Today I want to give a shout out Bacon's Rebellion.

The blog is dedicated to covering Virginia; especially infastructure, transportation and taxes.  Bacon's Rebellion has a few contributors but the person I have highlighted the most is James Bacon.

I like the post about a fellow transparency advocate retiring.  The post about the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority lobbying for more state money with state money; is a great example of how some potential conflicts of interest can fall through the cracks.  Even if using public money to lobby for more public money isn't illegal it should be questioned and blogs are the perfect place for that kind of digging.

Bacon's Rebellion's posts are always thoughtful and focused on how best to deal with the nuts and bolts that make up Virginia.

The Virginia State Board of Elections has announced that it will have live election results available in real time using XML (Yes the announcement is in a PDF, one step at a time.)  You can see the results here.

Great job Virginia for using XML and embracing real time election results.

(h/t Luigi Montanez)

Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and congressional political news.  This week I have highlights from Virginia, Maryland, Delaware

In Virgina, Shaun Kenney writes about Virginia part time legislature and the conflict of interest that grows from it.  Virginia has a part time legislature which creates a lot of examples of conflict of interest, for instance, "Delegate Jennifer McClellan continues to hold her seat despite her professional employment as a lobbyist for Verizon."  This post was in response to Waldo Jaquith's post about  a Virginia legislator who basically wrote himself an earmark- "Hamilton had Old Dominion University hire him as a consultant, using funding he’d allocate from the state budget."  Jaquith suggests that Virginia should make their state legislature full time and pay their lawmakers more.  Shaun counters that more time and money won't make lawmakers more ethical, so he suggests a shorter legislative session with no pay.  For the several state legislatures that are part time (Montana's meets once every 2 years for example) this is an important discussion.  The question of  what kind of lawmaker you want to represent you is one of the defining debates of any republic. 

In Maryland, Annapolis Politics has a post about analyzing campaign finance reports.  "You don't really need intelligence--what you really need is time.and a cynical attitude."  It's an excellent summary of what to look at:  Key notes of information: amount of donation, type of donor, location of donor, amount of money raised, and ending cash on hand.

Kilroys Delaware has a post about school district transparency new legislation would require school districts to post, on their Web site, a check register of every check they write and update the register every three months.  This is a great first step for school district budget transparency.  Even though three months is pretty decent disclosure time schedule, they should really aim for real time disclosure, since checks are all done electronically real time shouldn't be a technical problem.

Earlier this week, Alexander Muir at SocialGovernment.com wrote an interesting post about social media in the states; how they are using new media to interact with citizens and what are some of the best programs. Much like the federal government, he found that the states can and should be doing so much more.

Muir found that states were starting to use maps to inform their residents about traffic and other similar issues. He gives Maryland “extra credit” for the Old Line State’s interactive map displaying environmental initiatives having to do with the Chesapeake Bay. He notes that many states should do more with safety alerts. Currently, Amber Alerts are the most used new media app. He suggests a tornado watch system would be appropriate use of new media.

With the federal Recovery.gov up and running, many states are building their own version. He sites Illinois’ site as a “great start,” but added we’ll have to take a “wait and see” approach to see how transparent and useful these sites end up. And I would add we must take approach the states much like we are the feds by prodding and demanding that they are as open as possible.

States are starting to experiment with Twitter, but few are fully realizing its potential. He sites California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as an exception, who has set up a Twitter group on Buzzable to discuss what’s going on with the state government. He adds that states should embrace widgets much more, with Virginia doing the most with ones on wine, traffic and emergency notices. He also credits Virginia for setting up a YouTube channel, podcasts and a flushed out stimulus site.

Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and congressional political news.  This week I have highlights from Oklahoma, Virginia, Maine, and California. In Oklahoma, the McCarville Report Online posts about State Senator Kenneth Corn’s amendment to ban lobbyists from being hired by state agencies.  His amendment was successfully added a bill that would ban state funds being used to pay for lobbying.

Virginia’s Tertium Quids writes about how the state bill that would create a state spending online database has been approved by the State House Science and Technology Committee only to be moved to the Appropriations Committee in order to assess its financial impact.  The financial impact on transparent state finances this will be a hard one to figure out.

JonB at Turn Maine Blue has a post about the Web site Maine set up to monitor what it spends from the stimulus.  JonB asks people to take a critical look at the site and give feedback on its user experience.   Good for Maine for taking the first step and setting up a space to disclose where the stimulus money is going.  This is definitely a step in the right direction.  Mainers should head to it and give some good feedback on how the site can be improved.

In California, the Liberal OC has a post about State Rep. Jose Solorio being lobbyied on Facebook.  Rep. Solorio updated his status saying he was reviewing the budget and people commented on his wall and status with feed back.  A pretty interesting way to lobby a lawmaker.

Loudoun County in Virginia just launched a new wiki to collect community news and information. Loudounpedia is run by the Loudoun county library system and has sections for local government information, blogs, job board, recreation and other community related activities.

The government section now has all information regarding the election including a Google map of polling places. This is an excellent resource for the community and the choice of a wiki allows people to edit it with their own knowledge making it a resource that is owned by the community.

h/t to the Municipalist