Open government bills in Wyoming

There are three legislative proposals set to make government more transparent in Wyoming. One bill would require a response to Freedom of Information Act requests in three days. Currently, the Wyoming Sunshine Law does not specify response times.

Another proposed change would require courts to expedite cases involving public records requests, while the third bill would require government bodies to record executive sessions.

Forcing governments to comply to a time frame in answering public records requests is a great step towards more openness. Tightening response times for FOIA responses was one way Illinois dealt with its government transparency problems. And as far as recording executive sessions–what better way to ensure that all citizens have access to open government. Doing so would be in the spirit of the Wyoming Public Meeting Law.

Public perception of transparency: how much does it count?

According to a ForeSee and Nextgov Government Transparency Study, citizens give governments failing grades on transparency:

The White House earned a 46 on the study’s 100-point scale for its efforts to be transparent about what it is doing; federal agencies overall scored a 40, and Congress was at the bottom with a score of 37, nine points below the White House score.

Citizens were asked to rate governments on three aspects of transparency:
*The thoroughness of information disclosure
*The speed with which it is released
*The ease of accessing it.

The third question is worrisome. The question is “how transparent is your government?” and it is being measured by how easy it is to access government information. That is basically a way to answer the question of transparency with the definition. I also wonder if the scores attained by governments aren’t more indicative of general approval of the governments, and less reflective of transparency-centric feelings.

Still, this is a problem governments need to worry about. If governments are making serious efforts to engage citizens and make information available, but citizens aren’t aware of it, the result is the same as if these efforts weren’t made. The appropriate response is for governments to evaluate their open government initiatives, and to make sure these are conspicuous enough for citizens to be aware of them.

Open government in South Dakota Attorney General race

Attorney General Marty Jackley, a Republican, and Democratic challenger Ron Volesky agree that open government is important in South Dakota.

According to the Rapid City Journal, “Both candidates for South Dakota attorney general give open government in South Dakota an above average grade.” Sunshine Review, on the other hand, grades the South Dakota state website as a “B” on information disclosed on the state website; counties get an “F.”

Of course, it’s campaign season, so each candidate is trying to out-perform the other. The open government discussion in the state is turning out to be an “I can be more transparent than you” standoff. Both candidates agree that the Open Meetings Law should be stricter. Incumbent Jackley stated he would consider legislation that would allow open meetings complaints denied by states attorneys to be appealed to another venue, such as the attorney general.

Challenger Volesky, playing off of that consideration, proposed a third party to deal with such complaints.

For more South Dakota and FOIA, see the state’s sunshine law (FOIA) and make sure to check out WikiFOIA.

Using openness to improve government transparency

John Moore, who recently wrote about Gov 2.0 for Fortune Magazine, asks the internet what the biggest obstacle to local transparency is.

Moore tries a new crowdsourcing program, Quora, to collect answers. And the answers are all insightful, and come from interesting sources:

Douglas Barnes, Attorney: “The real problem is when there is strong institutional resistance or even hostility towards greater accountability to the public.”Take the NYPD (please). Their policy on FOIL requests? Drop them on the floor until you litigate. Providing data for timely crime mapping or community alerts? No way. The data and the technology is all there — after all, what do you think is driving CompStat? But god forbid the public would ever be brought into the loop in a meaningful way. The Village Voice recently ran an excellent series that highlights many of the reasons the NYPD might have for wanting to avoid transparency: http://www.villagevoice.com/2010…”

The really great thing about this piece is that it’s very much in the spirit of Gov 2.0 and open government. Moore uses an innovative 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 we won’t let you down.

The piece is definitely worth checking out.

Taxpayer-funded lobbying and Cook County

Sunshine Review compiled the totals for lobbying expenditures by the ten largest counties in Illinois. We found over $6.2 million in taxpayer-funded lobbying. Naturally, we included Cook County.

Cook County has had transparency complaints against it in the past. In fact, we’ve written about some of them. For our Freedom of Information Act request, the county was a mixed bag. The Freedom of Information Act officer I worked with would generally pick up phone calls and make himself available.

However, the process of getting my information, even once it was already processed by the county, was fatiguing. To begin with, I didn’t get all of the information I requested. I requested contracts between the Cook County Board and lobbyists since 2005. I also requested the county board’s membership dues to taxpayer-funded lobbying associations.

I received contracts with lobbyists for 2008 and 2009.

For those keeping score:

Requested: lobbying contracts and membership dues
Received: lobbying contracts, no mention of membership dues

Requested years: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
Received: 2008 and 2009

The total amount of spending that Sunshine Review uncovered for Cook County lobbying is $780k. But this is clearly only a partial figure. The real number must be exponentially more. In a purely unscientific fashion, the amount spent on lobbying between 2005-2010 in Cook County is more than twice as much at $1,559,980, considering the 3 years of contracts not disclosed and not even considering membership in taxpayer-funded lobbying associations.

From my very subjective perspective, Cook County wasn’t stonewalling me. They just didn’t prioritize their resources or time to respond to my request. Which is just as unacceptable as them having done it on purpose, because the result is the same: citizens and journalists having to go through rings of fire in order to get information that rightfully belongs to them.

There’s always room for improvement when it comes to transparency and taking your constituents seriously, and Cook County is no excuse.

Governors’ owe constituents their time sheets

I have had jobs where I have to report my hours, and am familiar with time sheets. They are certainly annoying, but I never lamented it too much. I always felt that my employers had a right to hold me accountable.

Turns out there’s a version of time sheets for governors. And in Texas, there’s also an equivalent to the employee who doesn’t fill out his time card, or who doesn’t work. It’s hard to tell.

Governor Rick Perry’s schedule for the first six months of 2010 showed an average of seven hours of state work per week, according to the Texas Tribune. And 38 of his weekdays had “no state scheduled events.” Perry responded that he simply doesn’t write down much of his work for the state.

This is certainly not the norm. The Tribune obtained detailed schedules kept by his fellow big-state governors:

Perry’s counterparts in California, New York and Florida do write down what they do. New York Gov. David Paterson’s schedule goes so far as to include drive times between events. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lists “cigar time” on his schedule. And they make their schedules readily available to the public. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist puts his schedule online every day.

Perry in all likelihood just isn’t reporting his schedule. Perry’s schedule makes no mention of a series of conference calls that Gulf Coast governors held regarding the BP oil spill. On one of the days on which Florida Governor Charlie Crist’s log shows a phone call with Perry, Perry’s schedule reads “no state scheduled events.”

“Many times the governor was on [the call], [and] many times his staff was on,” says Katherine Cesinger, a Perry spokeswoman. “If the governor didn’t call in, it’s not necessarily on his schedule.”

The article goes on to compare the approach of all of the governors examined to reporting their work, and to how this affects their approach to their jobs. It also focuses on other aspects of Perry’s transparency record, and notes that Perry’s office deletes official e-mails every seven days.

The practical consequences of transparency are prevention and weeding out of fraud and corruption. But on another, more personal level, open government and proactive disclosure instill trust in our elected officials. Perry may not be up to anything fishy, but it wouldn’t hurt him to share more information with Texans about his professional activities.

Are efforts focused on open government better directed towards open society?

Andrea Di Maio is an analyst at (and VP of) Gartner Research, where he focuses on e-government strategies. Today, he discusses an essay from Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice.

One Di Maio appreciates in the essay is its acknowledgment that feedback of all sorts tends to be negative. You don’t call a representative, for example, to tell them that they’re doing a great job. Typically, you call a representative when you’re angry. When they’ve done something wrong. Sunshine Review does recognize this, however, and in an effort to acknowledge the positive efforts governments make in being transparent, we give Sunny Awards to governments that get an A, A-, or B grade on our transparency checklist. Good achievements deserves just as much, if not more, acknowledgment than shortcomings.

Still, there’s one part of Di Maio’s assessment that is slightly off-mark. Noting that government is the most transparent of all of society’s institutions, he quotes the conclusion of the essay, saying that most people would agree:

“The current sophisticated movement for open government should expand its agenda and become a movement to Open Society”

It is true that most people would agree with this statement. Transparency, which has the curative effects on government of weeding out corruption, exposing fraud and waste, and instituting trust in constituents, should have the same effect on other spheres. As we often note, it’s not just citizens that benefit from this, but governments themselves. An inefficient government is no good to anyone. So, again, private companies, for example, can benefit from transparency as much as their customers can. This is probably true even on an individual level: my friends and I would both benefit from me being more open and honest about my actions and motivations.

But this is all beside the point of government transparency. We don’t demand that governments make information available to us solely because of consequential reasons. We demand it because it is our right. This isn’t a disagreement with Di Maio, but rather a clarification. Transparency is great in every sphere, but while it’s voluntary or in the hands of customers to demand it in most, in government, it’s the ultimate standard. Take for example the recent scandal in Bell, California where it was discovered that public officials of the town of 40,000 were making six-figure salaries. The outrage wasn’t simply about a misuse of funds. It was about breaking the peoples’ trust. If, for example, you buy a product and later find out it cost much less to produce, there is maybe annoyance. But not a feeling of betrayal.

Governments need to respond to citizens in a way that private entities don’t. Perhaps citizens have high expectations of their governments that contribute to them focusing only on the negative. But being held to high standards is nothing to complain about. Transparency everywhere is a noble goal. But let’s start with transparency in government.

Citizens work wonders with information on their side… when they aren’t being kicked out of public meetings

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 40,000. 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.

Public universities deal with transparency issues, too

When thinking about government transparency, people often forget that public universities fall under that umbrella. But the burden of transparency does fall on universities. And so does the inevitable confusion about what should be disclosed and what should be kept private.

University of California and California State University administrators have taken seemingly contradictory stances on two bills dealing with donor privacy. Administrators are arguing for a bill that gives them the right to continue sharing alumni contact information with credit card issuers and other corporate partners. They are at the same time opposed to a bill that would lift the anonymity of certain donors, claiming this would have a chilling effect on contributions.

Administrators say these are “Two very different issues,” akin to “Apples and oranges.” Senator Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat, says it is “Blatant hypocrisy.”

Earlier this week, I wrote about the Referendum 71 case, where the Supreme Court ruled that Washington state was to make public the names of people who voted to get Referendum 71 back on the ballot. I implied that the line between matters of transparency and matters of privacy could be thin, gray, nonexistent, or incredibly confusing. In this case, however, the two ballots seem to be on opposite sides of the line.

D.C. Attorney General: D.C is transparent enough

A few days ago, DC Attorney General Peter Nickles asked the D.C. Council to pass legislation that would give the administration of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty “unspecified additional time” to respond to Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests in unusual circumstances. D.C. currently allows 15 days for a response to a FOIA, with a 10 day extension. (In comparison, Illinois FOIA law allows for 5 days to respond, and an additional 5 day extension.)

“I have never seen more burdensome FOIA requests that are sapping the energy of our lawyers and paralegals,” Nickles said. “You can’t both cut our budget and expect that we’re not going to have difficulties responding.”

Of course, executing open records and open meetings acts are worth extra money. It is part of governments’ responsibilities to deliver information we have a right to. But it is also important to balance this need with reality. What are the reasons to extend the amount of days to answer a request? As Nickles noted, sometimes governments don’t have the resources to answer all information requests in a timely matter.

My experience with the Illinois Freedom of Information Act shows the dual nature of the matter. Illinois had been suffering from poorly fulfilled FOIAs when the Attorney General Lisa Madigan decided to back an upgrade to the law. The new Illinois FOIA law, as compared to the old FOIA, gave governments more compelling reasons to answer a FOIA by upping the penalities for failing to comply with the law. It also shortened the amount of time to respond from seven days to five. After I sent FOIAs to all 102 of Illinois counties, somewhere around 80% (or higher) of the counties asked for the additional 5 day extension. This could point to the fact that for certain requests, the time limit is too strict. Still, what is the alternative? The alternative is local governments not taking a FOIA seriously and abusing more generous time limits.

But Nickles says the Fenty administration isn’t in this boat: the administration is doing great on transparency. One member of the DC Council, Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), disagrees and is currently advancing a transparency bill that would create an independent agency to oversee and facilitate the diclosure of records. Nickles has said the bill is unnecessary because the Fenty administration is creating an electronic system that will make it easier to submit and track FOIA requests. Nickles pointed to statistics that show the average response time to requests has been reduced since 2007. In general, the AG thinks D.C. is transparent enough already.

However, as one participant in our weekly Twitter conference notes, there is no such thing as too much transparency. We are due every last bit of nonsensitive information, online, and once that utopia is reached, we want information in real-time.

Cheh, in return, has said Nickles “is looking for an open-ended excuse not to comply, and he’s not going to get it. It’s a simple invitation to delay, an invitation to mischief.”

Fenty’s administration has sought to “delay at every turn” says the Chairman of the Fraternal Order of Police. The union’s attorney noted that the District “doesn’t respond at all or responds a year or two later, only after we file a lawsuit.”

Nickles also took issue with a provision of Cheh’s bill that would allow the new agency to impose fines. He said it would create an “unnecessarily punitive and adversarial approach that casts government agencies and their employees as villains to be punished and pursued.”

“Unnecessary” is in the eye of the beholder, which is the taxpayer in this case. Governments can’t afford to get lazy when it comes to providing information to its citizens, and they must lean towards quick disclosure. Illinois law treats asking for unreasonable fees for a FOIA response as noncompliance. In the same vein, if D.C. is really taking up to a year to respond to a FOIA, and ignoring others, then that is noncompliance, breaking the FOIA law, which makes the negligent agency a criminal. Nickles should be fighting for stricter penalties, not serving as an apologist to lazy governments.

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