I'm happy to have Lynn Fazekas from Illinois' City Barbs guest blog today. City Barbs is a hyper local blog that covers issues that affect DeKalb, Illinois. The story of DeKalb struggle for transparency is not exclusive to DeKalb but is happening in small towns across the country.  The lack of publicly available information prohibits people from actually being able to hold elected officials accountable and lets corruption reign free.

By Lynn Fazekas City Barbs

Events following Victor Wogen’s controversial election to the DeKalb (Illinois) City Council prompted a citizens’ group to push for online access to more types of public information.

When Wogen was elected DeKalb’s Third Warders and others, including myself, wrote letters to the editor to call for the alderman-elect (Wogen) not to be seated in May.   Citizens came to City Council meetings, some wearing t-shirts and buttons with “Wogen Resign” and “The Barbed Liar” on them (barbed wire was invented in DeKalb) to demand his resignation and to ask other Council members to denounce his behavior.  Of course we blogged as well.  Nothing much came of these activities but at least we’d officially registered our displeasure -- or so we thought at first.  Upon reading Council meeting minutes, we realized the City Clerk* had “sanitized” some of the citizens’ statements during these meetings.  Comments in support of the new alderman were duly recorded, but remarks unflattering to him were summarized vaguely; e.g., “So-and-so commented on the Third Ward election.”   Thus began another round of letters to the editor, neighborhood meetings, appointments with the mayor and clerk, and the birth of the Wogen Watch blog.  By mid-summer the focus was more on how to combat the bias in meeting minutes than on the Wogen himself.

Expanded public access to records besides the meeting minutes seemed reasonable to request.  In August nine of us – unnamed then but now known as DeKalb Citizens for Transparency – sent a letter asking for certain documents to be placed online on a regular basis.  The request was well-received by the Council; promises were made and a deadline set for the changes.

On a personal note, I remember feeling relief that we could channel our energies into a positive, productive direction.

Two years later, the improved access helped lead to the discovery that Alderman Wogen has been awarded no-bid contracts under the radar during his term of office.

None of the public access improvements were more important than the online posting of the “agenda packet,”  the collections of documents such as memos, preliminary drawings, surveys, etc., which accompany agendas and help City Council members, media, and other interested persons prepare for meetings.  The agenda packet also includes the city’s check register once per month.  It was the tracking of expenditures made possible by inclusion of the check register, along with the Illinois Secretary of State’s Corporate/LLC online database, which confirmed Victor Wogen’s ownership of Masonry Works, LLC and his additional city income of nearly $53,000 in 2008 for post-demolition repair work in downtown DeKalb.

Access to state records have also led to the discoveries that Wogen did not pay prevailing wages for the downtown jobs, that he is being pursued for unpaid payroll taxes, and that he owes the Illinois Tollway thousands in unpaid tolls and fines.

Read on...

The Stakes are High

Victor Wogen resigned late last year and, without a doubt, the departure is satisfying to many.  It would be a huge mistake, however, to allow Council merely to scapegoat the Third Ward alderman without acknowledging and challenging the individuals and the system that enabled his activities.  In the near-term, small-picture sense, we must question the competence of our legal counsel and the ethics of our top administrators and elected officials.  Longer term, it’s about replacing cronyism and a culture that is always looking for the “work around” (aka loophole) with a higher degree of professionalism.

We do not have unlimited time.  The City of DeKalb is facing financial challenges as never before, not all of which can be laid at the door of the poor economy.  For example, administrations have been operating for years without a formal debt policy or catastrophic liability insurance, and have built up an unfunded liability of about $30 million for a post-employment health insurance benefit that, for most of its recipients, is neither a state-mandated nor contractual obligation.  Even where the larger economy is demonstrably the culprit, it is clear the city is, and has been, failing to adapt to the new reality.  We anticipate a revenue shortfall approaching $3 million (in a General Fund operating budget of $30 million) by the end of the fiscal year, but there’s no plan for cutting expenditures – and the shortfall was projected last month, before we found out our largest employer, Northern Illinois University, is suddenly having a difficult time meeting its payroll.  Taxes and fees have already been raised at least a half-dozen different ways in the past 18 months and a property tax hike was just passed even though the problem of general affordability, a longstanding issue in the community, is becoming acute.  When cuts do occur, it’s generally public safety services that suffer, yet the city continues to engage in land acquisition and a $12 million effort to beautify the downtown.

DeKalb may be able maintain both solvency and a basic level of services if budgeted expenditures are drastically reprioritized.  Up to this point, however, a complacent City Council’s path of least resistance has been to go along with staff recommendations that serve the interests of an entrenched bureaucracy and a relatively small group of business people who are looking to remake DeKalb to resemble more prosperous Chicago suburbs to the east.

Our challenge in the simplest terms, then, has been to create a new path of least resistance – one that leads to Council’s acting in the best interests of the wider constituency.

Role of the Blogs

I run a hyper-local blog and so do a couple other members of DeKalb Citizens for Transparency.  Though able only to speak for myself, I believe we’d all agree that the blogs are no substitute for the face-to-face interactions that comprise acts of civic duty, activism or journalism.  That said, they do aid, supplement, and add a dimension of empowerment to these activities that makes me optimistic about the future of our democracy.  Nowadays a regular Joe or Josephine can run downtown to city hall with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and scoop the local dead tree publication a few days later, or present a public argument or analysis without having to wait and see if the gatekeepers will print his/her letter to the editor, or find like-minded people on the other side of town.

The growth of blogging has become uncomfortable enough for the status quo that attempts have been made to control the conversations there.  Local government officials refer to “the blogs” derisively.  Known bloggers are sometimes invited out for a beer and attempted persuasion to “be more positive.”   Members of a city commission have even discussed how they might pressure a local newspaper to censor its online comments to block bloggers’  “disproportionate” amount of influence over the City Council and perceived negative impacts to the city’s image.

Some of us see these actions as symptoms of the growing pains of systematic transparency.   Blogging has turned default secrecy on its head and the reaction is strong, but in the long term we believe behavior will change.

Results

We could see that the Wogen story deserved as large an audience as we could find for it, and were quite fortunate that the student-run newspaper at Northern Illinois University, Northern Star, was willing to delve into the Wogen arrangement or it might very well never have gotten beyond the relatively small readership of the local blogs.  In fact, the sequence of events suggests the very act of the Star’s submitting Freedom of Information Act requests led to a decision by city officials to try to get ahead of the story with a press release, which resulted in reaching the widest local audience possible.

The task since then has been to combat the natural tendency of city government to minimize the legal and ethical issues raised by the behavior of those who enabled Wogen.   Continuing coverage by local traditional media has helped keep up the pressure but tends to be focused on Wogen, a tempting target not only because of the no-bid contracts but also more recently for poor attendance at meetings and for having moved out of his ward following domestic battery charges last summer.  The Citizens for Transparency countered with two rallies last month to help redirect the message to a wider call for reform of city government, and we’ve spoken to these issues at Council meetings.  Additionally, we individually contact the aldermen and mayor on a regular basis to comment on proceedings.

December 14 – the same day Wogen resigned – the DeKalb City Council passed an ordinance that requires Council approval of expenditures over $1500 to city employees and elected officials.

We harbor no illusion that we’ve attained the goal.  For one thing, the ordinance is flawed, perhaps fatally so because at least one provision flies in the face of state statutes that limit the percentage of ownership interest.  There is also the matter of the Wogen enablers’ retaining employment with the city.  Until these folks are replaced, there will be a lingering suspicion that the brazen Mr. Wogen represents the tip of a slimy iceberg.   This is reason enough to keep calling for investigations as well as to press Council to continue to tinker with the system that concerns ethics and related legislation.

There’s no endpoint to civic duty.

Still, it’s safe to say a few of us are savoring the moment here in DeKalb, Illinois.

Matt Fretz writes Blog the Fifth, which covers New Jersey's 5th district and Representative Scott Garrett.  Matt has been a vocal supporter of transparency efforts around the state and in Congress; as well as doing his part to keep Rep. Garrett accountable.  With the contested race for governor over and Chris Christie the winner, Matt shares what transparency measures New Jersey needs to take to battle the culture of corruption that has over taken the state.

By Matt Fretz Blog the Fifth

People have different reasons to be passionate about transparency; mine is accountability to the taxpayer. To me when elected officials let us know what they are spending our money on then we can keep them accountable and government becomes better. Regardless of whether one is pleased or disgusted with the outcome, the Governor’s race here in New Jersey highlighted just how far transparency has to go.

Chris Christie’s win is rooted in the 130 corruption convictions he rode to victory, which were products of a closed government that encouraged no bid contracts, no show jobs, grants for favors, as well as every form of patronage you can imagine and some you wouldn’t believe were true. Books have been written about our culture of corruption, and the core of it all is the overall lack of transparency. Politicians and decision makers have largely been able to operate out of the public and press’s purview for longer than anyone can remember.

Then Christie showed up and started arresting people.

It’s a sad statement on our state’s government that a subpoena was the only way taxpayers could find out what was going on. Despite assertions it was largely a partisan exercise to bolster his own career; it was not as though Christie didn’t get a conviction on every person he charged, Democrat and Republican.

In his acceptance speech, Christie said he is open to new ways to fix our broken state, here’s mine: Open it up.

Already paying the most in taxes, and unlikely to support more, the people of New Jersey are going to have to see cuts and reorganization on a massive scale in order to close a projected deficit equal to roughly 25% of the State budget. It has been proven that governments can find savings when they open the suggestion box to the employees. Residents of New Jersey should also have a chance to look at how our money is spent and voice their suggestions on cuts.

In the effort to include residents in a meaningful way, New Jersey’s Web sites are in desperate need of an upgrade. The sites most needed to track expenses, campaign donations, and legislation almost seem purposely counter intuitive at times, or at the very least cumbersome. Some basic intuition would go a long way, and would provide a golden opportunity for Christie to win some support from the 51% of the population who didn’t vote for him.

Another step would be to eliminate the loophole allowing for pretty much every contract to be awarded in a no bid fashion, or at the very least institute a waiting period between announcement of intention to award the contract and actually awarding it. This would give journalists and citizens a chance to see if there’s any funny business going on. Too often it’s only after the contract is awarded that people realize how much money the the contract winner has contributed, whether directly or indirectly.

Granted, Christie had some questionable actions of his own during his tenure, but never before has a Governor come in with such a strong track record that voters actually expect him to clean up the state. At the very least, one has to be optimistic he may actually get there. The best way for him to start the process is with a little sunshine.

The state level is a mix and match of some openness and an incredible amount of opacity.  That is why groups like Texas Watchdog are worth their weight in gold.  According to their site they are "a news Web site and training center that scrutinizes the actions of government agencies, bureaucracies and politicians in Texas. It is an independent, nonpartisan entity founded on the belief that our American democracy depends on transparency in government."  They have been doing excellent work bringing Texas into the light and keeping their elected officials accountable.  This is why we welcome Jennifer Peebles to share her experience advocating for transparency in Texas.  - Nisha Thompson

By JENNIFER PEEBLES With 254 counties, 1,200 school districts and a population of about 24 million, the commercials are right: Texas really is like a whole other country.

It's also a country where you have no legal right to know who has applied to be your kid's next school superintendent, where public officials think open meetings laws trample their free speech rights, and where state legislators keep paper records of who is snooping in their ethics forms.

As the deputy editor for Texas Watchdog, a Houston-based nonprofit news site that launched about a year ago, I advocate for government transparency and try to help average folks who are trying to get government information. We request a lot of records for our own investigative reports as well as just to upload to the Web so that journalists, citizen-journalists and just plain citizens can access them more easily. Texans are proud of their public records law and like to say it's one of the best in the nation. Indeed, the mechanism it created -- in which the state attorney general acts as a sort of judge or mediator and determines what's public and what isn't -- has proved to be much better than in Tennessee, where I lived and worked for several years, and where you basically have to sue a government agency that won't cough up a record you want.

Texas Watchdog has had several contested records cases get punted to the attorney general in our first year, and overall, we've won a majority of them, including getting access to most of Houston Mayor Bill White's calendar, employee salary information from the county around Corpus Christi, and most recently, e-mails between Houston's public transit agency and a well-paid consultant in California who was hired without competitive bids.

On the other hand, we've also lost some records battles that we wish we could have won, such as access to financial and other information for a nonprofit agency that was set up by the Houston Airport System so that its employees could build and run airports in Latin America and elsewhere. That one, in particular, bugs me.

But legislators have also written some exemptions into the law that rebuke transparency. Want to know who has applied to be the next superintendent of your school district? You have no right to know that in Texas -- those records are closed until the school board or school trustees settle on one "finalist" for the job who, obviously, is all but hired by then.

Want to know which Texas Highway Patrol troopers failed polygraphs or had criminal charges on their records when they were hired?

Too bad -- all polygraph results and criminal records checks for state troopers are specifically closed under state law. I was stunned when I learned this after I tried to get some records from the state Department of Public Safety earlier this year about troopers with troubled pasts -- I mean, who, other than troubled troopers and the people who hired them, would want to prevent the public from finding out whether a state trooper has a record or lied to his superiors?

This past session of the legislature, which wrapped up this summer, had pluses and minuses for transparency. Lawmakers finally passed a first-ever reporter shield law for Texas, but they also voted to close off criminal background checks on public school teachers -- and they came frighteningly close to closing off dates of birth for public employees. Reminds me of the Molly Ivins joke someone told me on my first week in Houston: "Why doesn't the Texas Legislature meet every year? So they won't do any more damage."

As for government information available online, there are some bright spots. State Comptroller Susan Combs has a "Where the Money Goes" site, that serves as an online state check register (this just in: The Texas State Commission on Fire Protection spent $370.93 on office supplies last fiscal year).

And the Texas Ethics Commission has campaign contribution information online -- pretty important in a state where there are no-state imposed limits on contribution size. Everything's bigger in Texas, I reckon, especially the campaign checks -- though I do wish the state would require that campaigns supply an address each donor. That would make it much easier for the public to find familial and other connections between donors and recipients.

But more could be done. A few years back, legislators wrote laws requiring themselves to file annual ethics forms about their sources of income. But they also required the Ethics Commission to keep a paper record of everyone who asks to see a lawmaker's ethics form -- a subtle, but effective, intimidation tactic. Texas Watchdog countered that by getting the forms for all 181 state legislators and posting them all online on our site.

An effort in the legislature to repeal the identification requirement, and to demand the Ethics Commission post the forms online itself, didn't get very far earlier this year.

Let's hope the tide turns in favor of more transparency in 2011.

Check out more of the Texas Watchdog's great work here.