Minnesota taxpayer-funded lobbying: How much disclosure is enough?

A few months back, the Illinois Policy Institute released a report heralding the transparency of Minnesota on the state’s disclosure of its taxpayer-funded lobbying.

Taxpayer-funded lobbying is just what it sounds like: lobbying funded by citizens’ money. Local and state governments use public funds, which come from tax dollars, to lobby for legislation and to attempt to gain money from other governments.

Not much is known about this process, which is why the Illinois Policy Institute was optimistic about Minnesota’s disclosure. Every year, the Minnesota state auditor releases the Local Government Lobbying Services Report, which details the cost of lobbying by entities in the state. The report includes payments to taxpayer-funded lobbying associations, as well as contracts with lobbyists. A very good job of proactive disclosure, especially considering the archives for this information go back to 1989.

Or so it would seem. The nonprofit Freedom Foundation of Minnesota recently released a report highlighting the federal lobbying spending of 26 public entities in the state. The entities spent $5.2 million since 2006 lobbying federal officials.

So what’s the problem? Federal lobbying isn’t included in the auditor’s report. According to the Freedom Foundation president, this needs to change:

“It’s critical that taxpayers have an understanding of how much their local governments are spending on lobbying,” he said. “It is important for them to know how much their cities and counties are spending to lobby legislators in St. Paul. It stands to reason it is just as important for them to know how much they are spending to lobby congressmen in Washington, D.C.”

That makes perfect sense. Minnesota should be lauded for its efforts in being accountable to its citizens, but in transparency, there’s always room for improvement. Federal lobbying should be disclosed as readily as state and local lobbying is. Minnesota will be all the better for it.

USASpending.gov “almost entirely useless”

The Sunlight Foundation called out federal agencies at the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington, DC today. USASpending.gov “almost entirely useless,” said Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation.

The organization has launched its own website, Clearspending.com, which has found that roughly half, or $1.4 trillion, in spending has misreported on government websites.

Miller did not stop at USASpending.gov, but also criticized Data.gov and Recovery.gov for equally bad reporting.

Which begs the question, how can we guarantee the government will report accurately? What checks and balances can be put in place to keep government reporting honest? We’ll see what the summit decides, but I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments on the subject.

CA salary transparency bill stalls in senate

Almost every politician in California was ready to jump on the “Let’s bash Bell” bandwagon, but now that legislation calling for salary transparency is in the senate, political officials are balking. The latest legislation would require that both municipal employees post their salaries online and state level employees as well.

The California senators are considering addressing the issue with an internal rule, which would be more flexible and easily changed.

If the California legislature was so eager to expose municipal salaries, then they should also be comfortable placing the same transparency standards on themselves. The legislature should worry less about how it’ll reflect on their campaigns, and more about what is right for Californian constituents.

Transparency isn’t always comfortable

A hotly-contested tax in Mission, MO has some doubting the merits of transparency. After disclosing a new fee that would go towards fixing roads in the town, bloggers and other media officials are unhappy with what has been dubbed “the driveway tax.”

The fee was established after discussions and hearings, and the municipality announced it in a newsletter.* These transparency efforts lead to the negative reaction from bloggers and media outlets.

Often, the knee-jerk reaction in these situations are a mix of self-preservation, defensive posturing by city officials, and an unwillingness to put information in the public spotlight again.

Transparency isn’t always easy, and just like any job people will not always be happy with the end results. But just like a paper that is proof read, exposing government information to the public will lead to an open, honest, and better performing government entity.

I believe this for all levels of government, from cities like Mission to the Federal level.

* I have not been able to find a website for the city. While it’s obvious city officials are trying, a website would be a positive step for easier access to government information.

Albuquerque website goes the distance

Sunshine Review has ranked over 5,000 government website since we launched, and only 52 of those websites have merited an “A” transparency grade.

Which is why I can’t express how stoked I was to see Albuquerque, New Mexico’s new website. This city website is out-performing most government websites in the US for proactive disclosure of information. In fact, very few local governments have made the effort to be that transparent, and in such detail.

You want it, this site has it. Credit card receipts, lobbying expenditures, campaign contributions, audits, contracts, employee salaries—everything. This website literally achieved not just every mark on Sunshine Review’s transparency checklist, but also nailed all our suggested data as well. Data is even downloadable in different formats.

I highly recommend poking around the revamped site, and demanding the same performance from your local governments.

Small town Texas has big web presence

Have you ever heard of Manor, TX? Probably not. It’s a small town in Texas with 6,500 residents, and it happens to be one of the technological hotspots for Gov 2.0.

Manor is currently piloting over a dozen technological programs, like See.Click.Fix., QR codes (those bars that cell phone can scan), and a virtual suggestion box that’s gotten up to 2,000 comments from the small town.

And while I’m happy to see a small town work hard for civic engagement, I wish I’d seen a stronger transparency score. Manor scored a “D” transparency score on SR, and failed to post things like contracts or even e-mails for their city council. I hope to see Manor continue to be cutting edge, but I also would like to see them cover the basics first.

Update: Manor updated it’s website within a day of this post and doubled it’s transparency and improved to a “B” transparency grade.

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.

Proactive disclosure of financial forms could save all sorts of trouble in Massachusetts

The Boston Globe reported that it takes months to process requests to see financial disclosure forms in Massachusetts. The State Ethics Commission is in charge of these forms.

The forms, called Statements of Financial Interest, detail financial holdings of state and local officials. A state law requires the filings be available during office hours upon request. Still, in practice, the forms are difficult to procure.

Massachusetts requires the state notify an official when a request to see his or her form is submitted, which contributes to the lag. 29 other states post the forms online, and most of the rest make the forms publicly available in their offices.

Thanks to The Globe’s story, however, legislators have to resolve the problem. It’s a good thing, too. Information that’s inaccessible in practice may as well be inaccessible by the law. The result is the same, which is citizens left in the dark.

Proactive disclosure is the answer. Senator Brian A. Joyce (D) and Representative Anne M. Gobi (D), members of the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight, both suggest the state post the disclosure forms online from the get-go. They suggest an amendment to the 1978 Massachusetts law that would allow the Ethics Commission of the state to post the forms online.

Some officials are even taking the responsibility to be open into their own hands. Steve Grossman, a Democratic candidate for state treasurer, posted the forms he has filed on his website.

A spokesman for the Ethics Commission previously said that the commission was trying to find ways to process the forms more efficiently.

What’s more efficient than proactive disclosure?

Thanks to Todd Wallack for the excellent story.

Good performance—a natural off-shoot of transparency

How often do you think about government like a business? Until I started working with Sunshine Review, I never did.

However, experience has taught that governments programs need to be run like a business. Some have good performance, some are corrupt. ::cough, um, Bell, cough::

But government programs can be run like a business. Asking questions like, “Is the new road being built as efficiently and cheaply as possible?” are just as important as posting the checkbook register. Which is why I’m glad one of Sunshine Review all-stars, Pinal County, Arizona, just gave a presentation for how they manage programs for optimal performance. You can see the entire presentation here.

I like to think transparency demands better performance management from governments. After all, what government wants to report what a bad job they’re doing?

Does your local government have performance results posted online? Let us know in the comments.

CA officials jump on transparency bandwagon

In the wake of Bell, California’s exorbitant government salaries being revealed, officials, agencies, and associations are scrambling to push through transparency initiatives. Treasurer Bill Lockye wants increased auditing rules to report large pay increases and Controller John Chiang would like to create a database revealing the highest wages in every country. Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown has called for investigations, while Sen. Lou Correa has proposed the Taxpayer Right to Know Act, which would create a database of public employee pay. Even the League of California Cities is drafting legislation to publish government employee salary and pension information.

These are all great ideas, but the OC Register was right to point out that Californian officials were “asleep at the wheel” to have let this happen in the first place. CalPERS, California’s retirement system, knew about Bell’s salaries since 2006. Officials who were previously unconcerned with a report about the high pay of city managers in California are now waving it like a red flag.

This fervor for transparency points out an important lesson to take away Bell, transparency and disclosure are just the first steps towards an honest government. However, all these efforts will be useless if you have an inactive citizenry. Watchful or curious citizens, like the journalists at the LA Times, can never be replaced by a database.

Side note: More high salaries were revealed in Bell, CA. The city’s director of administrative services was earning $422,707, and the director of general services made $421,402. There were also 5 more employees earning well over $200,000 annually.

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