, photojournalism and fact-checking websites along with hundreds of other mediums not even thought of yet.

If the government really wants its citizens have that "essential information" so they're able to make informed decisions, it should focus on being more transparent and accountable before anything else.

A more transparent government will allow citizens to make informed decisions without relying upon newspapers and broadcasters to present it to them. If, for example, they want to learn more about campaign donations they can visit blogs and websites dedicated to that topic. If they don't trust those websites, they can dig into the records themselves. In either case, the government is providing the public with its "primary sources" and allowing them to do as they please with it.

So while the loss of newspapers and broadcasters would be unfortunate, it would not spell the end of journalism as we know it. It will continue to thrive, albeit in another form.

Tarkanian to lead petition drive

From the RJ:

Defeated U.S. Senate candidate Danny Tarkanian will lead Gov. Jim Gibbons' petition drive in Southern Nevada to require that collective bargaining negotiations for schools and local governments be conducted in public. ...

Under the petition, local governments, school districts and unions bargaining on behalf of public employees would be required to follow the open meeting law. That means they would have to post notices of meetings and allow members of the public to meet and speak.

Despite the transparency this petition would promote, we have expressed concerns about the Governor's involvement in the past. The law is clear that a public official cannot "cause a governmental entity to incur an expense or make an expenditure" in support or opposition to a ballot initiative.

However, if Gov. Gibbons is able to make sure no state resources are used to promote this petition, it will go a long way in erasing any potential ethical issues.

The group has until November 9th to collect 97,002 signatures. We'll be sure to let you know how it turns out.

The Limits of Disclosure

Is disclosure enough?

Like many families during these tough economic times, Clark County School Board member Deanna Wright has worried about her husband losing his job.

"We're in the same boat as a lot of families," she said.

Unlike many spouses, Wright got to weigh in on her husband's union contract, which gave him a half-percent raise worth about $109 based on his annual salary of $21,902 for the 2010-11 fiscal year.

As a board member, Wright ratified the Clark County School District's contract with the Education Support Employees Association, which represents 11,582 support staff employees, including Wright's husband. Jason Wright is a typist clerk at Coronado High School in Henderson.

While she may have been in technical compliance with the law (which only requires disclosure), the most ethically-sound option would have been to recuse herself entirely.

Let's hope that in the future Ms. Wright will abstain from voting on contracts that would personally benefit her and her family. Doing so is the only way to ensure that people don't use their positions of authority to personally benefit themselves.

Not even doing their job

There is a good op-ed in the Rebel Yell on how employees of public agencies often fail to perform even the most basic duties of their job:

A large part of our tax dollars fund the salaries of government employees, and these salaries have steadily increased over the years, well beyond the scope of inflation. An increase in the use of tax dollars should be followed by an increase in accountability, but this is not a reflection of reality. The de facto situation is that increased government revenue is coupled with more flagrant, irresponsible spending.

The most reprehensible abuse of our tax dollars is not necessarily misallocation, but the funding of government employees and agencies that fail to adequately perform their jobs.

For example, instead of keeping an eye on the financial industry, SEC employees spent hours surfing adult websites.

And while employees of the Minerals Management Service were supposed to be monitoring the safety of oil drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico, they were busy accepting gifts from oil companies and viewing themselves as part of the oil industry.

When we pay our taxes to fund these agencies, we have a right to expect our money is being spent wisely. All too often, however, that is not the case.

Earmark ban easily bypassed

Shocker:

Just one day after leaders of the House of Representatives announced a ban on earmarks to profit-making companies, Victoria Kurtz, the vice president for marketing of a small Ohio defense contracting firm, hit on a creative way around it.

To keep the taxpayer money flowing, Ms. Kurtz incorporated what she called the Great Lakes Research Center, a nonprofit organization that just happened to specialize in the same kind of work performed by her own company — and at the same address.

The most bothersome aspect is the companies don't even really try to hide what they're doing. They shuffle some papers around, create a few front nonprofits and the earmark money continues to flow unabated. While they may be in technical compliance with the ban, they are obviously not in compliance with its spirit.

But do we make too much of these earmarks? Matthew Yglesias thinks our current system makes attempts to ban earmark money unfeasible:

If you have geographically based constituencies each represented by a single member, and a system of entrepreneurial politicians who are supposed to raise their own money, and you have relatively weak party discipline, then you’re going to have members of congress acting in support of idiosyncratic local interests.

Because representatives are only responsible to voters of their district, what downside is there in trying to get as many earmarks as possible? While the practice may offend fiscal hawks and good government reformers across the nation, the only voters who matter to a politician are those in their district. And if the voters are happy they will continue to vote for the politician.

Just look at the careers of John Murtha and Robert Byrd. They both were unabashed proponents of "bringing home the bacon" and they both spent decades in Congress. Byrd was the longest serving Senator in United States history and the people of West Virginia never got tired of the money he brought in.

So what (if anything) can be done to reign in abuses in the earmarking system? Short of abolishing the entire process, I'm not sure. Publicly shaming profligate earmarkers and more transparency for the companies might clean up the practice at the margins, but I doubt it will fundamentally alter its trajectory.

Thoughts?

Nevada Ethics committee: Judges can't be bought

... on the auction block, that is.

A District Court judge may not be auctioned off to attend a luncheon date with the winning bidder to raise money for a nonprofit research organization, the state’s judicial ethics committee ruled.

Several judges, some of whom are up for re-election, have been asked by an unidentified research organization to attend a luncheon at which the silent auction will be held.

The Standing Committee on Judicial Ethics and Election Practices said the silent auction to raise the money may be for a “philanthropic and worthy purpose” but it is “fraught and ethical peril.”

The opinion notes the winning bidder may have a legal matter before the judge and it would give the appearance that access to judges "is something that can be auctioned for any reason."

I'm sure the nonprofit research organization (which remains unnamed in the opinion) had only the best intentions, but the Ethics Committee made the right decision here.

By the nature of their profession, judges must be impartial and independent. Allowing them to be "bought," even for a worthy cause, would have damaged these characteristics.

Attorney General no fan of open-meeting laws

I urge you to take a look at Karen Gray's latest commentary, which systematically shows how carelessly our Attorney General enforces Nevada's open-meeting laws:

On the record, Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto is of course emphatically in favor of government officials obeying the state's open-meeting laws.

"What it comes to," she said in a recent interview, "is ensuring that the public has access to the information that their elected leaders are deliberating about within their communities. That's the goal here. That's the intent of the open-meeting law."

If Ms. Cortez Masto supports the state's open-meeting laws, why is her office dropping the ball when it comes to enforcement?

Worksheets released this month by Masto's office reveal that between 2007 and 2009 it exhausted one or both statutes of limitations for enforcement in 77 percent of the 89 complaints filed within one month of an alleged violation. Between 2007 and 2009, the percentage of violations grew from 25 percent in 2007 to 43 percent in 2008 and 2009.

Attorney General Cortez Masto appears to be just another politician saying one thing while doing another. If she truly supported Nevada's open-meeting laws and believed in transparency and accountability, she would be using the full force of her office to pursue and punish offenders.

BP, Obama Admin block press access to oil spill

What are they afraid of?

Kagan supports cameras in the Supreme Court

While the confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan have been a pretty staid affair, her support for allowing cameras into the Supreme Court is certainly cause for excitement:

"I recognize that some members of the court have a different view, and certainly when and if I get to the court I will talk with them about that questions, but I have said that I think it would be a terrific thing to have cameras in the courtroom," Kagan said at C-SPAN cameras rolled (see above). "And the reason I think, is when you see what happens there, it's an inspiring sight. ... I basically attend every Supreme Court argument. ... It's an incredible sight, because all nine justices, they're so prepared, they're so smart, they're so thorough, they're so engaged, the questioning is rapid fire. You're really seeing an institution of government at work really in an admirable way." (Emphasis mine)

On the issue, the Justices range from willing to look at it to dead-set against it. The most common reason given for opposing them is a belief they would wreck the "mood" and "dynamic" of the Court.

While allowing cameras into the Court would certainly alter its dynamics, their inclusion would not irreparably harm the institution. I'm sure our representatives also weren't thrilled about allowing cameras into Congress, yet their value is obvious now.

By the time the Justices hear oral arguments, they and their cadre of clerks have already spent months reviewing case briefs and writing opinions and much of the legal legwork has already been done. The arguments simply allow the Justices to ask any questions that may remain.

Given this nation's lack of civic knowledge, maybe allowing cameras into the Court would go a long way in helping us better understand how the Judiciary impacts us all.

Here is some video containing Kagan's answer: