“Guess Who’s Coming to TCamp12” is an mini-series we started to introduce some of the faces you'll see at TCamp, something we hope will be useful to attendees and non-attendees alike. This week, we’ve highlighted Ohio advocate, Beth Sebian and Transparency International Slovakia’s Matej Kurian. Today, we bring you a few of the TransparencyCamp Scholars.

The TransparencyCamp Scholarship program was started as part of our 2011 Camp. It’s an application driven process that provides partial travel stipends for folks from around the country (and the world) to come to Washington, DC to join us for Camp. This year, we accepted 10 Scholars -- a mix of long-time and first-time opengov activists, developers, journalists, and thinkers. Like last year, we’ll do a round-up of the full list of Scholars post-Camp, but first, here’s a sneak peek at these awesome peeps:

Yvette Cabrera

Berkeley, California

Currently, Yvette interns with the Oakland Food Policy Council, blogging on topics like aquaponics, food policy, interesting events, and supporting the Council’s efforts in building partnerships and identifying key regional allies and decision-makers.

Think food policy has nothing to do with transparency? Think again. From the data held by government agencies like EPA, FDA, and USDA to having access to the meetings and records of government boards charged with setting local policy, those invested in food distribution, quality, and regulation have plenty of concerns that overlap with us transparency geeks. When asked why Yvette in particular wants to come to TransparencyCamp, she answers:

I want to learn about building transparency in the government on a national and local level in order to create a food system that is healthy and just for everybody. Transparency to me means efficiency and increased citizen participation in decision-making, and I think that is the only logical way to improving the current food system that we have here in the U.S.

Nuno Moniz

Porto, Portugal

Nuno is a civic hacker whose interests in open civic data have led him to work on a variety of different projects. His first was to open up the Portuguese State Budget, making it available in JSON. Using this information and the Open Knowledge Foundation’s “Bubble Tree” (a way to display interactive visualizations of spending data), Nuno went on to create visualizations for both the Portuguese 2012 State Budget and the Azorean 2012 Autonomous Region Budget.

Currently, Nuno is sinking his teeth into the meat of Portuguese legislative data. “For the last 6 months (and for the next 6 months) I've been working on my Master's Thesis: in a nutshell, I'm transforming three years of Portuguese Legislation's .PDFs into open data.” Knowing that the TransparencyCamp community is full of civic hackers from all over the world who work on legislative data and others who can provide help insight on the use and governing of this information, Nuno hopes to lead a session at TCamp about his work:

"Opening the Portuguese Legislation: What useful information lies in the documents?" was the name of the session I proposed [on Google Moderator]. As I said before, I've been working for the last months on an open legislation project. The objective of this session, besides sharing the project, its development status, and the "bumps along the way", would be to think what more information lies in the legislation texts. Which and what entities are present in those texts? People, Organizations? What do we gain by processing, discovering and interlinking that information and not just publishing its text? How could mapping that information add more transparency in the legislative process? Questions for the debate, and at the end, I hope, new and better ideas. :)

Dan Schneiderman

Rochester, New York

Dan says that he got into the world of opengov-ery because of his “passion for playing with big data and seeing how it can be used to help people.” Building off his experience at TCamp 2011, he hopes that TCamp 2012 will be an opportunity to explore new possibilities for future projects and how he can become involved with the transparency movement after he graduates.

To kick off this exploration, Dan plans to brings to TCamp the fruits of an independent study of government data he’s been working on using the javascript library D3. His study mashes up information from Data.gov, the Open States API, and a large collection (340,000!) of tweets relating to Super Tuesday that he scraped. Want to learn more? Find Dan’s session at TransparencyCamp.

Join us at TransparencyCamp April 28th and 29th just outside of Washington, DC to meet Matej and other folks -- inside and out of government -- who are working to making our government more open, accountable, and transparent. Register today at http://transparencycamp.org -- and hurry! Space is limited.

• This week, a comprehensive overhaul of the Georgia’s open government laws unanimously passed the Senate. House Bill 397 will now go back to the House so members can agree on changes made by the Senate. Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens, one of the bill's backers, maintains that it “makes great strides towards increasing transparency in Georgia.” Hollie G. Manheimer, executive director of the First Amendment Foundation, points out, “We are optimistic that HB 397 will pass in its current form, and that the attorney general will begin as soon as possible to address an increased number of open government violations. Stronger open government laws mean greater transparency for Georgia citizens.” For the whole story, see Kathleen Baydala Joyner’s post on ATLAW.
• California recently received a D-minus for government transparency. According to John Diaz, this low grade is mostly due to the state lacking a “checkbook” website that displays financial information online. Diaz maintains, “California, home of so much brilliance and innovation, should be ashamed that Texas and Kentucky lead the nation in using the tools of technology to make their government spending more transparent to their citizens. Even worse is that 35 other states scored higher than California in a recent analysis by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Perhaps most humiliating of all is that the technology that could have put California in the top tier in 2012 is not expected to be up and running until … 2017.” For his entire take, see his post on SF Gate.
• In Kentucky, a bill increasing secrecy at the Cabinet for Health and Family Services died in a Senate committee only to be revived minutes later in the House of Representatives. Critics of the measure worry the bill will “sharply curtail public access to details of child-abuse deaths and serious injuries, were outraged, saying the bill gives the cabinet more power to withhold information.” David Thompson, executive director of the Kentucky Press Association opposes the bill. Calling it a “secrecy bill.” Media attorney Jon Fleischaker testified the Senate committee about concerns over the lack of transparency the bill has for cabinet oversight, even though supporters were pushing it as a transparency bill. For the entire story, see Mike Farell’s post on the Kentucky Open Government Blog.
• According to a report by the State Integrity Investigation, Virginia has been ranked the fourth worst state regarding open government and anti-corruption laws and practices. The state earned a failing score of 55 and performed better than only Wyoming, South Dakota and Georgia. In his blog, Virginia  Senator Chap Petersen called the report “an example of the lamest, most superficial analysis.” For more information, see Nicole Trifone’s post on Fairfax City Patch.

• California Councilwoman Teresa Barth recently wrote an open letter publicizing her support for increased government transparency. In the letter, Barth maintains that Encinitas, California needs stronger transparency laws. She writes, “At the June 10, 2009 City Council meeting, I proposed a citizen’s task force to work with staff to craft a Sunshine Ordinance for Encinitas. My colleagues said the city was already in compliance with existing laws and a Sunshine Ordinance was not necessary. I believe we should set a higher goal. We should strive to do the 'Best Not the Least.'" She urges all citizens to tell the city council to support a Sunshine Ordinance. She argues, “The right of the people to know what their government is doing is fundamental to democracy.” For the whole story, check out her post on Coastal News.
• In a blog post, Gwyneth Doland, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government,  reassess the state of New Mexico transparency after Sunshine Week. Some of  the guidelines Doland wants New Mexico to adopt are having public meeting agendas available 72 hours in advance (instead of the current 24 hours) and improved access to information about about schools, roads, taxes and other public works. Doland maintains, “Being open and transparent isn’t always easy for government to do, but it’s always the right thing do.” For more information, see her post on NM Politics.
• The Kentucky attorney general has decided that the Kentucky State University Board of Regents violated the state’s Open Meetings Act earlier this year. According to the blog, “The Finance and Administration Committee and the Audit Committee jointly held a closed session meeting on Jan. 27 to discuss an external audit. Before entering the closed session, the committee failed to pass a formal motion to go into closed session and cite the reason for the session, as required by the Open Meetings Act.” Board of Regents Chairwoman Laura Douglas maintained that the meeting was not illegal and that the committee went into a closed session under an exception to requirement of public session that focuses on threats to public safety. The attorney general maintains that the exception was "clearly inapplicable and the meeting was illegal." For the entire story, see Christine de Briffault's post on the Kentucky Open Government Blog.
• The Sunshine Review recently  evaluated state websites in Kansas. The Wichita and Derby school districts and Sedgwick County were among nine Kansas governments recognized for having transparent websites. Sunshine Review uses information such as budgets, meetings, lobbying, financial audits, contracts, academic performance, public records and taxes to determine the website’s level of transparency. For the whole story, read Phillip Brownlee's post on WE Blog. 

In our continued effort to highlight the anniversary of January 2010's Citizens United decision, this month's weekly roundups will take a look at what local bloggers across the country are saying about the ruling. First, we took a look at bloggers from the primary states. Last week, we looked at bloggers from the East coast states. We'll be ending our coverage by rounding up local blogs from the West coast states, where many campaign donations derive.

• San Francisco's Political Blotter covered Common Causes’ Amend 2012 campaign to reverse the Citizens United ruling. According to  Josh Richman of Political Blotter, “A constitutional amendment will take years to pass, coming far too late to stem the tide of money that’s already flooding this year’s election, but organizers say this effort at least will give outraged voters a voice and inject the issue into November’s vote, forcing candidates to take a position on it.” The campaign's initial drive for petition signatures will focus on Colorado, Montana and Massachusetts; that might expand to Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio and Washington. Common Cause President Bob Edgar said Americans “have lost faith in Washington, they don’t think the government works for them anymore.”
• Despite 2010’s Citizens United ruling, Montana state courts upheld the state's law banning corporate spending. According to the court, laws burdening such speech are subject to strict scrutiny, which requires the Government to prove that the restriction "furthers a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.” Opponents of Citizens United in Montana worry that a large influx of corporate money has the potential to alter the course of elections and politics in the state. A former house representative maintained that, “Montana, with its small population, enjoys political campaigns marked by person-to-person contact and a low cost of advertising as compared to other states.” For the whole story, check out Patrick Genova’s post on State of Elections.

Transparency advocates in California are drawing inspiration from the Public Online Information Act (POIA) to pursue disclosure improvements in California. POIA was introduced this Congress by Rep. Steve Israel in the House and by Sen. Jon Tester in the Senate.

The new transparency organization govUNLEASHED has chosen the California Public Online Information Act (CPOIA) as its first major initiative. The proposed legislation would require any information that "reveals government agency operational conditions and their capacity to consistently deliver cost-effective public services to U.S. taxpayers" be posted online. This would reduce the burden on state resources that is created by the numerous requests submitted under the current system, according to the organization's website.

On the federal level, POIA would require Executive Branch agencies to publish all publicly available information on the Internet in a timely manner and in user-friendly formats. It would also create an advisory committee to assist in developing government-wide Internet publication policies. You can visit Sunlight's policy page for more information, including a video introduction, to POIA.

• The Austin Independent School District agreed to release a report that deals with the closing, repurposing, and consolidation of nine schools in Central Texas. The district was supposed to release the report to The Austin American Stateman several days prior to a school board meeting scheduled for Monday. However,   district officials later said they would only release the document if the newspaper’s editors and reporters were willing to wait until 10 PM Monday night, several hours after the meeting would have taken place. The school district claims that the report was actually a “working draft,” which exempts it from the state’s open records law. Curt Olsen remains unconvinced, maintaining, “transparency with conditions is not transparency." Read more of his take at the Texas Budget Source.

• The Attorney General of Massachusetts has just released a new website to ensure all meetings are in accordance with the Open Meetings Law. Members of the public, press, municipal officials, and public bodies may access its determinations by searching for key terms or phrases or by actions ordered. According to Jefferey Roy, “The Open Meeting Law supports the principle that the democratic process depends on the public having knowledge about the considerations underlying governmental action. It requires that most meetings of governmental bodies to be held in public.” Find out more at the Franklin School Committee Blog.

• According to Max Brantley, Little Rock’s city hall is violating transparency laws. Two days after Brantly filed an FOI for accumulated city data on ward redistricting, none have been provided. The custodian of the documents has not replied, as law requires, to his FOI request. City manager Bruce Moore claims they have published the only document pertaining to redistricting, however,  Brantly disagrees. He asks readers, “Do you trust them to be any more forthcoming about decisions on spending their new half-billion dollars?” Read more at the Arkansas Blog.

• Former city council candidate and California attorney Mauren Sundstrom  filed a complaint with the San Bernardino County District Attorney alleging that Upland City Council committed two open meeting law violations. She alleges that these meetings violated the Brown Act, which allows the public the opportunity participate in meetings of local government agencies. Sundstrom maintains that she wants city council to realize they may not be as open as they think they are. Read Sandra Emerson’s  post on Inland Politics to find out more.

• New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has made good on his campaign promise to increase his own transparency by launching a new website called CitizenConnect. This website provide citizens with details about his schedule and allows them to conduct online town halls with him. Jimmy Veilkind has been critical of Cuomo's transparency record in the past and sees this as a step in the right direction. Cuomo hopes the site will provide “an open forum for New Yorkers to interact and participate in their government.” Find out more on Veilkind's take on the new website at Capitol Confidential.

• According to a study done by The Sunshine Review, a nonprofit that uses a transparency checklist to evaluate state and local government websites, the state of Florida has a B grade for online transparency. Despite several Florida county websites receiving A+ grades for online transparency, the overall grade average was weighed down by the low marks given to the state website MyFlorida.com. The site earned a B due to its tough-to-navigate search function, not providing information on state-paid lobbying and agency lobbying contracts, and not providing "comprehensive information" for making public records requests. Find out more about Katie Sanders' take on Florida's ranking at the Miami Herald Naked Politics Blog.

• Cook County, Illinois just launched an online open county data catalog. For its template, Cook County used the Model Local Open Government Directive, which was designed to fill a need for open government policies  expressed at CityCamp Colorado. Bryan Gryth, Vice-President and Director of Colorado Smart Communities maintains, “Today is a good day for open government and the citizens of Cook County because they have a more transparent county government and that transparency will hopefully lead to a more informed citizenry that can hold their government accountable.” Check out Sebsatian James' take on the  campaign on the Cook County Blog.

• San Francisco's oldest municipal Sunshine Ordinance was established and extended thanks to the San Francisco Bay Guardian.  They are now reporting that enforcement of this ordinance was left to an ethics commission that simply would not discipline recalcitrant officials, thus leaving the task force powerless to give citizens the openness they have a right to. She maintains that this oversight allows government departments to lie about embarrassing public records with little impunity. See why Terry Francke describes the Sunshine Ordinance as a "cloud of inaction" at CalAware Today.

by policy intern Eric Dunn

Budget transparency for the state of California is the subject of California Common Sense, a new website launched by Stanford University students and alumni. It includes reports and transparency tools that dig into the California budget and open data up to the public. Sunlight recently highlighted similar efforts in Minnesota and Oregon.

One of the tools available through CACS explores budget expenditures. This feature lets voters click on an issue area (like K-12 education) to see which agencies are spending money on that issue broken down by expenditure type.

Tools developed by third-party entities, like CACS, can help make the budget process at the state level more transparent. CACS is also circulating an online petition to Governor Jerry Brown that requests that more information about the budget be made available to the public.

As Sunlight has covered before, California is one of the many states that is in dire need of transparency. A recently released report [pdf link] from the Pacific Research Institute offered up some policy recommendations after examining the situation. The free market think tank published their report during Sunshine Week and focused primarily on reforming open-records and open-meetings laws. The author of the report noted,

Recent incidents like the City of Bell pay scandal show that California’s open-records and open-meetings laws are in need of reform. Public pay is the public’s business, along with the debates, decisions, and actions of government and the outcomes of government policies.

The Sunlight Foundation is enthusiastic to see more organizations spur discussions of open government and encourage brainstorming of solutions. Among the many policy recommendations, we were particularly excited to see the online posting of public meetings and minutes, as well as making records available online with all fees stated upfront.

I’m proud to present this independent research project by our summer intern Mike Liu.  Mike looked at his home state of California, the recent Bell salary scandal and the need for transparency at a local level.  -  Nicko Margolies

When I first heard about the exorbitant salaries of top officials in Bell, California, my initial thoughts concerned college, not politics.

Last year I participated in student government as a freshman Senate mentee, working closely with student Senators in order to better understand university governance.

Though I obtained firsthand insight into effecting change on campus, many mentees and I left incredibly disillusioned by the lack of transparency and accountability in student government.

Both new and experienced Senators missed mandatory meetings on a whim. Furthermore, attendance at Senate committee meetings was painfully sparse: Senators often found themselves struggling to establish quorum, even when student organizations' budgets were on the line. This was particularly troubling, considering Senator salaries (compensation many students didn’t even know about) were based on nominal committee leadership and participation.

After a controversial and unproductive year, a new batch of Senators were elected and sworn in, leaving many unaddressed problems destined for repetition.

Reading the LA Times investigation, I couldn't believe the striking similarities between the Bell fiasco and what I had seen on campus.

The Bell scandal

In the relatively small, low-income town of Bell, City Council members' inflated salaries were safely hidden from the public eye. Year after year, Bell Councilmen received over $7,800 per month for sitting on boards of various agencies including the Community Housing Authority, the Surplus Property Authority, and, ironically, the Public Financing Authority.

What's worse, as the LA Times reported in July, these boards did close to nothing, holding meetings that sometimes lasted for as little as a single minute.

These same Councilmen were also responsible for the more infuriating and heavily publicized part of the Bell story - the extraordinarily bloated salaries of Bell's top officials, including former city manager Robert Rizzo's $1.5 million annual compensation.

Though the corruption displayed in the Bell scandal is of an obviously different magnitude than the carelessness of the student Senate, they are both pieces of a far-reaching set of problems. Fueled by a lack of transparency and citizen participation, unaccountable leaders were given extra room to behave in an opaque and irresponsible manner.

In the case of Bell, corrupt officials went unchecked and unnoticed as they pocketed hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of taxpayer dollars.

Small steps forward

As much as we’d like there to be a quick fix solution or a panacea for local corruption woes, there simply isn’t one. While detailed investigations, voluntary salary cuts, and a slew of resignations are necessary first steps, they have relatively few implications for the long term.

Outrage centered on bloated public officials is justified, but turning that energy into permanent solutions is the crucial next step.

Public equals online: salary edition

Last week, California State Controller John Chiang announced that cities would be required to disclose salary information online. This was a great step for local transparency in California, and having the state encourage financial disclosure at local levels is a promising sign.

However, it is ultimately up to individual cities to make sure that the data they are disclosing is both understandable and comprehensive.

Published data should include basic annual salary information as well as a detailed breakdown of benefits packages and other perks. An independent 2010 report [pdf] by Laguna Hills City Council Candidate Barbara Kogerman lists “obscure compensation factors,” which add to compensations while slipping past disclosure requirements. These benefits include “management incentives, deferred compensation, contributions to private retirement programs, insurance premiums […] auto expenses, moving expenses, payouts for unused sick or vacation leave […]” and others. Although some of these compensations are included in the annual salary, many are taken into account after retirement, effectively increasing pensions without being reflected in general salary reports.

Employment contracts for officials should also be posted in an easily accessible database and updated to reflect salary-boosting addendums and any other modifications as soon as they are implemented.

A useful, meaningful online record of city salary information will include a searchable, itemized, and consistently updated database of compensation factors available for public review.

A great example can be found at the Missouri Accountability Portal. As the Sunlight Reporting Group explained last week, the website is entirely automated, and salary information is updated in real time. In addition, contracts are displayed in detail and are fully searchable. Sites like this could be scaled down and used to keep track of local expenditures. In fact, counties could establish their own “accountability portals” so that each city has a consistent, useable framework for disclosing important data.

For more insight into local transparency, I turned to professor Raphe Sonenshein, political science chair at California State University, Fullerton. He informed me that California has a relatively expansive set of protections for transparency under state law. Although “local governments are absolutely required to comply […] what happens when they don’t?” asked Sonenshein. “That’s the Bell Case.”

Although Bell pushed the limits of non-transparency, their actions also illustrate the potential problems with California’s existing disclosure policies. Let’s look at how Bell dealt with two of California’s longest-standing pieces of transparency legislation: the Public Records Act and the Ralph M. Brown Act.

The disclosure debacle

An LA Times article last week revealed that Bell withheld public records requests beyond “the time limit set by the state Public Records Act” without explanation.

Sonenshein experienced similar roadblocks when he tried to obtain a copy of the city charter. “The person who answered the phone said she’d be happy to fax me an application for a public records request,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

It’s ridiculous that citizens would have to jump through hoops to obtain records as basic as salary summaries during a salary scandal or the city charter of a charter city.

Bell City Council members similarly disregarded the Brown Act as they held secret meetings in the wake of the scandal.  The extent to which private deliberations concerning salaries took place in the past remains unknown.

It was also through a discreet loophole that Bell City Council members inflated their salaries in the first place. A “little-noticed city ballot measure” to convert Bell to a charter city was approved during a special election. There was no real mention of the exemptions from salary regulations that such a change would cause.

The measure passed, receiving a total of less than 400 votes.

The Bell scandal reinforces the argument that California’s existing transparency laws don’t do enough on their own. Enforcement simply does not exist, and though most cities follow the rules, we know from this experience that relying merely on integrity is not enough.

A proactive commitment

Accountability is not simply releasing information in bulk. It’s also not passing nominal, unenforced legislation.

What real accountability requires is an active, honest effort from citizens and leaders. Steven Croley, a law professor at the University of Michigan, and new member of the Obama administration's Domestic Policy Council, wrote a blog post in 2007 that is relevant in this discussion:

“Government is open not just because it discloses information about what it has already done, but because it solicits citizens' input about what it is doing.”

Take the example of the special ballot measure that allowed Bell Council members to eliminate their salary caps. It’s undeniable that the public was left in the dark. Instead, though the use of town hall meetings and online outreach, changes to city legislature and policy should have been posted and discussed before a final vote went through.

In his post, Croley stated that federal agencies should adopt the attitude of “[telling] you before you ask” over “we’ll tell you if you ask.” This idea will certainly be at the center of a successful transparency movement.

Right now, local officials have an invaluable opportunity to be proactive instead of passive. A relevant solution to the inconsistency of the Public Records Act, for example, might be to establish a database where documents are uploaded and made public for future reference as they are requested. This system would create easy access to the most pertinent records while slowly establishing a comprehensive, accessible database free from red tape.

Get involved

While it is the responsibility of government to operate transparently and with integrity, the impact of citizen engagement should not be understated. Within weeks after the Bell scandal broke, citizens banded together and effectively forced the resignation of its corrupt city officials.

But it shouldn’t take a looming scandal to start an accountability movement.

Citizen engagement has great potential to effect change, and for most people, local government might just be the most accessible place to take action.

One model example of a transparency movement is Illinois’ Local Transparency Project, which combines the expertise of the Illinois Policy Institute with local leaders fighting government opacity. The Local Transparency Project is an encouraging example of a successful grassroots effort and a great resource for citizen activists looking to organize and mobilize.

In addition, the Sunlight Foundation offers fantastic resources and a strong community for transparency advocates. A solid first step would be to join the Public=Online campaign as well as the Citizens for Open Government group. Sunlight is also producing a guide on how to do state level organizing and advocacy around transparency. Bring your community and concerns to the conversation.

Local government operates closest to the people, but it rarely receives the same attention enjoyed by the state or federal levels.

The Bell scandal proves, however, that though City Councils will never enjoy the celebrity of White House officials or pass billion-dollar legislation, corruption at home can still bear enormous consequences.

If we implement permanent transparency solutions at a local level, we’ll be on our way to a truly open government.

A downloadable chart of Bell City official salaries can be found here [bellcityclerk website pdf]

A huge thank you to the Los Angeles Times and its reporters for breaking the Bell story and shedding much needed light on local governance in California.