Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week #25

Open Records brings us another edition of the Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week.

Augusta, Georgia’s purchasing department needs a little sunshine, and Robert Mullins wants to be the guy to open the blinds. The problem? He’s not receiving his FOIA’ed information as soon as required by law. In fact, Mullins had to sue the city and Geri Sams, the Augusta Procurement Officer, in order to have a chance at ever seeing the information he requested.

Apparently, he’s not the only one with difficulty getting access to public records- the Augusta Chronical joined the lawsuit. The Chronical had this to say.

Congratulations, Robert Mullins, on your award. When you finally receive that information you requested, please, let us know if you discover the reason Ms. Sams refused to just follow the law.

Thanks for doing the job we pay you to do

The Times Picayune ed board gave Louisiana Ag Commissioner Mike Strain a pat on the back today for, well, basically not being as fiscally irresponsible as his predecessor.

From the editorial:

First, Mr. Strain announced that the department would no longer use lawyers, accountants, veterinarians and other employees to do construction work the way his predecessor did.

Now, with Mr. Strain’s support, the Legislature is requiring the Louisiana Agricultural Finance Authority to follow public bid laws. That never would have happened when former commissioner Bob Odom was in charge.

Now, we at SunshineReview are all about praise for good work, but it sounds like Mr. Strain is simply doing what any decent, responsible public servant should do: Safeguard Taxpayer Money.

If public gratitude is needed for things like correct contracting and competitive bidding, Louisiana voters have some more work to do.

Alaska Opens Its Checkbook

I found the following information about Transparency Efforts in the State of Alaska on the Americans for Tax Reform website.

On February 5, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) announced that the State of Alaska’s check register
would be posted online. The department of administration’s website now hosts datasheets in pdf
and excel that allow taxpayers to view details for every expenditure greater than $1,000, organized by
department, payee and type of expense.

Click here to visit the Alaska OnLine Checkbook.

I congratulate Governor Palin and the government of Alaska for opening up the government to the people. Keep up the good work.

Does “Andrzejewski” mean “Transparency”?

Transparency has a strong advocate in Adam Andrzejewski, the Executive Director of For The Good of Illinois, an organization dedicated to transparency on all 7200+ levels of Illinois government. Andrzejewski is currently working to persuade school districts to place their check registers online so parents (and all taxpayers) know where their money is going, and how much of it directly benefits students.

From a recent editorial:

Our schools are literally in our backyards. Having ‘local control’, we fund our public schools with roughly 70% of our property tax monies. Illinois spends $20 billion on public education which amounts to $10,000 per student. We are not receiving a good return on our investment. In the last four years, Illinois students are testing 20% lower on 8th grade reading scores. That’s a steep and fast drop.

How do we know if the $20 billion of Illinois education funding is well spent?

The only way to answer that question is to ‘Open The Books’ of the local school districts! Each school district should post their check register on the school website. The proposal’s simplicity is its strength. There is virtually no cost. The check number, vendor name and amount are already a part of the monthly board packet. Information is already the ‘public’s right to know’ through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Check register posting harnesses current technology with existing law to create a convenient path of community access.

For The Good of Illinois is starting to gain some attention from the press. The Kankakee Daily Journal editorialized on transparency on 5/5/08 and The Pioneer Press published a letter to the editor on 5/15/08.

Three school districts are already posting check registers online: Huntley School District #158, Carpentersville Community District #300, and Oak Park Elementary #97.

3 down, 876 to go. Good Luck, Adam, and thanks for your service to Taxpayers and Parents everywhere.

Elected Official Praisies SOS Transparency Website

The praise continues to roll in for the North Dakota Policy Council’s (NDPC) Sunshine On Schools Transparency Website.This time the praise comes from a prominent elected official.

From the latest edition of the NDPC newsletter:

Here’s what North Dakota State Legislator and Edinburg School Principal Dave Monson said about Sunshine on Schools:

“I found the information on the Sunshine on School’s project to be very easy to read, accurate, informative, and useful. I am looking forward to the new updates and further information as it becomes available on the site. It is a great tool for school administrators!”

If you have not taken the time to visit the Sunshine on Schools website please do so today by clicking here.

Keep up the good work North Dakota!

Federal Government Tries Transparency

Another government transparency website hits the web. It is called USAspending.gov.

Like many of you I was not aware that the federal government has a transparency website where a citizen can search for whom the federal government has awarded contracts and how it spends your tax dollars. This website come is the result of legislation sponsored by US Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and US Senator Barack Obama (D-IL).

While the website is far from perfect it does give the average citizen more access to its government…. that is always a good thing!

Take a look at the site by clicking here.

This proves that open government and transparency are issues that Republicans and Democrats can support!

NebraskaSpending.com: Follow our lead

Shane Osborn, State Treasurer of Nebraska, has been aggressively promoting NE’s new transparency website, NebraskaSpending.com. Treasurer Osborn has said that he hopes to set a national example for transparency- and with his new website upgrades, he is definitely a leader on the issue.

The site originally featured agency budgets and programs, taxes levied, and a chart with historical budgets. New upgrades to the site now allow taxpayers to review $20K+ contracts, $500K+ expenditures, detailed information on 93 counties, and data regarding Nebraska’s Operating Investment Pool.

Although I have been (rightfully) accused of being a data junkie, my favorite part of the site was Osborn’s description of his job:

As State Treasurer, my office is responsible for the receipting and disbursing of all state funds, which includes accurately recording these transactions and informing the Legislature through a yearly report on the state’s financial picture. Further, as a public servant, I believe elected officials have a duty to show the public how their tax dollars are being spent right down to the last penny.

We couldn’t agree more. Great work.

NC: Bring your grades up, or you’re grounded

North Carolina’s John Locke Foundation released their much-anticipated 2008 Transparency Report Card this past week. Unfortunately, authors Chad Adams and Joseph Coletti found a disturbing lack of openness from NC government agencies, cities, counties, and school districts.

From the press release:

[JLF Vice President for Development Chad] Adams and JLF Fiscal Policy Analyst Joseph Coletti evaluated the Web sites of 22 state agencies, North Carolina’s 10 largest cities, 10 largest counties, and 10 highest-spending school districts. Each earned a letter grade from A to F based on the “degree of difficulty” presented to citizens hoping to find line-item budgets, annual financial reports, and information about government contracts, grants to non-profit groups, and personnel data.

As a group, the cities earned the highest marks with an overall grade of C-minus on the report’s 2008 Transparency Report Card. Individual city grades ranged from a B in sharing information about crime rates to an F for government contracts. Counties earned an overall D-plus grade; local school districts, D; and state agencies, D-minus.

Read the entire report here or see just the report card here.

The media took notice. From Mark Tapscott at TheExaminer.com

John Hood and the rest of the outstanding crew at Locke are doing superb work in so many areas and the fact they are devoting significant resources to building public understand of and support for increased transparency in government at all levels is a tremendously positive development on the Right.

More chatter can be found here, here, here, and oh yeah, a video right here.

Praise for North Dakota Policy Council

I received my newsletter from the North Dakota Policy Council (NDPC) this morning and was very happy to see the praise the NDPC has received for it’s Sunshine on Schools Transparency Website.

As reported in the NDPC newsletter: Mackinac Center’s President Larry Reed: GREAT work… You’re doing some of the best transparency work in the country. Congrats!

I blogged about this great website earlier this week.

If you have not taken the time to visit the Sunshine on Schools website please do so today by clicking here.

Keep up the good work North Dakota!

Nagin defends gagging city contract panel

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is under fire again for a lack of transparency- this time in city contracts. According to New Orleans CityBusiness, Nagin issued an executive order in 2005 that made all executive branch contract review panel meetings confidential and prohibits disclosure of information to third parties.

Two N.O. city council members, Arnie Fielkow and Shelley Midura, are pressing Nagin for more transparency. It is the practice of the city council to have an open forum for committees to consider legislative branch city contracts, which currently total about $9.9 million. Unfortunately, the mayor controls executive branch contracts (the bulk of the contracts) through his closed-door meetings.

Nagin’s defends his lack of transparency to CityBusiness:

Via an e-mailed response, Nagin’s press office answered questions about transparency saying “Requests for bids and proposals are advertised and posted on the city’s website; review committees include an outside evaluator and now also are attended by a representative from the Office of the Inspector General and final contracts are public documents.”

However…

Inspector General Robert Cerasoli said his staff has only been “notified two or three times” of meetings.

Oops.

Janet Howard, president and CEO of the Bureau of Governmental Research, had this to say:

“Talk about transparency,” Howard said. “(The city has) a confidentiality agreement as opposed to an open transparent approach to contracting.”

Another concern of Howard’s is that “professional services” is a “very loose concept.”

“Anything that has a service component, even if you have a piece that’s equipment, gets treated as a professional services contract,” she said. “So (the administration) puts a lot of things into professional services that shouldn’t be there. The downtown trash cans were treated as a professional services contract.”

According to the article, Howard is also concerned about the history of N.O. mayors reaping a windfall of campaign contributions from businesses that have or desire city contracts, creating a “pay to play” atmosphere.

Note to Nagin: Open up your books, and no one gets hurt (by more bad press).

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