Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and Congressional political news.This week I have highlights from Louisiana, New Mexico, Nevada, and Texas. In Louisiana, Forgotston talks about the how some NGOs in Louisiana are getting money from the budget that the state is borrowing.  Forgotson went through and found $24 million being given to NGOs and noted that they weren’t listed on Louisiana’s legislation site.

Only in New Mexico posts about the lack of transparency in Bernalillo County government’s purchase of an upscale office building for government offices.  Jim wants a few questions answered, before the government goes and spends 42 million dollars:  “Who gets the real estate commission? Was there more than one appraisal? What will the operating costs be versus other possible solutions? What will this do to our tax rates? What were the alternatives?”  That sounds reasonable to me.

In Nevada, Reno and its Discontents has a great post highlighting how citizens are using social media tools to cover the conventions.  Myrna the Minx talks about the UpTake’s great coverage of both conventions using  “live footage later contextualized completely in researched written reports online.”  I concur that the social media presence at the last two conventions has been phenomenal, even the Sunlight Foundation got some great footage that even the MSM couldn’t get.

Texas Watchdog reports that “Houston city officials have failed for the past two years to post ethics forms online as required by law.”  These ethics forms are required filings that disclose city officials to report any relationships that businesses applying for city contracts. Nothing shady about that.