The really great thing about this piece is that it’s very much in the spirit of and open government. Moore uses an means of finding answers by using Quora. He also uses crowdsourcing, a favorite of open government advocates—include everyone, make their opinions public.
And the responses are expert. One responder notes that a weakness specific to Canadian local government is a focus on technology by the agencies housing records, as opposed to a focus on information delivery. That’s an opinion that identifies remediable problems concretely. It should thus serve as an example to government officials to include us, because .
The piece is definitely worth .
A friend of mine once remarked that us transparency folk just like to complain and that no disclosure will ever be enough. This is untrue: complete, live updates of government activities will stop my whining about the lack of proactive disclosure on governments’ part dead in its tracks. But since we aren’t there yet, I still have something to complain about.
I was looking at New York state’s lobbyist disclosure section.
New York state requires lobbyists to be registered with the state’s . The Commission’s website is fairly straightforward, which is great. If information is , the government may as well not post any information: the outcome is the same.
The for the state is online. But unlike other states (like and ), this information is only available through a .
The limits of this are obvious. If you are looking for a specific entity or lobbyist, you’re going to have an easier time than other citizens and investigators. But even then, mispelling a name, or typing an entity’s title in an incorrect order will quickly lead you to a dead end. From a journalistic perspective, the value of being able to see all of the registered lobbyists in a state and their clients is obvious. If you aren’t looking for anything, per se, but want to get a feel for the context of lobbying in a state, having one master list of lobbyists is invaluable (or if you’re hoping something noteworthy will jump out at you).
Again, this is nitpicking, but it is important nitpicking. The site does a great job of keeping visitors abreast of related news. One link on the margins of the site lets visitors know that a computer error led to a miscalculation in expenditures that failed to account for . An agency that is transparent about bad news along with good news is one that cares about the trust of citizens. of New York’s state website, and the accumulated analysis for New York counties, rates the two at a “B” and “C” on transparency, respectively. Not too shabby, but there’s room for improvement.
That improvement should start by posting a comprehensive lobby list. Thanks in advance.
I’ve written before about of the states taxpayer-funded lobbying. The Minnesota State Auditor publishes a yearly summary of all of the taxpayer-funded lobbying within the state.
is the use of public funds by public entities for the purpose of influencing legislation. is the only state I know of that this activity. Even then, it only discloses taxpayer-funded lobbying within the state. The Auditor’s report only requires lobbying information for governments lobbying the . Of course, many of these governments are also lobbying the .
The contains revealing insight on . For example, of all lobbying:
*Cities account 32% of total spent on lobbying
*School districts: 10%
*Counties: 28%
*Other entities: 30%
Also, for , those governments that did belong to them tended to either be members of one (46.1%) or two (49.9%) associations.
Because other states don’t provide* this level of disclosure, Minnesota serves as an interesting example of government lobbying.
*If you know of another state requires such disclosure, tell us about it!
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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* on Sunshine Review
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