All is not well in the Aloha state. “Sunshine” advocates including Rep. Barbara Marumoto are rising up to oppose a recent attack on Hawaii’s open government. A new bill that was introduced earlier this year is set to intentionally delay responses to public records requests. SB2858 “Creates a process for an agency to obtain judicial review of a decision made by the Office of Information Practices relating to the Sunshine Law or the Uniform Information Practices Act, and clarifies standard of review.” In other words the bill ironically referred to as “relating to open government” instead takes a jab at everything open and has been likened to a closed government bill.

In summary, SB2858 will make it more difficult for the public and media to find out what is going on in state government by:

• Delaying the release of information under the Uniform Information Practices Act.
• Forcing the public to spend money on legal fees in order to access data which should be made available in the first place.
• Giving agencies the freedom to challenge an Office of Information Practices (OIP) ruling in court.
• Setting state agencies in opposition against each other in a bid to comply with practices within the Uniform Information Practices Act.

It goes without say that if this bill is approved, Hawaii’s history of maintaining a decent record in keeping an open government will be tainted. Worse, we will have no idea what the government is doing and when it is doing what it’s doing -- unless of course if we are willing to go to court to find out. Effective July 1, 2030, the anti transparency bill sadly has the support of Gov. Neil Ambercrombie who is already said to be a secretive governor.

Allowing government agencies such as Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources (a supporter of the bill) to appeal unfavorable Office of Information Practices rulings -- as this bill proposes to do -- shows that government is clearly putting their own first and the public second. Hawaii’s legislature has a Submit Online Testimony where the public can send in their testimonies and hopefully convince everyone involved that this bill is bad for transparency -- just as Common Cause Hawaii did.

 

Common Cause Hawaii Testimony on SB2858

While journalistic skill and technique are essential for writing a good investigative article, we often take it for granted that journalists have access to the information they need to write complex news stories. Without publicly available data, much of our news would not be possible. We've been looking at investigative articles as part of an ongoing series called "Back to the Source" for the last several months. Now we've decided to amp it up a bit and make redacted visuals to explicitly demonstrate how little the public would know without laws and regulations that force the government to make the data it has publicly available.

In honor of Sunshine Week we decided to create "The News Without Transparency." We took original investigative articles and manually blacked out all the information that would not be known without existing transparency measures. It is worth taking a look at just how little we would know.

Some examples we found notable are below, and the ongoing series is available here.

The News Without Transparency: Military Defense Contractors, Lobbyists Support Mrs. McKeon

The News Without Transparency: Pentagon Contractors Flock to Mrs. McKeon

Military defense contractors and lobbyists are rushing to support the wife of Congressional House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon in her bid for California state assembly, according to a Salon article in early February.

This article would not have been possible without public access to campaign finance and lobbying data.

The article reports that in the first few months of fundraising, Patricia McKeon was able to collect $19,200 from defense contractors or their lobbyists. This includes $3,000 from Lockheed Martin - a company currently locked in a battle to maintain funding for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet. It also includes donations from lobbying firm Beau Boulter LLC, which lobbies on behalf of Proxy Aviations, and Bruce Leftwich, a DC-based government affairs specialist.

The California Secretary of State's website provides campaign finance data for all candidates running for public office, including Patricia McKeon's. The data can be searched by contributions received or made, expenditures made, late and high dollar contributions, and late independent expenditures. The contributions listed on Mrs. McKeon's disclosure page include the following...

Click here to read the full text of our analysis.

The News Without Transparency: U.S. Approved Business With Blacklisted Nations

The News Without Transparency: U.S. Approves Business With Blacklisted Nations

The New York Times published an article in December 2010 investigating the U.S. government’s approval of American companies doing business with countries blacklisted for sponsoring terrorism, such as Iran. According to the article, the Treasury Department has granted almost 10,000 licenses for business deals involving these blacklisted nations, some of which were impacted by political influence.

In addition to good reporting, the public availability of data was essential to making this such a meaningful investigative piece. That said, much of the underlying data for this article was hard to obtain, and the article itself says that even after the Times filed a FOIA request, “The process took three years, and the government heavily redacted many documents. . . ”

We investigated and have highlighted what data is publicly available and what data isn’t, but in some cases can be obtained through FOIA.

The article highlights how much less business the United States did with Iran than China or Europe did, pointing out that “…in the first quarter of this year, 0.02 percent of American exports went to Iran.” The U.S. Census Bureau provides monthly and annual datasets detailing American foreign trade, which provides information such as the data point used in the article. The annual report for 2010 is available here and can be viewed as a PDF or as a zip file for text or excel formats.

Click here to read our full analysis of the data behind this article

The News Without Transparency: Obama Rewards Campaign Contributors

The News Without Transparency: Obama Rewards Campaign Contributors

An in-depth analysis of Obama's 2008 campaign contributors conducted by iWatch News in 2011 determined that in certain circumstances major bundlers ended up receiving appointments to key White House positions, invitations to White House events, and stimulus money awarded through contracts. This analysis required a high level of investigative journalism skill, but would not have been possible without public access to several data sources.

The iWatch analysis frequently returns to the story of Donald H. Gips, a Colorado businessman and bundler for Obama. His story provides a useful frame for illustrating the data sources that provided essential information for this piece.

The article states that Gips bundled over $500,000 for Obama in 2008.  Presidential candidates are not required to report their bundlers, but both Obama and McCain chose to do so in 2008. The Center for Responsive Politics makes available the list from 2008 as well as a list of 2012 bundlers for those candidates who have chosen to disclose. While the candidate usually only discloses the name of the bundler, CRP adds value by including additional information such as the total amount contributed, the name of the bundler, the city and state, and employer. The information also contains the total amount the bundler has contributed him or herself to the specified candidate since 1990. Bundlers are additionally broken down by industry. A search for Gips shows that he bundled over $500,000 in 2008 and has individually donated $32,391 since 1990.

Click here to read the full text of our analysis.

The News Without Transparency: $52 Steaks on Menu as AT&T Feted Lawmakers During T-Mobile Push

The News Without Transparency: $52 Steaks on Menu as AT&T Feted Lawmakers During T-Mobile Push

The proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger dominated the news in Washington last fall. It caused quite the stir, with numerous outlets reporting on AT&T's massive lobbying efforts to push through the merger. Bloomberg was one such news outlet, reporting a story of expensive steaks and 'lobbyist's libations' in early September. The story focused on the numerous swanky fundraisers AT&T was hosting as well as their generous campaign donations to key lawmakers.

This was a detailed investigative piece that involved a good deal of skilled journalism. It would not have been possible without public access to campaign finance data and lobbying disclosure information.

The article begins describing the lavish fundraisers AT&T had been hosting for lawmakers, citing Sunlight's Party Time data. Sunlight's Party Time data is free and available for anyone to use. We manually collect fundraiser and event invitations and put them online. They are searchable by a variety of of criteria including committee, leadership PAC, beneficiary, host, and venue.

Click here to read the full text of our analysis.

Less than a week away to Sunshine Week , a surprise attack on transparency in Kentucky is threatening to change the state’s Open Records Act. On February 28, Rep. Johnny Bell sponsored HB 496  -- a bill that will -- if approved, exclude private companies who have at least 25 percent of their revenue coming from public projects -- from Kentucky’s open records requests.

John Cheves of the Lexington Herald-Leader talked to Rep. Bell who assured him that he “respects the public’s right to know”. But it’s interesting that the same Representative sided with private companies in construction, highway building, engineering and architecture who are complaining about the time and money they waste on legal fees associated with public records requests.

Bluegrass Institute’s Logan Morford is reminding Rep. Bell and colleagues who they represent and that it -- the American public, including citizens seeking “sunshine” in Kentucky:

• Taxpayer money comes with strings attached whether it is spent by government or with private industry. Private companies take public money with this understanding. If you don’t want to be subject to open records laws, don’t take public money.

• Quasi-government agencies like the Kentucky League of Cities would still be subject to existing transparency laws. Government cannot choose winners and losers. In this respect they would be choosing which recipients of taxpayer money are to be held accountable and which are not. That is unacceptable.

• The legal fees that are too burdensome only come into play in one scenario: The records request is challenged. Costly and burdensome legal fees can be avoided by simply turning over records related to taxpayer money.

HB 496 is scheduled for a hearing this Thursday before the House State Government Committee. Here is to hoping all involved in voting on this bill will seriously consider the public’s right to know what their government is doing.

Although we preach the importance of public meetings, we recognize that there are some legitimate frustrations to be had with their openness. For instance, a lot of public meetings are boring. And long. And, critics are right: public meetings aren’t necessarily the best format for every single deliberation made by a governing body.

But most of these “issues” are besides the point. As our Policy guy, John, noted, the need for public meetings doesn’t mean that every conversation needs to happen in public, but that all the official meetings should. That’s the basis behind our push to open up the meetings of the “Super Committee” -- the body created by Congress to deal with our national debt -- and an important factor to consider in the arrests made at a DC local gov meeting in June.

I wrote about the event shortly after it happened, but the quick version goes like this: Two reporters were arrested by Park Police at a Taxicab Commission public meeting at the request of members of the commission: the first for taking photographs of the meeting. The second, for filming the arrest of the first. The charge? Disorderly conduct and unlawful entry...which, at a public meeting (and with video evidence of how they actually acted), is absurd. Thankfully, the charges have since been dropped and there’s been a lot of conversation about the future of the Taxicab Commission (Council Member Tommy Wells wants to scrap it, local blogger David Alpert wants to reform it), but there's been little conversation about the impact of this event on DC’s public meetings law.

The gray zone in this issue is that DC’s Open Meetings Act doesn’t actually specify whether or not meetings can be photographed or recorded. But, as the DC Open Government Coalition pointed out, “The absence of an explicit statutory mandate to allow recordings of open meetings does not translate into a prohibition [of recordings].”

Following pressure from the media and advocacy groups like the DC Open Government Coalition and the National Press Photographers Association, on August 1st the Taxicab Commission issued a revised policy on public attendance, behavior, and recording during meetings:

Pursuant to section 742 (the “Open Meetings Act”) of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act ... all meetings and hearings of the Commission are open to the public. Also, a recording (or transcript) of the proceedings will be made available to the public free of charge.

A member of the public, including any representative of the media, may record or photograph the proceedings of the Commission at an open meeting by means of a tape recorder or any other recording device so long as the person does not impede the orderly conduct of the meeting, by, for instance, creating excessive noise that impairs the ability of others to hear the proceeding or using excessively bright artificial light.

The policy goes on to review all the ways the commission does not have to support public recordings, but open government activists in America’s littlest state should still take heart. Perhaps this renewed policy will set a precedent for the broader Open Meetings Act, or will at least inspire District residents and activists to advocate for one. In their statement about the Taxicab Commission debacle, the DC Open Government Coalition highlighted the fact that the role of director for DC’s Open Government Office has been vacant for almost 4 months. The office, they note, was established as the public’s primary means of enforcing the Open Meetings Act and funding for the Office has already been provided.

Filling this office is a step DC can take to show their commitment to open government and to reduce the “burden” of meeting citizens’ requirements for greater transparency. DC is by no means the only governing body wrestling to adjust to the increased demands on and attention paid to its public meeting and public records laws: this sort of news is making headlines all across the country. The important thing is that, going forward, DC and other governments do find ways to adapt to the Age of the Interwebs and the increasing expectations constituents have for public access -- and that they take advantage of the free tools (YouTube...) and advocacy groups out there offering help.

*Photo credit: matthewgriff, via Flickr.

Whether it is a top-down issue or the other way round, we can not help but notice a disconnect between what Florida's Governor -- Rick Scott preaches and what he practices. Earlier this year, one of his top aides avoided using emails, because they create a paper trail. And the mixed messages ranging from designing Florida Has a Right to Know , to imposing fees on public records that were previously free, are not helping.

• A private company that provided e-mail services for Governor Rick Scott’s transitional administration “accidentally” deleted all emails from the Florida governor-elect's office soon after he took office. Peter Schorsch is wondering whether this was a genuine accident considering the governor’s disregard for open government laws. See how he equates it to the ‘dog ate my homework’ situation on SaintPetersblog.

• The city of Laurel in Maryland has amended their background check law on all candidates vying for city council office. After consulting with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the city’s mayor Craig Moe, said the original law was meant to increase transparency to the election process but now feels that conducting a background check could be considered discriminatory. Gordon Basichis notes one plausible aspect of the amendment law; which is the immediate removal from office, of anyone convicted of a crime while in office. Read on at Corra Daily Planet.

• Campaign finance laws in Fulton County, Georgia could soon see some change. A resolution created to stop any corporation, officer, agent or individual making campaign contributions or gifts from seeking county contracts, is under consideration by the county’s Board of Commissioners. Already proposed in Indiana, and found problematic in Colorado, the new resolution seeks to regulate conduct of campaign financing and contributions. Stefan Passantio is screaming “fire” about this “pay-to-play” ordinance so head on over to the Pay to Play Law blog to see why.

• Citizens in New Mexico will now be able to access complaints against police officers under a new ruling by the state’s Supreme Court. Alicia Feichtmeir, an attorney in litigation and dispute resolution shares that information contained in the citizens’ complaints belong to the citizen in question regardless of whether or not the allegations made a true or false. See how she compares this ruling to the Washington’s Public Record’s Act on Local Open Government Blog.

• John Knutsen a Puyallup, Washington Councilmember was awarded a key award by the Washington Coalition for Open Government for opting out of informal discussions that happen outside of the scheduled council meetings. The informal meetings, also known as rolling meetings are used by some councilmembers in groups of two to three to discuss official issues, without the burden of notifying the public. For more on how open government supporters are praising the Councilmember’s action as a transparency effort, see Puyallup NOW.

 

A new trend by those in power to keep public information secret from those who are not, is slowly spreading. From using exaggerated public records fees, to state laws, leaders across the country are continuing to come up with ways of preventing the public from knowing what is going on in their government...

The Tennessee Ethics Commission recently turned down a request from TNReport (an online newsource) for the number of complaints and investigations that have been received by the Commission. Citing a section in the state’s code that gives the Commission the right to preserve confidentiality of all its proceedings including investigations, the Commission’s Executive Director Drew Rawlins, said that making the records public could create problems from people who may be against some cases. Tom Humphrey shares how the Commission has never found anyone guilty of violating any ethics rules on Humphrey on the Hill.

The Sunshine Review was slapped with a $22,000 bill by Miami-Dade county in Florida, for requesting for public information. Other counties have provided the same information for free, including Palm Beach county (in the same state) and Harris county in Texas. Michael Barnhart, the Sunshine Review’s president is joined by others who feel that it’s an outrageous fee which is perhaps being used by the county to deter the public from getting the information they have a right to know about. Kristin McMurray writes all about it on the Sunshine Review.

After struggling to get a B in content, C in clarity and C in accessibility, the city of Costa Mesa in California has finally upped its transparency. In a new dramatic move, the city recently released a detailed report of all its employee salaries including full and part-time staff. Sunshine advocates praised this effort as a proactive one from the city, and emphasized how citizens will now be encouraged to become more involved in their government. Joseph Serna shares  more on LA Now.

The California Assembly seems to be operating in the dark. In an earlier report by the Sacramento Bee, the Assembly said the public had no right to see lawmakers' current office budget documents because it could be wrongly interpreted as punishment of lawmakers who do not vote in favor of key votes - especially if their budgets have been significantly slashed. One such lawmaker who recently got the “punishment” is Assemblyman Anthony Portantino. John Seiler writes how a secret legislative assembly can easily become a corrupt one on Cal Watchdog.

Making sure that state publications appear in a timely manner especially when they are time sensitive, is one of the major open government best practices. A librarian for the North Carolina State Publications Clearinghouse at the Government & Heritage Library, Kurt knows all too well the importance of making sure that information is easily accessible electronically. See how he lays out other best practices on Government and Heritage Library Blog.

Earlier this month, Ohio Governor John Kasich, signed into law a bill that will greatly reduce the penalties for unlawful destruction of public records. Sandwiched in the budget amendment bill, and likened to SB 178, the bill sets a $10,000 limit per case in fines that a given agency can pay for destroying public records.

Before the amendment, the state’s Public Records Act prohibited anyone from removing, destroying or mutilating all records because they were the property of the Public Office ( Sec. 149.351.)

The implications of this bill are two fold:

1. Agencies now have leeway to burn or shred public records that they consider either controversial or unfit for the public to see. As long as they can pay the $10,000 fine, then they are good to go.

2. While advocates for this bill believe that it will stop people requesting documents they do not need (especially after they have been destroyed) only to turn around and sue for large amounts of money, opponents feel that the $10,000 cap on lawyers fees will prevent most Ohioans from suing agencies that destroy public records. Several transparency supporters, including newspaper publishers and environmentalists, believe that this is a direct attack on open government.

The Ohio newspaper Association, Ohio Environmental Council, Ohio Association for Justice and the Ohio Employment Lawyers have all signed a joint testimony calling on the Governor to remove the amendment to the Public Records Act from the budget bill. (See joint testimony at the bottom.)

Ohioans are also showing their displeasure in the study: A Quinnipiac University poll released this week shows that 50% of registered voters disapprove of the way the governor is conducting his work.

Ohioans and others dissatisfied with their governor’s commitment to transparency legislation (or, at the very least, their commitment to not signing into law legislation that will directly inhibit transparency) can take action against these kinds of transparency rollbacks. Our campaign to tell our governors not to roll back on transparency now has a tool that makes it easy for you to call your governor’s office and tell them that open government issues -- like public records laws, financial disclosure, and open data -- are important to you. If you don’t tell your elected officials that these issues matter, then anti-transparency measures like Governor Kaisch’s signing of SB 178 will be norm.

Make the call and let us know how it went. By continuing to track our governors’ actions, we ensure that their campaign promises of being transparent are not just promises, but actions they can be accountable for.

P.S. For those of you following our trip to Utah to visit the National Governors Association (NGA), we should note that Governor Kaisch recently opted out of the NGA because he did not feel like it was “worth the amount of money to be [a] member.”

Look for more coverage of our trip this week!

Ohio Public Records HB153 Testimony

As mentioned earlier, the open government movement made major strides today -- when together with the Participatory Politics Foundation, we launched OpenGovernment Minnesota. This brings the total number of states covered by the OpenGovernment initiative, to six. As we continue to expand this project to include more states, we take note of individual citizens who are being proactive about tracking the legislature in their states. By so doing, we recognize that active citizen participation in government is the key to prompting change and increasing accountability. And we support this recognition by building tools that empower the public to see how their government is functioning. But our role can not simply be reduced to tracking bills. We need to be engaged in the rule making process and reinforcing Public Records Laws and Open Meetings Laws is one such way of doing that. All the while ensuring that the legislative system is not given "special treatment".

• Two years ago, the legislature in Bacon Hill, Massachusetts managed to exempt itself from  the requirements of the Public Records Law and the Open Meetings Law -- using a sweeping ethics reform bill. Now, there are four bills that have been introduced to subject the legislature to the open meetings law. Media and technology lawyer Robert Ambrogi, is challenging the lawmakers to pass these laws if they are true supporters of transparency. Will these bills see the light of day, unlike their predecessors that went no where? Read more on the media law blog.

 

• A new bill that will make all executive orders issued by the office of the mayor of New York City available on line, has been passed. Currently, the orders can only be accessed via requests through the Freedom of Information Law. Richard Yeh shares that open government advocates are applauding the bill because of the transparency and openness it will create. Legislative text from the bill shows that all memorandum of understanding and similar documents will be available on a government website starting April 1, 2012. See what else the bill says on the WNYC News blog.

• Public information from the governor’s office in Louisiana will soon be accessible to the public. A new bill that will significantly relax the state’s public records law by making all of the Governor’s documents including those related to budgetary issues, public, has been introduced. At the moment, the state is using Act 495 enacted in 2009, which exempts the governor from disclosing any material considered to be under a “deliberative process”. Chad Rogers is sure this bill will go a long way in restoring confidence in the public. Read more about how the bill will change Louisiana from being the only state that exempts the governor's records from disclosure on chadrogers.net

• The Cleveland Coalition, together with several open government supporters including the Sunlight Foundation, will be joining forces for the Transparency Action Plan Summit (TAP) to take place in Cuyahoga Ohio on July 29-30. The first of its kind in the region, the summit will bring together like-minds to discuss transparency initiatives that will make the county a leader in government transparency and public engagement. For more of the action plan details, head on over to Cleveland Coalition.

 

 

We welcome Daniel O’Leary as our guest blogger today. Daniel is the Vice President of Global Solutions for LincWare, an electronic forms and document assembly company that specializes in replacing paper forms with dynamic, electronic forms that integrate with a wide variety of ECM systems. You can follow him on twitter at @danieloleary.

     

Meeting minutes from public entities like city councils and public universities provide citizens with almost floor-to-ceiling windows of insight into the goings-on of tax-payer supported efforts. Problem is, elected officials and those working on our dime are prone to pulling the shade, allowing the sun to shine on only portions of the minutes they deem fit to share.

That's not how it's supposed to work.

Enter electronic minute recording forms.

Since some meeting minutes in public environments are recorded, there is no reason they can't be entered into text fields as part of a customized, searchable form that can be made web-accessible. In fact, this can be a powerful time saver for the secretaries and interns charged with keeping up with the ramblings and tirades of those sitting around the table.

The process most commonly used today (not electronic) is still rather “old school”. A tape machine (cough! 1980! cough!) or digital recorder is used to capture the audio as it’s happening. (Today, we call that "real time.") Post-meeting, they are put down on paper to be approved at the next meeting. Well check this out: What if the completed minutes form was hung on-line in a password-protected place for the requisite board members to access prior to the meeting? This saves paper and tons of e-mails and calls needed to verify items. Once a board member gives them a quick review, the next meetings approval goes smoothly, sans debate about contextual mistakes or semantics. Then -- and here's the cool part -- the minute taker simply "submits" the form to the Web site, where it's now available to the press and public, with rays of sunshine beaming all over it.

All interested citizen parties and media can subscribe to that page to receive alerts as soon the minutes form is updated. Every form can be archived, as is legally required, via a cloud-based repository. Because everything is digital, people can search for keywords within the minutes to rapidly find the appropriate subject area. Individually titled fields can be created for each meeting topic. Attendee lists with links to public bios, scanned hand-outs and even custom voting record lists could also be embedded into such a form.

(Take a look at the demo below for an idea of how an eform can be used).

                                         

Now, whether we like it or not, there are categories of information that can be held in the dark such as any public record or information prohibited by federal law or regulations from disclosure including an injured worker’s social security number. (Chapter 7 of the Social Security Act explains it in details).

Okay, fine; we're not here to argue that. Via the very cool minutes eform, the minute taker can assign a "closed" status to fields that are not accessible on the published version. That way, even more time can be saved by not having to manually redact or edit just those portions that people are not allowed to see. Who hasn't run into delays when requesting information because a public employee needs to pull information from a document?

So folks, are we starting to see the light on the power of eforms in the public information arena? If so, then we should push for more minute recording using eforms!

(The views expressed in this blog post are entirely the guest blogger’s. This is not an endorsement of any product mentioned in the blog)

   

When it comes to public records, different states have different exemptions. What is exempted in one state, may not necessarily be exempted in another. Take an example of  New Jersey. Under the Open Public Records Act (OPRA), State or federal statutes and regulations, Executive Orders, Rules of Court, and privileges created by State Constitution, statute, court rule or judicial case law are specifically exempted from disclosure.  While the California Public Records Act makes available all public information because it believes that "access to information concerning the conduct of the people's business is a fundamental and necessary right of every person." So when we see states making an effort to open up their governments even more, we make a note of it. Just as we are doing with Oregon.

• A new proposed amendment to Senate Bill 41 in Oregon will reduce exemptions that allow public records to be kept private. The proposal was introduced during a conference organized by the Oregon Library Association, where several government transparency projects were discussed, including the Oregon Transparency website and data.oregon.gov which lets you build your own graphs using state government data. Check out Chrystal Reeves blog post as she writes more about the integration of state and federal agency data on Oregon Legal Research.

• In his blog post “Ethics Laws Potentially to Get Quick Fix; Push For Comprehensive Reform to Come Next Year,” Charlie Harper recommends a comprehensive ethics reform for Georgia that is funded by an investigative Ethics Commission. Sparked by the recent ruling of Georgia’s ethics Commission that declared that gifts and expenses on legislature staff will be exempted from disclosure requirements and cripple transparency, Harper believes that a well funded Commission will restrict lobbyists from influencing the state’s decision makers. Take a look at how he rationalizes it on Peach Pundit.

 

• Governor Dannel Malloy has a solution for Connecticut’s fiscal crisis: balance the budget with $2 billion in employee concessions. But while writing about an article in the Middletown Press , Jonathan Pelto expressed that he feels that the governor should be more open about where  he hopes to get the money from. Pelto argues that even with the state employee give backs, the  governor will not be able to make up the difference needed to balance the budget so the questionable conclusion is that  the ongoing negotiations between the state unions and the governor’s administration may not be as transparent as they are made out to be. Find details on the New Haven Advocate.

• State purchasing officers in Oklahoma will soon be able to use a public Wiki to report items that are on a mandated state purchasing schedule thanks to a recently introduced House Bill. Authored by Jason Murphey and state Senator Clark Jolley, HB 1086 will also enable the creation of a website that will help policy makers and the public to monitor state projects from start to finish. Murphey shows how this bill will improve communication between purchasing offices and potential vendors interested in bidding for government business on the House district 31.

• Proposed legislation in Maryland, House Bill 173 is about to make Invest Maryland -- a venture capital program -- the most easily accessible website in the state. The program, which will require disclosure of all funds and credits that the state invests in a company, will also provide details of the state’s spending programs, including annual reports from the Department of Business and Economic Development. Megan Poinski blogs that this will increase the state’s public records availability. Read more on Annapolitics.