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.

 

We’ve spent a lot of time making general reflections about the experience we shared with some of you at TransparencyCamp, but haven’t really covered the specifics -- the sessions, people, and takeaways -- that made our great Camp just so darn great.

This post won’t cover all of the above, but it will highlight some pretty special folks who added volumes to the conversations and energy of the weekend: our travel scholars!

With your help, Sunlight was able to take the edge off of travel expenses for 11 people journeying from across the country (and then some) to Camp. We promoted the scholarship program publicly on the TransparencyCamp website and received some fabulous applications from activists, academics, developers, leaders, n00bs (er, newbies), students, lawyers, and so on. For those of you who want to see where your donations went and for the rest of you curious folk (who might want to see this program expanded in the future), here’s a snapshot of our scholars:

Mike Sherry

Hails from: Prairie Village, Kansas
How he works for #opengov: Mike has been a journalist for nearly 25 years. He currently serves as the Executive Director (and Founder) of the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit dedicated to watchdog reporting in Kansas and Missouri, though he's also known as a founding member of the Missouri Sunshine Coalition and for his byline in several midwestern and DC-based publications. (Perhaps you've heard of CQ?) Mike came to TCamp to connect with others passionate about open public records and data.

Stephen Jackson

Hails from: Chelsea, Alabama
How he works for #opengov: Stephen’s been an IT developer and consultant for over 10 years. He founded OpenBama.org -- an independent, volunteer initiative to make Alabaman legislation more accessible to the public -- after he found that the state’s legislative system made it nearly impossibly to track legislation. When he started, Stephen had never heard of the open government and open data movements, let along groups like Sunlight and govtrack.us. Now Stephen's trailblazing for Alabama in the greater #opengov community.

Tamar Gurchiani

Hails from: Georgia (the country), by way of Williamsburg, VA (W&M Law School grad)
How she works for #opengov: Tamar is an expert in Georgian Freedom of Information law, working for 6 years with the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association on FOI projects. This spring, she completed her LLM at William and Mary, started at the National Security Archive as a visiting fellow, and is scoping out how to take TransparencyCamp back to Georgia with her.

Ramphis Castro

Hails from: San Juan, Puerto Rico
How he works for #opengov: Ramphis is a software engineer and the president of the Institute of Computer Engineers, spearheading efforts with technologists and others to get more public policy focused on transparency in Puerto Rico. Outside of his advocacy for local open government, Ramphis is the principal tech advisor for Relisc Coporation, a group that provides outsourced-CIO services for clients, and the curator/founder of TEDxSanJuan (stay tuned for their first event November 2011).

Stefan Urbanek

Hails from: Bratislava, Slovakia
How he works for #opengov: Stefan is a senior business consultant (and owner) of Knowerce, a knowledge management company, with a strong background in open data work (evidenced by his latest project, Data Brewery). Stefan’s work spans Slovakia and the US, though among his top credentials are a Slovakian open public procurements portal and Datacamp, a data sharing application.

Jason Williams

Hails from: Hyrum, Utah
How he works for #opengov: Jason is an activist, talk show host, and blogger, sharing news and opinion on national and local issues since 2005. Following the Utah state legislature’s attempt to dissolve it’s Freedom of Information law (aka GRAMA), Jason became involved in the citizen efforts that were organized in response, including the collection of some 65,00 signatures required to petition the government to keep open records...open. Jason now serves on the working group - composed of lawmakers, citizens, and lawyers, among others - that's examining alternatives to the passage of unpopular legislation.

Suzanne McBride

Hails from: Oak Park, Illinois
How she works for #opengov: Suzanne is the co-founder and co-editor of Chicago Talks, a 4-year-old website covering local issues, events and politics. She has a history of working for on open government issues as an investigative journalist (leading, for example, a statewide audit of public records for the Indianapolis Star in 2004). When she’s not working with ChicagoTalks, she’s supervising a group of undergrads and grad students on award-winning investigations as a professor at Columbia College Chicago.

Friedrich Lindenberg

Hails from: Berlin, Germany
How he works from #opengov: Friedrich defines himself as “a media scientist turned coder.” His open data cred spans the creation of data portals for a number of European administrations and authoring Adhocracy, a collaborative drafting software. Currently, Friedrich works the Open Knowledge Foundation where he focuses on different initiatives to make financial and budget data accessible.

Michael Clarjen-Arconada

Hails from: Sag Harbor, New York
How he works for #opengov: Michael stood out as a local leader when he organized a community showing of the Casino Jack and the United States of Money -- a 2010 documentary on the Jack Abramoff scandal. His Long Island event drew around 300 viewers.

Tracy Dingmann

Hails from: Albuquerque, New Mexico
How she works for #opengov: Tracy is an investigative reporter and proud IRE member who’s been around the block with open records requests. Currently working as an independent and correspondent on the KNME program, In Focus, Tracy’s been reporting for over 20 years and just wrapped up a stint as the New Media Director at the Center for Civic Policy.

Michael Maranda

Hails from: Chicago, IL
How he works for #opengov: Michael is a software developer and movement strategist, working on the bridge between open data and open government efforts. His interest in increasing digital literacy has led him to leadership roles in several community networking groups, including the Chicago Digital Access Alliance and the Illinois Community Technology Coalition.

Last week the U.S. Public Interest Research Group published a transparency scorecard for every state in the country that assessed their ability to publish their spending online. The scorecard map operates on the belief that there is a new standard for accountability and accessibility, one where spending records are searchable and detailed online.

The 'Following the Money 2011' study [pdf link] classified nine states as "leading states" that published detailed information on grants and economic activities of the government online, even publicizing tax expenditures. Most fell into the "emerging states" category where basic steps were taken to supply residents with less granular information or did not make the data searchable. Finally, the "lagging states" section highlighted the ten least transparent states who did not populate their websites with relevant spending information and Maine doesn't even allow public access to their data. The study notes that there is no partisan leaning between states that excel or fail to provide citizens with this data.

As the press clamors to champion or chide their governments, we hope the states continue to study up on this subject and improve their standings next year. It also couldn't hurt to move the goals posts a little farther too - putting your checkbooks online is a pretty obvious homework assignment for this year kids.

Be sure to look up how your state ranks on the Following the Money map and encourage them to continue the work.

The open government movement (like most of the online world) is obsessed with “unconferences” -- meet-ups, of sorts, where the participants determine the content of and lead sessions around a pre-determined theme. When done right, it can be a powerful tool for building community.

Sunlight held its first unconference, TransparencyCamp, three years ago in an effort to get the diverse groups of people thinking about and working for government transparency together. From the conversations and problem-solving that took place there, we’ve seen the emergence of some incredible initiatives - take, for example, CityCamp.

This year, we want to go further. We want to focus on government transparency not just on Capitol Hill, but where you live. So, we need your help.

Please take a minute to fill out this survey and let us know what you want to get out of TransparencyCamp.

Never been to a TransparencyCamp or even an unconference before? Not a problem. We’re still interested in knowing what open government issues interest you, what you would want to get out of this sort of experience and how we can improve on the experiences you’ve had at similar events in the past.

TransparencyCamp 2011 will be open to people from across the country. We’re relying on your input to make it the best it can be.

http://transparencycamp.org/survey

Thanks for your help.

Election season is in high gear, as you've no doubt noticed. With it comes the normal barrage of ads, phone calls, door knocks, and big pieces of glossy mail telling you who to vote for and why you should vote. Organizers and strategists on hundreds of campaigns across the country are frantically trying to figure out the best way, whether online or offline, to get you out to vote for their candidate. What they don’t tell you (or your potentially less politically aware friends and family) is who’s funding all of those campaign efforts to get you to vote, and who those candidates will be listening to after the polls close in eight days.

Introducing the Influence Explorer Postcard. If you’ve used Influence Explorer before, it’ll look pretty familiar. The Influence Explorer Postcard lets you choose which candidate to highlight and displays the top contributors and contributing industries to that candidate or candidates on a postcard. You can even opt to choose both candidates in a given race for side-by-side comparison. Then, from the comfort of your home computer, polish off your postcard with a personal note to a friend or family member that you want to clue in about who has the real influence is this election before your friends vote, preview the card and hit send. No post office visits or stamps required.

This is a cool way to make sure that at least one piece of mail your friends get over the next eight days amidst the flood of campaign messaging is meaningful and transparent. And if you’re snail-mail challenged like me, this is a great way to make an offline impact online.

Business note: sadly, direct mail isn't free. The cost of production for this postcard is $2.00, which you can pay using an Amazon account right from the site. If, like us, you’re excited about the ability to take your online impact offline, the opportunity to shine a light on the influence of money in politics to those who matter most to you, or you just like Sunlight and want to help us out, we ask that you chip in one extra dollar to help us hit our goal of 1,500 new small donors before the end of this year. (We’re currently at just over 500 thanks to the generosity of many of you who have given so far). Given the overwhelming amount of money being spent on the midterms this year, we hope an extra dollar isn’t too much to pay to help make this election just a little more transparent.

Check it out and let us know what you think in the comments.

If you follow Sunlight in any capacity, you may have noticed a seemingly innocuous typo slip into our writing of late, a little something called “transbearency.” Today, I am proud to announce that “transbearency” is no accident. It’s a movement.

Allow me to explain...as best I can. It started when the folks at Sunlight heard that the infamous faux-pundit Stephen Colbert decided to take his message of Politics As Usual to Washington, DC on October 30th. His mission? A march to Keep Fear Alive. Colbert claimed that such a march was a necessity:

There are dark, optimistic forces trying to take away our Fear [and] they want to replace our Fear with reason. But never forget — “Reason” is just one letter away from “Treason.” Coincidence? Reasonable people would say it is, but America can’t afford to take that chance.

Maybe we were being sensitive, but this call to action offended us. Reasonable solutions to unreasonable problems in government mark the foundation of the transparency movement. Reason is the...reason that Sunlight builds technology platforms and advocates for policies that make our elected representatives accountable to the folks who elected them.

Rather than feed into his fear-mongering, Sunlight decided it was time to stand up to Colbert by hitting him where it hurts: his fear of bears.

Stephen Colbert is terrified of bears and all their hairy complexity, and we want to send a powerful message his way. So, if you believe that there is nothing to fear about a more accountable government, then I ask you to join Operation Transbearency for the month of October. A few ways you can take part:

• Be a bear online: Change your avatar(s) (like we did) to a bear to show your inner watchbeardog.
• Spread the honey: When you see something delicious, like stories about open data, lobbying reform and campaign ethics, tell your friends and make sure to post about it with a tag for #transbearency (or #opengov) so that your fellow bears can find it.
• Bear with us: Text BEAR to 224866 (“ACTION”) if you’re planning on attending the rally in Washington, DC on October 30th to get info on how to meet up with us (and directions to our post-rally happy hour).
• Really brave? Show up to the rally dressed as a bear. Seriously. The Colbert/Stewart folks have already asked that ralliers come in costume -- it will be Halloween, after all -- we're just asking that you choose a costume that will make a difference. I promise you, we'll be out there in full bear regalia with special swag and surprises for anyone ferocious enough to stand in solidarity.
You may think this is silly, but bears are not silly. They are serious, and so are we. We hope you'll join us on the 30th.

This week's round-up highlights some major issues affecting state transparency from the East Coast to the Pacific. Here is a quick look at the topics that made news:

• Residents of Santa Ana City are concerned about the closed-door meetings held by their city council. CalAware Today reports here that these closed sessions critically prevent public comment.

• Incoming Honolulu city mayor, Peter Carlisle will have a tough challenge in attempting to enforce a citywide public disclosure of rail contracts. As Ian Lind of the iLind.net blogs, the city needs some help getting its transparent policies in line with its actions.

• Jennifer Pebbles of Texas Watch dog critiques public officials who use transparency as a weapon towards their opponents yet fail to be transparent themselves. She emphasized that transparency should be a genuine goal for all public officials.

• Fort Collins city council in Colorado is not using the public email account specifically set up to help residents access information about their council members. Amy Oliver Cooke of Colorado Spending Transparency considers the city’s lack of transparency in official communications.

• Still in Nevada, we discover how publicizing overpaid government employee information can be a way of promoting accountability in government. Eric Davis showed how the cities of Laughlin and Pahrump made the list of overpaid public employees. (Bell, California, anyone?) Transparent Nevada has more.

Enamored as I am by Twitter these days, here's a useful item, a government twitter directory. BearingPoint, the McLean, Va., -based management and technology consulting firm, is compiling lists of Twitter links to state and local government, federal government, contractors , journalists and industry/academics. Might be nice to see this all in a widget.

And along the idea of sharing good information...over the weekend, John Wonderlich , Sunlight's Policy Director, wrote about several lists he and his team have been compiling. For instance, they've just posted at Congresspedia a list of access points for House of Representatives Web publications and primary source information that affects the House, with a description of the content each one provides. He's working on a Senate version too.