The Evergreen Freedom Foundation found that 68 agencies in Washington had failed to disclose taxpayer-funded lobbying. The Transit Authority was one of the worst offenders and has’t complied with transparency laws by failing to report its lobbying activity for seven years, amounting to to $800,000 in spending.

We give Cook County in Illinois a B- on the information it discloses on its website. Which is a decent grade. One of the check marks the county misses on our checklist is for “Lobbying.” The county does not disclose on its website what lobbying organizations it pays dues to, or what lobbyists it hires to represent the county before the Illinois State Legislature or the federal government.

Most local governments have lobbyists. And because these lobbyists are a part of public affairs, they should be disclosed.

Cook County is now posting lobbying reports online of those who lobby them. Which is great! The section of Cook County’s website is called “Lobbyist Online. The county is the largest of Illinois’s 102 counties and it contains the largest city in the state, Chicago. Naturally, this is interesting information:

The site, proposed by County Clerk David Orr and a bi-partisan group of commissioners, also lists how much lobbyists were paid.

Orr said 188 lobbyists representing 89 businesses reported on time. They contacted about 60 government officials and were paid a total of $1.12 million.
“You can track who they were lobbying and, for the most part, why,” Orr said. “They made 576 contacts with those roughly 60 people, and that’s just in the first half of 2010.”

Still, while this is great information, it still doesn’t make up for the fact that Cook County still does not disclose what lobbyists it contracts. Cook County as a whole has at least one lobbyist, as reported to the state of Illinois, and its departments and subsidiaries have more. Not to mention the dues paid to organizations like the Metro Counties of Illinois.

The county’s efforts in increasing transparency are laudable, but it can still take the next step forward. Lobbying by counties isn’t rare. Especially because of its prevalent nature, local governments should take the initiative to making that information available to its taxpayers. If anything, they should do it to get an extra point on our checklist and upgrade their B- to a B. Or, you know. For its citizens.

A provision by the newly signed financial-reform bill has exempted the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from disclosing information to the public, even under the Freedom of Information Act. According for Fox Business:

The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from “surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities.” Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot.

That argument comes despite the President saying that one of the cornerstones of the sweeping new legislation was more transparent financial markets. Indeed, in touting the new law, Obama specifically said it would “increase transparency in financial dealings.”

The SEC cited the new law Tuesday in a FOIA action brought by FOX Business Network. Steven Mintz, founding partner of law firm Mintz & Gold LLC in New York, lamented what he described as “the backroom deal that was cut between Congress and the SEC to keep the SEC’s failures secret. The only losers here are the American public.”

This is by far one of the most startling developments for transparency this year. The SEC is one of America’s largest agencies and now it does not have to disclose public data when citizens make public inquiries. Fox was able to quote three cases exposing SEC wrongdoing by FOIA in 2009 alone, and it’ll be unknown how much vital information will remain missing in the future. This marks a huge step backwards for the transparency movement.

What can citizens do once they have government information?

In Bell, California, three senior city officials were making lavish salaries. The Chief Administrative Officer, Robert Rizzo, was making $787,637 for running the city of less than 40,0000. When citizens found out, they were rightfully outraged and their anger translated into the resignation of those three officials. Now activist groups are calling for the resignation of 4 out of the 5 city council members. These positions are part time, but the council members are making more close to $100,000.

“It’s showing that the residents are ready and willing to fix this problem and they’re going to move forward until they get justice and get a government that works for them,” said Christina Garcia, the head of one of the activist groups involved in organizing upset citiznes. The group is calling for open records and an exhaustive audit of the city’s finances. Coincidentally, the city gets an “F” on transparency using our 10 point transparency checklist.

Citizens armed with information are fully-vested with the power they need in order to keep their government accountable. But what about those instances where information is kept from citizens?

Mike Gatto, California State Assemblyman, avoids cameras and answering question. But that’s putting it lightly. One man representing the assemblyman who can only kindly be described as “overly aggressive” in his tactics kicked a journalist out from a public meeting in a public library. Less than 30 people attended the meeting. And that’s how many would find out what really happened in that meeting,

Police at the scene threatened to arrest the journalist if he didn’t leave. Of course, the journalist was the last person that needed to be threatened by police. Perhaps the police should have threatened the assemblyman and compelled him to acknowledge California’s open meetings law.

Several things I’ve learned through #FOIAchat, our weekly Twitter conference on Freedom of Information issues, come to mind. First, video cameras will bring out the worst in public officials and their staff as far as secrecy goes. But few will object to, or notice, a voice recorder. For many reasons, video is far superior to just voice recording, but it is better than nothing. Second, the fact that Mike Gatto is acting like a diva is a story in itself. If this were a special on VH1, it would be understandable why he wouldn’t want unexpected cameras. But as an elected official, paid by taxpayer money, he has no right to exclude journalists (and thereby exclude his constituents) from public meetings. This is a story on it’s own right, and had he let the journalist in the meeting, the journalist probably wouldn’t have found anything as worthy of reporting as Gatto’s power trip.

Lastly, people are becoming a part of government accountability, and officials should embrace this and learn to work with citizens instead of trying to push us out. We’ve talked about the benefits to governments and citizens alike to letting cameras into open meetings. Officials can benefit by having justifications for their decisions available and they can also see a decrease in Freedom of Information Act requests. The benefits to citizens are obvious.

It won’t work to keep us out, we’re already in. Officials need to get with the times and include us in the conversation, or suffer the wrath of informed citizens.

The most recent reports by State Budget Solutions (SBS) state the average state debt per private sector worker is $17,000, with the aggregate state debt exceeding $1.8 trillion. That is $1,800,000,000,000.

The biggest problem-states include Alabama, California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.

SBS offers and continues to develop solutions to overcome the record state budget deficits. Go to SBS’s website you’ll find more information on solutions for your state’s budget.

Michigan’s constitution requires that the state government operate with a balanced budget.

But Michigan legislators returned from a two week break without a plan on how to address the state’s more than $300 million budget shortfall for the current year. Governor Jennifer Granholm (D) is seemingly waiting for Congress to revive a measure that would give Michigan $560 million in additional federal money to help provide health care for the poor. Republicans are not counting on the money, instead planning more budget cuts.

The Michigan Senate already has voted to erase a projected shortfall of $1.3 billion in the state’s general fund through spending cuts and savings in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, but Democrats who control the House oppose many of those measures.

It’s a tough job, but legislators are compensated for their troubles, and compensated well. Michigan lawmakers earn the second highest salary of state legislators, $79,650, next only to California.

However, despite all of the cost-cutting benefits of going online, Michigan has yet to post its check register. Unlike other transparency projects, posting Michigan’s check register online would apparently come at no cost because of the way that the state deals with accounting.

Involving citizens in the process by taking steps to become more proactively transparent won’t solve all of Michigan’s problems, but it would be a great first step in budget discipline. For example, the information that Michigan legislators are the second-highest paid in the nation is invaluable. People have a right to that information. There’s nothing that increases prudence like public scrutiny.

When Oklahoma drafted its Open Records and Open Meetings Acts, it exempted itself from the laws. The only thing the Legislature has to disclose is what monies are being spent, but any other correspondence in the legislature remains confidential.

“It’s kind of interesting to me that we promulgate rules on every other agency to be open and transparent, except for the House and the Senate,” said Tulsa Democratic Representative Lucky Lamons in an interview with News 9.

Lamons added amendments to several bills in the last session that would have forced the legislature follow the Open Records and Open Meetings Acts, but all of them were killed.

Those in the legislature are defending the exemption, saying they need to protect constituents privacy. But the confidentiality clause isn’t much of a defense, according to Representative Jason Murphey. Murphy will be drafting an Open Records and Meetings Act especially for the legislature next fall.

It’ll be interesting to see which of those who’ve signed pledges supporting open government principles will support the bill.

Alexandria, VA— Maryland school districts earned an overall “C” for information available on their websites according to an analysis conducted by Sunshine Review, a pro-transparency group. The analysis found that Howard County Public Schools earned a perfect score; Frederick and Montgomery County Schools received the only other “A” grades. Five school districts received failing grades, including Talbot and St. Mary’s County Public Schools.

Sunshine Review employs a “10 Point Transparency Checklist” to assess state and local government websites on proactive disclosure of government information. The checklist measures content available on government websites against what should be provided. Checklist items include information about budgets, meetings, elected and administrative officials, background checks, audits, contracts, academic performance, public records, and taxes.

Marta Hummel Mossburg, a Senior Fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institute, noted the importance of providing key information. “As Sunshine Review’s analysis of Maryland’s school districts shows, most fail to provide information online about fees funding schools and other key documents. In good times and especially during this recession, parents and residents should have easy access to whether their dollars are being spent wisely.”

President of Sunshine Review Michael Barnhart agreed, saying “It is crucial for parents and taxpayers to have access to complete information about how school districts operate.”

Sunshine Review is a non-profit organization dedicated to state and local government transparency. Sunshine Review collaborates with individuals and organizations throughout America in the cause of an informed citizenry and a transparent government. Since its inception in 2008, Sunshine Review has analyzed the websites of all 50 states, more than 3,140 counties, 805 cities, and 1,560 school districts.

For more information, visit www.sunshinereview.org.

One exemption to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is the deliberative process exemption. Matter relating to the “deliberative processes” of government can be exempt from public records disclosure.

Deliberative processes include opinions or recommendations in the course of making decisions that apply to official government functions (like policy or legislation). To qualify for the privilege, records must be both predecisional (they must precede a final decision) and deliberative (they must be opinions or recommendations). Things like processing forms and paying accounts, purely procedural, administrative processes of an agency, are not part of its deliberative processes.

The privilege is meant to protect the “candid and frank discussions” of government employees and prevents them from being second-guessed constantly by interested outside parties. The privilege is also sometimes claimed to avoid confusing the public about the way a decision was reached.

While the justifications for having the exemption seem justified, it is considered on of the most often abused FOIA exemptions. Government Technology, a magazine on government best practices, saw the exemption in 1996 as “self-serving, [protecting] most of the records which really reveal the process of government, and [...] invoked often as a knee-jerk reaction to a request.”

But that article has more than a problem with the application of the exemption. The justifications for it are on shaky ground:

It is hard to fathom that a competent government employee would be so embarrassed or upset that his or her analytical work was disclosed to the public that it would cause that employee to be less candid in the future. It is difficult to believe that most staff members are so unsure of what they have to say, or so timid about expressing themselves, that public disclosure would force the process of government to grind to a halt.

The author of that article requested a Justice Department report on proposed changes to FOIA, and after several legal battles, he was granted the file. With half of the pages redacted. The reason? Deliberative process exemption. He tried requesting again under the Clinton administration, a more FOIA-friendly organization, and was granted the full report. After reading through it, the author was confused:

When I leafed through the report I wondered why in the world we had wasted so much time litigating over it. The information originally deleted was cut-and-dry legal analysis. This is certainly no criticism of the attorney who prepared it, but it was not a scintillating novel approach to the law. The attorney was not expressing any “candor” or “frank discussion.” It was as routine as one could possibly imagine. No secrets, no nothing.

This anecdotal experience certainly justifies the belief that using deliberative process as ground for an exemption is a knee-jerk reaction when governments get an information request.

When is this exemption justified? I’d love to hear from you about cases you’ve been involved with or have followed where there was a need to keep deliberative, decisional information private. Let me know or join Sunshine Review and WikiFOIA on Twitter this Friday from 2-3 EST at #FOIAchat, our weekly chat on public records and open meetings issues. On Friday, we’ll be talking about the deliberative process exemption specifically, so come share your thoughts or join us to learn more about it.

Yesterday, we discussed that California has the largest state budget shortfall in the US, topping at $41.6 billion dollars. Solutions are still being discussed after the Governor’s proposal to cut public employee wages was overruled by a judge.

Well, it turns out there are a few salaries for California public employees which being drastically overpaid.

In the city of Bell, home to 38,000 residents and one of the poorest municipalities of Los Angeles County, it was revealed that the City Manager earns a salary of $787,637 with annual 12 percent raises, the highest in the nation. The police chief makes $457,000, more than the LAPD’s chief, who oversees 3.8 million residents. Part time work for city earned council members $100,000 a year and an average monthly check of $8,083.

“It seems obscene to me,” State Assemblyman Hector De La Torre said. “People making $30,000 a year are paying taxes so that their council members can make $80,000.”

The report sparked outrage amongst the residents who protested outside of city hall, calling for an independent audit of the city council member’s salaries and contracts. They want fiscal transparency in the county, and they want it yesterday.

Not surprisingly, the city earned an “F” transparency grade from Sunshine Review, but hopefully the corruption in the city council will push for a more open, honest and realistic government. The City Council can start by proactively disclosing salaries and other budget information online.