Remember that fuss we were making over our Open Letter to Governors and the lack of support for state level transparency? Well, Maine’s Governor Paul LePage just wrote to point us straight:

Maine Governor LePage response to Sunlight's open letter

For the record, I do not have nor ever had a business advisory committee. Some of you folks read too many blogs.

He’s right. We do read too many blogs...but Governor LePage would do well to follow us on Google Reader. Then he might learn about the Executive Order he issued on March 3, 2011 “Establishing the Governor’s Business Advisory Council,” which Rebekah Metzler breaks down nicely in her piece in the Portland Press Herald.

Or this thorough post from Maine State Representative Sharon Treat on her blog, From the North, which notes that, after Democrats and Republicans and members of the media attacked his plan, LePage backed off from establishing said business advisory council.

So, you see, Governor LePage “[does] not have nor ever had a business advisory council” because the people wouldn’t let him make this or any commission -- sorry, council -- that would be exempt from the state's Freedom of Access law. LePage claimed that he needed this exemption to account for "candid conversations” with people who aren’t public workers:

"There's no secrecy here," LePage said. "If they want to do it on the steps of the Blaine House, I'm fine with it too. But some of these people want to be frank and honest and open and they don't want to be exposed to the same scrutiny and exposure that we see every day."

Treat’s blog has a great breakdown of just why these councils do need to be exposed to the same scrutiny and exposure we see every day (hint: it involves lobbyists!) and Mike Tipping of the Morning Herald highlights some “candid” feelings LePage shared about the Freedom of Access Law right around the time he was pushing for the creation of his advisory councils.

When we wrote our Open Letter in March, Governor LePage’s advisory council was still on the table. The Executive Order for its creation has since been put on hold -- but not rescinded. Perhaps the Governor could review the text of his EO and get back to us...Or, you can help remind him. Click here to check out our Open Letter and have a candid chat with Governor LePage.

The National Governors Association (NGA) will be holding their 103rd annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah - July 15th through 17th. According to their website, the state leaders will be meeting to discuss education, innovation and competitiveness. Here at Sunlight, we would like to take the same opportunity to address an equally important issue - open government. A call to the NGA’s Communications office to see if I can be given access to the agenda of the meeting, revealed that it was not available for the public “because their meetings are private” -- unless if you are an attendee or a governor. So as you and I are neither, we will just have to wait and hope that the agenda will be made public AFTER the meeting.

It is ironic that this year’s venue for the NGA meeting is Utah. Not so long ago, the state’s governor, Gary Herbert, passed HB477 - a controversial law that altered treasured public access legislation, restricting access to records about the state senate, imposed punitive fees and created waiting periods for anyone requesting information. In March 2011, after learning about this bill and noting a trend of similar transparency rollbacks around the country, we decided to launch the Open Letter to Governors campaign. Although we emphasized activity in Utah , Maine, Tenneesse, Florida and Wisconsin, we framed our letter with a message to all governors, from all citizens: Transparency is not a campaign promise.

Today, we explore how these open government issues have played out in the states we highlighted earlier and what new issues have cropped up from governors’ offices in other states.

Colorado:

All call records made by Governor John Hickenlooper on his cell phone, including those concerning his office, are exempted from disclosure under the state’s public records laws. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press wrote that this could become a disturbing trend as other public officials may start making public calls while using their private cell phones.

Florida:

Contradicting his earlier efforts to make Florida government more open and transparent, Governor Rick Scott signed an executive order that now imposes a fee for public records. This move contrasts with the former governors’ policy (who explicitly did not charge for public records), slows down the process for receiving information, and restricts how much the public gets to know.

Illinois:

A bill that would drastically change the way government responds to public records requests, is being considered by Governor Pat Quinn. Sponsored by Don Harmon, HB1716 will amend the Freedom of Information Act by authorizing charges to people requesting records for the actual cost of retrieving and transporting said records from an off-site storage facility. The bill will also affect citizen watchdogs, individuals and free lance journalists by delaying responses to their requests. It has already been approved by both the Illinois House and Senate and Governor Quinn has 60 days to review it.

Louisiana:

Louisiana Senate rejected a bill that would have opened up more of the public records from Governor Bobby Jindal’s office. In 2009, the governor created a “deliberative process” exemption to prevent the public from accessing the state’s budgetary records under the guise of maintaining his ability to get “candid advice” on financial issues. Now, the governor is using deliberative processes to bar the public from seeing information between him and his staff including his emails and phone records.

Montana:

Unfazed by the U. S. Public Interest Research Groups report that gave Montana an F for state transparency, Governor Brian Schweitzer vetoed a bill that would have created a website with information on the state’s budget and spending. The governor, who claimed that state legislators are already publishing the same information on their individual websites, added that the cost of creating new sites could not be covered by the state.

Tennessee:

Governor Bill Haslam, who has repeatedly stated how important it is to let the public know where a public official’s income is coming from, continues to not disclose how much he is earning in outside income. The governor, who threw out outside income disclosure requirements through an executive order he signed early this year, also made sure that his top aides were exempted from disclosing their outside income. The governor has also made unprecedented delays in responding to public records requests made by the Associated Press - and when he did fulfill the requests, the documents he sent did not contain the information the AP asked for.

Washington State:

Thanks to a recent superior court ruling, Governor Chris Gregoire is now above the state’s Public Records Act. The Freedom Foundation, a non-partisan think tank based in Washington, filed a lawsuit against the governor after discovering that she had been using her executive privilege to shield emails, memos, and other documents to other agencies that had been legally requested. The governor won her case by arguing that is would be a violation of the separation of powers doctrine for the courts to tell the governor how to disclose public records.

Wisconsin:

He may have made a show of trying to back up his public statement with public records, but Governor Scott Walker demonstrates that he can still roll back on transparency with the best of them. Earlier this year, the governor passed a controversial bill after midnight, robbing the public the right to see what was going on. Soon after, the governor passed another bill in the dead of the night after he vowed that his first midnight passage would be his last - again stripping the public of a chance to see how their government operates.

What is happening in your state? How is your governor responding to open government issues? We encourage you to take active participation in the way you are being governed and ask for openness from your leaders. Share your stories in the comments.

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.

Today, our guest post is written by Joshua Gay, a programmer, activist, and community organizer whose interests revolve around technology, government, education, and computer user freedom.

My personal interest in the Open Atrium project came about this past fall when I began volunteering to help with the Public Equals Online Wiki. The so-called "PEO" Wiki has a lot of potential for being a good place to coordinate and collaborate on state and national transparency initiatives and projects. However, the software it is built-upon, MediaWiki, needs to be highly customised in order to make it a compelling platform for a community to start using. In my efforts to customize and improve the wiki, I have been using the features and design of Open Atrium as a sort of roadmap for improving the wiki in hopes that I can make it a more useful, powerful, and compelling tool for the transparency community.

The Open Atrium project describes itself as a "part intranet, part do-it-yourself project with a kick of open source hotness," and it certainly is one of the hottest Drupal-based projects out there. Its feature list is impressive, and for many organisations or web-based communities, I could imagine it becoming the primary tool for both project management and development. Here is a quick snapshot of it's six biggest features:

Case Tracker - Open Atrium is designed around the principle of users and groups. Every group on the system can create an unlimited number of projects within the Case Tracker, and within each project you can create to-do items. Each item can be organized and prioritized according to categories or milestones, assigned to group members, and discussions and progress notifications on to-do items can be made through a nested commenting system.

Calendar - Although not feature rich as Google calendar, Open Atrium's calendar does present events in a similar, colorful fashion, supports single or multiday features, and syncs with calendars that support iCal.

Blog - This blog contains all of the basic features you would expect with nested commenting, file attachments, and granular notification system. But, what I think makes this blogging system unique is that it is integrated into the system, and therefore, blog posts can be used as a way to discuss projects and share ideas with other members of your group and community as well as with the outside world.

Shoutbox - This Twitter-like update system is a great way to share quick updates with your group members. What I like best about the Shoutbox is that it integrates a social element into the rest of the workflow.

Documents - This is a simple, but nice collaborative document editor that supports: attachments, a revision system with a nice way to compare different versions, and a nice built print function that allows you to export and share the final product.

Dashboard - The Dashboard is where the entire system comes together and gives you a snapshot of all the activity happening across your groups. It is designed around "widgets" (like iGoogle), where users can add, remove, or arrange the widgets on the dashboard however they like. And, of course, it includes a Twitter-feed widget.

One exciting aspect about the design of Open Atrium is that its developers have designed it around the principle of features being designed like "plug-ins." Hopefully, as adoption grows, we will also a growing list of optional features that you can add to your own custom instance of Open Atrium.

I believe that Open Atrium is a powerful tool for transparency, not only for its potential use by government agencies (which would be amazing -- imagine a legislative feature!), but also an important tool for the transparency movement.

First, the good news: The Land of Enchantment launched a new campaign finance site this month which aims to put more useful information into the hands of citizens, and I have to say it looks pretty good and works even better. Search works well, and allows New Mexicans to narrow the results to reports from a specific election or to examine all the data ever reported by a candidate. One can also search for individual contributors, companies or political action committees. Once a report is found, the site provides several options for download: Word document, PDF and HTML for starters, but more importantly for reporters and developers, XML and CSV.

The only real drawback I've found is the lack of a bulk download option or an API. Unless I'm missing something, at the moment it's very time-consuming to locate and then compile data from more than one report. For example, the largest employer from my hometown is the mining company Freeport-McMoRan. You can find it's PAC using the new reporting system, but to get a big picture of where its campaign money goes to you'd have to open each individual report, export it, and then copy all the information into one spreadsheet:

Regardless, this is leaps and bounds ahead of where citizens in New Mexico where last year, and hopefully the Secretary of State will continue to improve the site during this election cycle.

Now for the bad news: A report by the New Mexico Independent shows that many governmental bodies within the state aren't abiding by open meetings laws. How bad is it?

New Mexico’s Open Meetings Act is meant to help ensure public involvement and to prevent backroom deals in state and local government, but violations of the law are widespread, an investigation by The Independent has found. School boards, universities, town councils, county and state commissions, and boards across the state have broken the law, casting a shroud of secrecy over government officials’ deliberations and bargaining.

If my experience as a reporter in New Mexico is any indication, the problem is even more systemic than described in the report, as officials will often live up to the letter of the law but not the spirit. The main issue observed in the NMI report the executive session, where a town council or other type of commission will remove itself from a public meeting to discuss certain issues in private. Now, the scope of what can be discussed in executive discussion is pretty narrow, and the method for calling one even narrower. In New Mexico, advance notice must be given on a public agenda, and the reasons for entering the executive session must be identified.

Of the 17 New Mexico counties with closed sessions listed for recent county commission meetings, only two — Taos and Quay counties — complied with the law, listing both the legal authority for entering closed sessions and the specific topics to be discussed, The Independent found.

Ten counties had no website or did not post meeting agendas on their websites. Harding County’s website posts links to agendas, but those links were not functioning. Rio Arriba County’s web page for meeting agendas was empty.

There has to be a reasonable expectation that some government action takes place behind closed doors: when employee personnel issues are being discussed, for instance, or when national security is at stake. But this has to be coupled with the expectation that citizens must know why they're being shut out of the process.

All that said, this is one example of the many cultural issues our community faces within government, but it is also an educational opportunity for citizens. There's an old saying, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse," but many government workers—at every level—lack detailed knowledge of open government laws. Others might drag their feet, trying to avoid the release of embarrassing info. Logistical problems are prevalent as well, as open government is never a big funding priority. We, as citizens, must start demanding compliance with those laws and the creation of better laws. Otherwise, we share some of the blame.

Finally, since we haven't talked about New Mexico enough today, I wanted to bring your attention to another recent news story highlighting a list of state transparency fixes that was drafted by the Rio Grande Foundation, a non-profit based in New Mexico. Most of the items would advance the interests of state residents and would provide some needed accountability in the Santa Fe. It's a good piece to chew on as our community works to develop it's own open government checklist. If you'd like to be involved in the process, sign up to be part of the Public Equals Online campaign.

This year brings a landmark for the Sunlight Foundation. We've been hinting for some time that we're going to make a serious play in state government, and New Mexico is one of the first where we'll focus those efforts. As my colleague Noah wrote earlier this month, the state's House of Representatives has voted to expand the presence of webcams in its proceedings. It was an early sign during the 2010 legislative session that New Mexico's lawmakers are beginning to take open government seriously. It was a also welcome sign, but when the session ended last week it was clear that open-government advocates will remain busy in the 2011 session.

The state has been plagued by corruption and ethics investigations in recent years, and while the Sunlight Foundation doesn't have a dog in that particular fight we do recognize (and support) the role transparency can play in helping citizens hold their elected officials accountable. From Sunlight's perspective, there are a number of interesting questions raised by New Mexico's legislature and the "state of transparency" there, some unique to the Land of Enchantment and some that will be applicable in other locales as well. For starters, the state legislature is part time—they just completed a 30-day session (every other year it's 60 days). That's true for many states, but in New Mexico legislators aren't paid for their work in Santa Fe. It also means lawmakers have precious little time to consider legislation. As you're aware, the Sunlight Foundation has long called on Congress to post legislation online for 72 hours prior to a vote. How would such a rule be feasible in a short legislative session like the one underway in New Mexico? On a more granular level, the state has a foundation of legislative transparency. Legislation has been posted online in the state for years, and that service includes versioning (a reader can see what language was struck and what language was added) as a bill progresses. The Legislative Council Service (similar to the Congressional Research Service) supports legislators, and the Legislative Finance Committee reports on bills in much the same way as the Congressional Budget Office. Documents from the LCS and the LFC are published online as well (and on the same page as legislation for related bills). However, none of this information is available in XML—plain text and PDF are the only options.

Again, as Noah noted, the New Mexico House will start to publish roll call votes online, but the Senate has yet to approve a similar measure. House Resolution 3, however, is vague in its wording, and there's no legislative mandate that requires the vote data be released in a format that complies with the Principles of Open Government Data. Will developers, like my colleagues in Sunlight Labs or at OpenCongress, be able to build projects around that information?

As worried as we might be about access to information and data formats, the Sunlight Foundation's mission is also to increase citizen participation in government. New Mexico's geography and the part-time legislature make citizen participation difficult. Lawmakers make an effort to hold "interim" committee meetings in communities across the state while not in session, and it's not uncommon for Senators and Representatives to host town hall meetings as well. But the sheer distances between Santa Fe and communities in the state preclude most ordinary citizens from engaging in the legislative process. The same effect was true for Congress before C-SPAN came along. In an attempt to remedy this situation, open government advocates have asked state legislators to stream committee meetings and floor sessions online. While the House has approved a resolution requiring streaming of some committee meetings, the Senate has not (both chambers stream audio and video from the floor).

There were some interesting developments during the session, and the Legislature sent several related pieces of legislation to Gov. Bill Richardson's desk for signature. The first, HB 165, would establish whistle-blower protection for state employees who report or refuse to participate in an "unlawful or improper act." The second, SB 44/211, sets standards of conduct for government and elected officials (for example, requiring disclosure of conflicts of interest). The third would create a "sunshine portal" where financial information for state agencies is posted online. In addition, the sunshine portal would feature information on lobbyists and open meetings. If Gov. Richardson signs SB 195, the portal would open by July 2011.

Two other pieces of legislation failed this session: one that would ban campaign contributions from lobbyists and state contractors, and another that would create an independent ethics commission.

In addition, a piece out yesterday argues that a new law requiring open conference committees is at the heart of the Legislature's budget impasse during the 30-day session.Walt Rubel, a veteran reporter, writes on the budget process:

This year the House came up with a third choice - do nothing. The Senate sent its revised bill over, and the House sat on it until the session ended. No conference committee was called. Forced to conduct the public's business in public, lawmakers decided not to conduct it at all. And when the closed-door sessions failed to produce a compromise, the 30-day budget session ended without a budget.

Regardless, I feel like the session was an incredible win for open-government advocates, in part due to the work of the American Independent News Network and the New Mexico Independent. They asked us to sit in on several liveblogging sessions, where we experienced first-hand the concerns of New Mexican bloggers and citizens. They helped pioneer this type of coverage in the Roundhouse, and it will serve as a model for successfully interacting with readers. During the final hours of the legislative session, several lawmakers participated in the liveblog as well. That's another welcome sign, and the sort of engagement the Sunlight Foundation likes to see.

This is from US Deputy CIO for Open Government Beth Noveck:

Inspired by the President’s call for more open government, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts launched its data catalogue, following in the footsteps of Washington, DC, San Francisco, New York, and elsewhere around the country (as well as cities in Canada and the UK), to provide public access to information by and about government. What makes this exciting is not merely having transportation information available in machine-readable formats, but that professional and amateur enthusiasts can then get together, as they did last weekend, to create new software applications and data visualizations to better enable public transit riders to track arrival times for the next subway, bus, or ferry. Publishing government information online facilitates this kind of useful collaboration between government and the public that transforms dry data into the tools that improve people’s lives. (For another great example, check out what happened when we published the Federal Register for people to use.)

The National Association of State CIOs is helping to spur this movement toward greater data transparency at the state level by publishing “Guidance for Opening the Doors to State Data.”

As my colleague John Wonderlich wrote earlier this year in a post about the importance of Recovery.gov, "The Internet has been recognized as having a central — even fundamental — role in enabling oversight and public access." In the case of the state and city level bulk data you can make the case that the Internet is also being recognized as making people's lives easier. Just ask anyone in here in Washington, D.C. about checking Metro and bus arrivals online or on your iPhone or Android. There is a large amount of information that our city releases that can be turned into useful applications that make the lives of Washingtonians easier. If you don't live in New York or San Francisco or Toronto or Vancouver or any other city that has bulk data access, you should really be advocating for it.