Texas Gov. Perry FOIA Fail

Gov. Rick Perry’s office has declined to release a state contract granting $4.5 million to an Austin company from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund. The company is reportedly founded by Perry campaign donor and friend David Nance.

The American-Statesman requested the contract under the Texas Public Information Act. In a letter to the newspaper Monday, the governor’s office said it believes the contract is not public under several exceptions to the law. Perry has requested an attorney general’s opinion on how he should approach the resquest for information, which the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas sees as a stalling tactic: it could take weeks or months before AG Greg Abbot makes a decision.

The contract is with Convergen LifeSciences, Inc. and was signed on August 13. The company has already been paid $2.25 million from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund. Perry’s office has not announced the contract or explained what Convergen does.

“Generally speaking, any contract with the state involving public funds is public information, period,” said Bill Christian, an Austin lawyer who is representing the American-Statesman in the matter.

The letter to the Statesman from the Office of the General Counsel for the governor said the contract should remain secret because it falls under the economic development information exception of the law. But Bill Larsen from the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas said that exemption doesn’t apply once contracts have been signed.

Perry’s office also said the contract should remain secret because it is covered by exemptions to the public information law covering information related to competition or bidding, trade secrets and certain confidential or financial information.

Exemptions to public information laws do exist and exist for good reason. Learn more about state sunshine laws.

Wish I was in Manor, TX

Manor, TX has just over 6,000 people in their small town, but it’s leading the way for open data, social media and a more open government. Yesterday and today Manor has teamed up with GovFresh to bring these ideals to other local governments around the nation. The conference is discussing:

• Open Government
• Citizen Engagement
• Citizen Service & 311
• Web & Mobile Technology
• Emergency Management
• Social Media
• Open Data

And even if you can’t afford to hop on a flight and catch the last panels for this conference, you can join me in listening to them live on Ustream, or follow on twitter with #manorgf. I’ve already heard some great great ideas, so I highly recommend watching.

Which type of transparency has the most value?

Gov 2.0 and the transparency movement have done nothing but gain momentum over the past few years, but even transparency activists tend to butt heads over the best way to implement it. And while there are many, many arguments, the one that I run into most is FOIA v. proactive disclosure.

Earlier this week the Texas Watchdog posted an article asking why the state comptroller handed out transparency awards based solely on posting checkbook registers online. Why not consider public record response rates? Many governments are happy to create fantastic websites and then decline FOIA requests based on their mood.

The long and short of it is that both matter. You need to proactively disclose government data and you need government to repsond honestly and promptly to citizen requests. I don’t fault the comptroller for recognizing one aspect of transparency, especially since it’s similar to what we do at Sunshine Review. Instead I’d hope that constituents and other organizations will take the reins to demand prompt responses to public records requests. After all, what’s stopping us?

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.

$500,000 taxpayer-funded lobbying exposed in Texas

More taxpayer-funded lobbying is bubbling up in Texas. It was revealed earlier this week that the authority for the Port of Corpus Christi spends a half-million dollars a year on lobbyists in Washington.

“If you don’t have people in D.C. to protect yourself, you’re going to be in trouble,” John LaRue, the port’s executive director, said. “We’re not talking hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake, we’re talking about hundreds of millions.”

Lobbying with taxpayer dollars happens at every level of government, some of the funds help local government entities, but other have proven to be wasteful spending. Like yesterday’s example of sending local firefighters on a trip to Vegas. This spending needs to be proactively disclosed and scrutinized by taxpayers, just like any other government spending.

Texas city taxpayers front tab for firefighters’ weekend away

Texas Watchdog, an investigative journalism group based in Texas, clued us into a story of unions using taxpayer money to cover the tab for what should be funded by private dollars.

McAllen, Texas taxpayers will send four firefighters on an all-expenses-paid trip to San Diego next month for a union convention guaranteed by their contract with the city. McAllen Firefighters Association Local 2602, which represents 142 of the city’s firefighters, have done this before: they billed taxpayers more than $7,000 for the union’s 2008 convention in Las Vegas. The firefighters receive regular wages from the union’s “business leave pool,” according to the union contract. This year, the San Diego trip will be at rooms at the International Association’s “headquarters hotel,” the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, which start at $259 per night.

“I’d say it’s very generous and it’s not the norm,” said an expert on union contracts.

This may not seem like a lot. After all, $7,000 is nothing in the great scheme of things. For example, Texas is facing a budget shortfall of up to $18 billion dollars. $7,000 compared to $18,000,000,000: not much.

But perhaps that attitude is how every state in the country but three has a budget shortfall. The event is benign, and the money isn’t a lot. But is it appropriate for this trip to come out of public funds? The question is not whether the actual conference is offensive; the question is whether this is a proper use of public money.

While this is certainly not the only case of misuse of taxpayer dollars, it is important for citizens to consistent be scrutinizing these actions. This time it’s $7K for a weekend away for heroes. But next time, it may not be so small a tab and so easy to justify.

And a misuse of taxpayer funds, is a misuse of taxpayer funds.

Austin takes open meetings to online forums

The city of Austin has launched an online forum to vote on which government programs deserve funding in the upcoming year. Constituents may cast 25 votes supporting the projects they’d prefer to receive funding, and may leave comments on the programs too. The expansion of the Austin Police Department has already garnered 44 comments, something I doubt would have happened at an open meeting, especially given the sass of some of the comments.

Kudos to Austin for being innovative and encouraging citizen feedback with an online forum.

Government sues itself for public records

That is essentially what is happening in Bexar County, Texas. Commissioner Tommy Adkisson has refused to hand over e-mails discussing public information from his personal e-mail account. This is after the Attorney General ruled that he must release the e-mails the San Antonio Express-News who had first submitted the open-record request back in February.

Adkisson says that he is appealing the ruling because he believe the newspaper is penalizing him for being opposed to toll roads.

“I think you’ve crossed the line between where I have some expectation of privacy and where you believe the public interest is,” Adkisson said. “I just believe that it has been one hugely intrusive episode by the Express-News.”

However, the AG has remained consistant the public information remains public even from personal e-mail accounts. If Adkisson wins the appeal, it has the potential to create a large loophole for government officials to avoid records requests.

Texas open meeting laws and new media

Last Tuesday, May 11, the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee spent nearly three hours discussing how the emergence of social media has changed the way governmental bodies conduct public business.

These new tools can be used by elected officials to better communicate with constituents. But as Keith Elkins, a former Capitol reporter and now executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, noted, elected officials could also use their cell phones, Blackberrys, laptops, and personal computers to communicate with one another in secrecy, outside of the state’s open records law and theTexas Open Meetings Act. He isn’t the first person to worry about this. Jason Stverak, president of the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, worried earlier this month about the lack of archiving in new media: while public officials are more available to their constituents, the are also more available to each other through means that circumvent open meetings law.

Senate State Affairs Committee chairman Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, recommends the Texas Legislature address how elected officials use the Internet to assure the public that no one is using the technology to violate the state’s Open Meetings Act or the Public Information Act. He also said public officials should not live in fear of being accused of violating the Public Meetings Act if they use electronic devices to communicate with others.

I wrote last week about the being behind municipalities using taxpayer dollars to sue Texas in order to “gut” the state’s open meetings law. Last year, four cities and some 20 local officials from across the state filed a federal lawsuit, supported by the Texas Municipal League, arguing that the penalties for violating the Act are harsh and unconstitutional. These penalties includ six months in jail and a fine of up to $500.
“We’ve got some good folks who are threatened with jail by innocent remarks or e-mails” said Amarillo Mayor and League president Debra McCartt.

Of course, there are consequences for a law that isn’t strict. The Illinois FOIA improvements that went into effect this year have sought to remedy lax execution of the state’s open meetings and records laws by setting up strict deadlines for compliance, and severe penalties for failing to do so.

It seems the answer is for Open Meetings Laws to explicitly state what is and isn’t acceptable, and to make clear what the exemptions to the law are. These laws need to address changing technology. It isn’t fair to officials for them to be unclear about whether their Tweet breaks the law, and it isn’t fair to citizens to be unable to access a Tweet relating to public business. Lastly, breaking the law needs to come with penalties that are strict enough to induce compliance.

Join us tomorrow on Twitter from 2-3 Eastern Standard Time to talk about Texas Open Meetings Law and open meetings laws in your state. Use hashtag #FOIAchat to talk to other transparency advocates about questions you may have or your experiences with open meetings. (If you can’t make it, our discussions are always archived.) For a topic schedule, look here.

Everything’s bigger in Texas, including attempts to exclude taxpayers

Taxpayer money helps fund a lot, more than taxpayers know about. Cities use taxpayer-money to lobby states and the federal government (a practice called “taxpayer-funded lobbying“). Anything that government does should be open to the government, that is our stance. Unfortunately, this practice is anything but open and there is little information available on it and taxpayer-funded lobbying associations.

And taxpayer-funded lobbying associations are making it so that government is less open. In Texas, the Texas Open Meetings Act is under assault. The Texas Municipal League is behind an effort to get cities to sue the state in order to weaken the open meetings law.

To put this into perspect: Texas citizens are funding an organization, which is encouraging Texas cities to sue the state, which are suing the state using the money of Texas citizens in order to prevent these citizens access to government meetings.

We’ll make sure to continue following this story. And make sure to tell us what you think.

Next Page »