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 Rhode Island, Utah, Washington, Missouri, and New Hamsphire.

In Rhode Island, Anchor Rising praises the state treasurer’s new online searchable database for the department’s expenditures.  I hope all other of parts of Rhode Island’s government set up databases so people can see where the spending is going.

In Utah, Jen’s Green Journal is excited about a great Utah Legislation Widget that the SideTrack made.  So head on over to get updates from the state legislature right on your Web site.

In Washington, Olympia Time has a great post about the shortfall on public hearings and the need to use online resources to give people more options to give feedback.  The use of online public forums and committee hearings could help give people a voice when they don’t have the ability to take off from work to testify in person.

In Missouri, the Turner Report has a post highlighting a proposed bill that would create transparency in how Missouri uses funds from the federal emergency stimulus fund.

Democracy for New Hampshire wrote a post about Freedom on Information requests they had made. The only response that the state could provide was “We have no documentation responsive to this request”. There is definitely something wrong when the state isn’t keeping any records.