Local Sunlight

by

This week I have highlights from Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Hawaii and Louisiana.

In Pennsylvania, Above Average Jane has a great post summarizing what bills passed State Legislature during the week.

In Mississippi, Y’all Politics posts about ethics reform legislation that passed the state legislature and is on its way to be signed by the governor. This bill would increase the number of persons who must file economic interest disclosure forms, would create more enforcement of open-meeting laws and would make public-record law improvements.

In Hawaii, Poinography has a follow-up to a previous post about how citizens cannot find voting information sorted by legislator. In response, he wrote a "script to download all of the bill status pages and to pull out the voting information for each legislator." Inquirers can find a link in the fifth paragraph of the above post to download the data. This is great work. Thanks Poinography!

In Louisiana, The Daily Kingfish has a great post highlighting the useful features of GovTrack and how it allows citizens keep track of their Congressional delegations.