IL boosts spending transparency

Today the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget (GOMB) released the statement of revenues and expenditures, outlining financial activities from 2010 and the first quart of 2011. Why is this so significant? Normally we would not be seeing these figures unti 2012.

GOMB has adopted a new schedule of reporting that will make financial statements for the state budget available on an annual and quarterly basis, much like how reporting is conducted in the private sector. Illinois’ new reporting methods will not affect the way audits are conducted, however, and those will not be released until a year or more after revenue and costs are available.

Timeliness is often forgotten about when discussing transparency, but real time reporting, or just more frequent, is vital to the access of government data. Bravo Illinois for taking this step!

The Sunshine Standard

Sunshine Review has rated more than 5,000 city, county, and school district website using out Ten Point Transparency Checklist. out of these, a mere 40 have scored a 9 or 10.

There’s clearly a need for some sort of legislation to encourage governments to disclose key information to citizens. That’s why Sunshine Review is proud to introduce the Sunshine Standard.

In the coming weeks, we will talk to more than 7,000 legislators to ask them to review the legislation and to support it.

What is the Sunshine Standard? You can hear it right from our president here.

The Sunshine Standard website includes model legislation for public officials to use as a tool, but also tools for citizens to start making a change in their state and local governments. We hope you’re as excited about this as we are, and that you’ll join us in making your local government more transparent.

Low standards for government lobbying transparency

Unlike our interactions with non-public institutions, we can’t just take our money elsewhere when it comes to government, and we can’t just not care–it’s our duty to keep our elected bodies accountable.

This is why lobbying disclosure requirements for public bodies are so important. It is one thing to want to know what private interests are influencing legislation in-state and at Congress. It is quite another to know what specific legislation and programs your money is funding. The latter instance proves a more pressing need for transparency.

Many, if not most, governments attempt to influence legislation by lobbying. But the lobbying registration philosophy in some states is odd. According to the Pacific Research Institute, 44 out of the 50 states have exemptions specific to public bodies that lobby. The reasoning? Lobbying is a “natural” function of public office.

Perhaps it is. Still, lobbying by public entities remains an activity in particular that governments should be open about. Besides the fact that ailing state budgets require voters and officials to scrutinize public spending, the spirit of open government practically demands that legislation being promoted with public funds be known as such. For example, while some governments lobby for more state money, others can be lobbying to weaken state Open Meetings Act, as is the case in Texas.

Only one state takes transparency here seriously. The Minnesota State Auditor posts an annual report summarizing the lobbying by public entities in the state. The report includes information on contract lobbyists that local entities like cities, counties, and school districts hire, but it goes one step further: it includes membership in taxpayer-funded lobbying associations in the report. These associations are funded by governments, but are generally not subject to the same open records laws that governments are.

Even then, there’s room for improvement: Minnesota does not compile information for local governments that lobby the federal government.

Governments owe it to their citizens to let us know where public funds are being used for lobbying–we should at least be allowed in the discussion. Minnesota may not be perfect, but it’s a start.

San Francisco voting on Gov. 2.0 legislation tomorrow

Tomorrow, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisor’s will likely vote into law the Open Data Directive proposed by former San Francisco Mayor, Gavin Newsom.

Over a year ago, Newsom—now the lieutenant governor—galvanized San Francisco into adopting social media and open government standards when he implemented Twitter-311 services and began sharing over 150 government data sets with the public on DataSF.org.

San Francisco’s website has already earned an “A+” transparency rating from Sunshine Review. It would be great to see a major metropolitan city cement Gov 2.0 practices for its future.

H/T: GovFresh

Tennessee website earns Government-to-Citizen Achievement Award

The Center for Digital Government has given the Tennessee General Assembly website the Government-to-Citizen Award. This is the second year that the site has earned the award.

According to the Center for Digital Government, the site has been noted for it’s amount of educational material, being well organized, nice design, and streaming video clips with agendas and bill information.

Sunshine Review is also impressed with Tennessee’s efforts. The state website earned an “A” transparency grade for proactively disclosing information online. We particularly liked to see the state posting its contract and salary data online, and hope that more states will follow Tennessee’s lead.

Should the government go paperless?

I love following twitter conversations, even when they don’t include my favorite #FOIAchat hashtag. One of the the ones I always checkup on is #localgovchat. This week they were discussing document management and posting government documents online.

There was a lot of discussion about redactions and if documents are properly setup so that information can be shared with the public. While reading up on the conversation, I couldn’t help but wonder why more of these processes aren’t done through an online form. As a matter of fact, the only paper forms I can recall filling out in the past months have all been government related.

True, some local and state government entities have progressed to a few online procedures (e.g. paying your taxes online) but few have taken the next step to servicing constituents. Imagine if you could file a FOIA request online and then track its status throughout the process.

And without paper forms, the government could manipulate which forms it presents to the public without having to worry about invading privacy rights, like when Springfield, Illinois published social security numbers.

Back in March, Obama pushed for health care to take the next step in becoming a paperless business. Perhaps we should be taking steps for a paperless government?

Is usability essential to transparency efforts?

Is usability essential to transparency efforts? My answer—you bet it is. One of the most common questions I receive from volunteer writers is how long they should search a website for a checkpoint on our transparency checklist. I tell them that if they can’t find it within a couple of minutes to mark the point as a “no.”

And let’s be honest, most citizens won’t give a website more then 10 seconds to satisfy their curiosity before they’re clicking back to Google. This is why I was so excited to see that Seattle.gov conducted a usability test on the business portal, asking questions like “Contact an elected official about the issue.”

I would love to hear of similar tests being conducted at municipal levels. Questions like “Where is the current budget?” would go a long way towards satisfying watchdog citizens inquiries.

And if any municipal governments are looking for usability test volunteers, I’d be happy to help get this trend started.

Minnesota taxpayer-funded lobbying

I’ve written before about disclosure in Minnesota of the states taxpayer-funded lobbying. The Minnesota State Auditor publishes a yearly summary of all of the taxpayer-funded lobbying within the state.

Taxpayer-funded lobbying is the use of public funds by public entities for the purpose of influencing legislation. Minnesota is the only state I know of that proactively discloses 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 Minnesota state legislature. Of course, many of these governments are also lobbying the U.S. Congress.

The Auditor’s report contains revealing insight on lobbying by governments in Minnesota. For example, of all lobbying:

*Cities account 32% of total spent on lobbying
*School districts: 10%
*Counties: 28%
*Other entities: 30%

Also, for taxpayer-funded lobbying associations, 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!

California budget finally approved

Finally, the record-long wait for California’s state budget is over. On the 99th day of its fiscal year the California legislature was able to approve the state budget. Already fiscal experts are calling the $87.5 billion spending plan a ticking time bomb, headed for certain disaster.

We’ll just have to take their word for it, because the budget is not available to citizens yet. In times where real-time results are a reality, how can be that budget that has been in process for 99 days not be posted online?

What do you think? Should we start a new count—how many days it will take to post the new budget online?

Update:I spoke too soon, 99 days and counting…

Idaho school districts fail transparency test

Idaho school districts earned an overall “D” transparency grade for information available on their websites according to an analysis conducted by Sunshine Review, a pro-transparency group.

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.

School districts Bonneville Joint School District and Pocatello-Chubbuck School District earned perfect transparency scores. However, school districts overwhelmingly failed the transparency test, with 40 of the 75 earning an “F.” Many of the school districts failed to post financial information, scoring badly on audits, contracts, and budgets.

Wayne Hoffman, the Executive Director of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, was not surprised by the school districts’ poor performance.

“Unfortunately, the results are not surprising. For too many school districts, government transparency is little more than an afterthought. In other school districts, transparency is an inconvenience. The districts that do the job well recognize how important government transparency is. It’s our hope that all Idaho school districts come to recognize that transparency is a basic and core function of government, and without it, taxpayers have every right to be suspicious of how well their money is being spent,” said Hoffman.

Despite the dismal scores reported, transparency in the school districts will be increasing later this year thanks to a bill which will require any school districts with over 300 students to post their spending online.

The President of Sunshine Review Michael Barnhart believes that proactively disclosing spending will have a positive impact on Idaho’s schools performance.

“It is crucial for parents and taxpayers to have access to complete information about how school districts operate,” said Barnhart.

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.

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