A dose of Common Sense for California

Great transparency article from Paul Jacob on Sept 12th. (reprinted with permission)

You can see this article as well as Paul’s other columns at ThisIsCommonSense.com:

© Is for California

You might think that there’s nothing a government won’t try. You’d be right. But I was near stupefied to learn that the state of California copyrights its laws. And it’s not alone.

The state tries to control — through copyright — how you can access its laws, where and how you store them, etc. The state makes available its building codes, plumbing standards and criminal laws online, but requires you to ask for permission to download them!

The state’s out to make money. It charges $1,556 for a digital version, more for a print-out, and makes nearly a million dollars a year selling what is legally ours.

Yes, what’s ours. We are a nation of laws, not of men, and we have the right to own and reprint our laws as much as we want. The purpose of copyright is to ensure private parties can maintain some control over their intellectual property. But the laws themselves are, in point of elementary political theory, the intellectual property of all. Not of state bureaus.

Thankfully, heroic Internet technician and mover and shaker Carl Malamud believes in government transparency. And he, unlike Al Gore, really worked to help build the Internet.

On Labor Day Mr. Malamud published the whole California code online. Available for free.

Obviously, Malamud is spoiling for a fight. Good. He should win it. He has, after all, the law (if not the state) on his side.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Paul Jacob: Another audit, please

Paul Jacob is a veteran transparency advocate and a senior policy advisor at the Sam Adams Alliance. Jacob’s column, Common Sense, highlights a suspicious reaction from Diane Oberquell, a Thurston County commissioner, when she found out Washington state officials were checking on the transparency of local government. From the column:

Last fall, Washington state auditors conducted a government performance audit to see how responsive local officials are to requests for public records.

According to the newspaper The Olympian, this Commissioner Oberquell — I guess it’s a coincidence that her name sorta rhymes with “overkill” — this Oberquell person went “ballistic” when she found out about the audit. Claimed it was an uncalled for “sting” operation.

Hey, if that’s what it was, so be it. Let’s have more of these sting operations.

The irony is that a draft report of the audit has just been released, and it seems Thurston County got an okay assessment. Not the best, not the worst. Middling. So why all the defensiveness?

Hmmm . . . seems mighty suspicious to me. Time for another audit?

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