Maryland transparency woes?

Yesterday, I wrote about the strides being taken in improving Maryland’s transparency and integrating technology into the state’s plans. But Maryland doesn’t have a completely pristine record on the matter, according to some.

An editorial in the Washington Post this week called the transparency in Maryland “fake transparency.” The author of the editorial has experience with Anne Arundel, which he recognizes as having “an award-winning Web site [that] happily provides tons of noncontroversial information.” The author had experience with Maryland Public Information Act requests, and in turn faced intimidation and incompetence from the county’s staff on several ocassions. Another problem he noticed was very lax compliance to the Maryland Open Meetings Act, like the lack of a public notice to alert the public of special meetings and a lack of responsiveness from county officials when the problem was brought to their attention.

The Post article concludes with the recommendation that local governments adopt legislation similar to the federal Public Online Information Act of 2010, which would make all documents subject to a Public Information Act request be online and free to the public from the moment of their creation.

I’ve also written about Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s mixed transparency record. The governor, like the state of Maryland, has some people lauding his transparency accomplishments, and others saying they are less than perfect. Apparently, his lack of follow-through on his transparency promises has landed Jindal the title of 4th Worst Governor in the Country. That is the consequence of not addressing transparency concerns.

Whether the problems found in Anne Arundel are generalizable to the rest of the state is yet to be determined. However, good transparency recommendations should be addressed, regardless of their premises. Our friends at the Sunlight Foundation have been saying Public = Online for awhile, the sentiment echoed by the Post editorial, and this may be the opportunity for Maryland to lead the way.

Sunlight Foundation: Obama = Transparency FAIL.

The Sunlight Foundation blog got on the case of Barack “Most Transparent Government in History” Obama today for not following up with a promise to post all non-emergency legislation to WhiteHouse.gov 5 days prior to signing. This practice was designed to allow time for public comment and review. Unfortunately, President Obama didn’t follow it on his very first opportunity, the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

It is too bad they let this transparency promise slip on the very first piece of legislation that hit the President’s desk. After a few transparency wins for the administration, it looks like they’ve hit their first fail.

Not good…Not good at all.