Transparency goes big-time

A google news search for “transparency” in the past week gets more than 24,500 results. About 5000 of these are comprised of “transparency obama,” probably spurred by his recent (re)focusing on earlier transparency promises. This accounts almost 20% of the hits for ‘transparency’ alone.

But the existence of the other 80% shows that transparency is a topic on the minds of many outside of the current news cycle.

This may be due largely in part to the fact that information is so easily accessible today, so candidates are forced the face the question: you can provide the voters information and make it available online—will you?

In state and local Illinois campaigns, this couldn’t be clearer. The state comptroller race, for example, has transparency as a common theme with one candidate being focused on a favorite of Sunshine Review staff, usability:

For the GOP, Dodge wants to make the comptroller’s Web site more user friendly, citing the difficulty of trying to find out how much a company earns from the state.

You can have all of the documents in the world on your website, but it doesn’t mean a thing if they can’t be found.

The races for the open U.S. Senate seat and for the Illinois governorship have also had the discussion turn to transparency.

Those who have been losing popularity points know to jump on the bandwagon. Todd Stroger has been asking his opponents to follow in his footsteps by releasing their tax returns. For Stroger, it may be too little too late, with opponents calling this a “publicity stunt.” Still, others should learn from his lesson, and deliver on their promises of transparency, or be prepared to pay the price on polling day. Transparency as an important issue for candidates for public office is here to stay.

State of the Union: Cloudy with a chance of Sunshine

President Obama had his first State of the Union address last night, and gave a brief shout out to transparency. And by “shout out,” I mean apology. Reason Blog’s Jacob Sullum put it better than I could have, saying:

Yesterday I noted that President Obama, in an interview with ABC news anchor Diane Sawyer, had acknowledged his failure to deliver on his oft-repeated promise to televise health care negotiations on C-SPAN. “It’s my responsibility,” he said, “and I’ll be speaking to this at the State of the Union, to own up to the fact that the process didn’t run the way I ideally would like it to and that we have to move forward in a way that recaptures that sense of opening things up more.” So how did he address the transparency issue in last night’s speech? There was this, referring to the health care debate:

This is a complex issue, and the longer it was debated, the more skeptical people became. I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people. And I know that with all the lobbying and horse trading, the process left most Americans wondering, “What’s in it for me?”

Obama did not acknowledge that the public’s suspicion may have been magnified by his failure to do what he promised to do: make the process fully transparent, so that everyone knew what was going on before Congress voted on the final legislation. Instead, as usual, there was a sense that our elected representatives were deciding our fates behind closed doors, the better to facilitate all that “lobbying and horse trading.” The C-SPAN coverage that did not happen (that was in fact blocked by the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, with nary a protest from the president) was symbolic of this failure. Last night Obama was even less forthright in accepting responsibility for the lack of transparency than he was in the interview with Sawyer, saying only that he should have explained things more clearly, as if the problem could have been solved with a really good Powerpoint presentation.

I would also content that transparency is not needed just for controversial measures being brought forward. If Obama was truly dedicated to transparency, he would do more than offer Americans a weak apology. I want to see more affirmative disclosure of information, not just in the legislature, but for government agencies, the Judicial Branch and the Executive Branch as well. As proud as I am to see representatives twittering, we need real data posted in real time for 2010.

Increasing revenue works in Oregon, but how about cutting spending?

Yesterday, Meaures 66 and 67 passed in Oregon. The measures will raise $730 million to fill in a shortfall in the state’s 2009-2011 biennial budget for education, health care and public safety by raising personal income taxes for individuals earning more than $125,000 and increasing corporate taxes on all businesses, except sole proprietorships.

Another way Oregon may consider cutting spending is to cut some taxpayer-funded lobbying, the use of public money by a government entity to lobby another government for money. One report places the amount of money spent nationally on taxpayer-funded lobbying at $1 trillion each year.

Some local governments have come to realize this. Jackson County has recently decided to leave the Association of Oregon Counties. With dues at $31,000 a year, an inability to dictate the lobbying prioties to pursue, and rampant inefficiency, it makes sense that the county would want to step back and localize its decisions.

Here’s hoping Oregon survives the budget crises that have been so common lately around the country.

Let the “Sunshine” In…Why Transparency Matters

Some argue for more “Sunshine” in government as if transparency is a positive onto itself. It is not. Transparency matters because it guarantees access to information that empowers every citizen to hold government officials accountable for the conduct of the publics’ business and the spending of taxpayers’ money. Official accountability to the citizen is the great positive; the corner stone of self government and liberty.

Sunshine matters because without transparency there can be no accountability. And, without accountability, there is no self government. Without accountability, government of the people is government over the people.

The opportunities for government transparency have never been greater. The Internet allows direct, low cost access to virtually unlimited quantities of documents and data, while an array of telecommunications devices can instantly transmit information to millions of citizens simultaneously. But for all the power of these technologies, government cannot be fully transparent—and thus accountable—unless disclosure is de rigueur.

Freedom of Information Act laws do facilitate a degree of citizen scrutiny. But government agencies easily exploit a variety of FOIA loopholes, and even the savviest citizens can be stymied by the convoluted requirements. Thus, government at every level must be forced to provide citizens ready access to all budgets, contracts, audits, permits, meeting minutes and the like. It is entirely reasonable to expect that such “affirmative disclosure” should be no less stringent than the multifarious disclosure demands government imposes on taxpayers.

Many states, counties, cities and school districts come up short in providing an appropriate level of transparency. For example, California’s budget site does not disclose line item expenditures, grants, state contracts, or employee compensation data. Massachusetts has no online database of state spending. New York posts its financial reports online, but in a PDF format that is not searchable.

A useful method of evaluating government Web sites—a 10-point “Transparency Checklist” —has been developed by Sunshine Review, a wiki platform for measuring government Web content against what should be available. As noted on the Sunshine Review Web site (www.SunshineReview.org), “We shouldn’t have to ask the government for permission to be an informed citizen.”

Michael Barnhart, Sunshine Review
mbarnhart@sunshinereview.org

Federal government website satisfaction up with transparency

A new poll revealed there is a correlation between satisfied constituents and government websites: transparency. According to NextGov:

For the last quarter of 2009, more than 250,000 citizens surveyed gave federal Web sites a satisfaction rating of 75.2 out of 100 points, according to a report released by ForeSee Results… Survey respondents also awarded federal Web sites a satisfaction rating of 75.2 for the third quarter of 2009.

What is the real shocker is that many of them exceed satisfaction found in many private sector sites, even Google or Amazon.

The three top-rated federal Web sites meet or exceed the private sector’s highest score of 88 points earned by Newegg.com, an online computer hardware and software retailer, and 28 of 103 federal sites measured earned average satisfaction scores of 80 or higher.

I think we could expect this constituent satisfaction to jump leaps and bounds if local government entities started engaging in transparency too.

Citizens United, transparency, and privacy

In the supreme court ruling of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to limit corporations’ independent spending during campaigns for the Presidency and Congress. This is in effect a blocking of a key part of campaign finance law, which has been criticized as a hinderance on the First Amendment.

Under the law, corporations would still be required to be open and transparent. Justice Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion that he hopes the internet and prompt disclosure will “provide […] citizens with the information needed to hold … elected officials accountability for their positions and supporters.”

We should hold elected officials accountable. But why “supporters?”

Our friends at the Sunlight Foundation notes that privacy for donors stems from attempts by the KKK to get membership lists of NAACP contributors in order to harass them and threaten violence. Sunshine Review sees the court’s decision as a win for free speech and confidentiality. Private citizens have the right to express themselves through donations and feel safe that their political speech will remain private.

After all, the Citizen’s United case started when a group of citizens wanted to air a documentary against then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Supporters of Clinton may be sympathetic to attempts to remove the shield of privacy for these citizens. But would they feel the same if the documentary were about another presidential candidate? Or a policy issue they support?

The same law that protects corporate donors would protect civil right leaders. This was a win for free speech.

NJ takes baby-step towards transparency

It’s unclear if it was done to be spiteful, but regardless I’m happy to announce that in his last days of office New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine has launched a transparency website. The website www.nj.gov/transparency/ lets constituents search through databases of state spending, revenue and purchasing. What is does not do is let them see line item expenses, which is how wasteful spending is exposed. So, c’mon New Jersey and jump on the line-item-expenses-with-search-capability band wagon already!

State budget crises: curiouser and curiouser

Sunshine Review has been tracking the state budget crises that are happening in basically every state.

The crises continue to worsen. However, the story is more interesting than just a shortage of cash: the crises seem to be getting worse in many states. In January 2009, the expected budget shortfall for Alaska, for example, was $402 million. The current estimate places the shortfall now as $1.35 billion, a more than 200% increase.

In Florida, the shortfal was expected to be $2.3 billion, and is now $6 billion.

Illinois had a $2.5 billion shortfall last year, which is now $7.29 billion.

Wisconsin’s shortfall grew from $593 million to $3.1 billion.

Sunshine Review discovered these changes when checking the history tab in the state budget article. One unique advantage to the wiki format is being able to track changes in a news story as they happen and compare the current version of an article to an older version. To see the changes, click here and scroll down.

Owasso, Oklahoma achieves perfect transparency grade

Owasso, Oklahoma city’s website earned a perfect transparency score from Sunshine Review today. The grade comes on the heels of Tulsa County accomplishing the feat in November of 2009. Owasso is the first city to accomplish this in Oklahoma.

“The citizens of Owasso, Oklahoma should be proud that the city council responded so quickly to Sunshine Review’s transparency checklist and is now providing essential public information online,” said Kristin McMurray, Senior Editor of Sunshine Review. “The Owasso government, following Tulsa County’s example, is the first city in Oklahoma to receive a perfect transparency grade from Sunshine Review. The citizens and taxpayers are well served by Owasso’s outstanding example to state and local governments throughout the United States.”