The City of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, wants to make it easier for residents to see and understand what's happening in their city. A new open data policy, a major component of that work, is now open for public comment.
Continue readingWhy are states replacing email with flawed web forms for contacting lawmakers?
Providing email addresses to contact state legislators is easy and effective — but more and more states are replacing them with inaccessible, buggy web forms. Help us get back on the right track!
Continue readingSunshine and shadows: Statehouses tackle open records laws in 2015
The 2016 state legislative sessions have already witnessed a host of important actions, with legislators across the country considering measures to increase and decrease governmental transparency.
Continue readingThe Week on Politwoops: Tillis Montage, campaign clearings and more
Happy Friday and welcome to another review of the week's notable deleted tweets archived by our Politwoops project.
Continue readingSouth Dakota forms Task Force on open Government
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the... View Article
Continue readingSunlight Weekly Roundup: “anytime you have an entity that receives state dollars, there should be transparency”
Following the Penn State child sexual abuse scandal, lawmakers want to strip state-related institutions’ exemption from Pennsylvania’s right-to-know law. State... View Article
Continue readingStates of Transparency: South Dakota
The Open Government Directive encouraged states to put valuable government data online. In this series we're reviewing each state's efforts in this direction.
This week: South Dakota
Website: www.open.sd.gov
After an open records law passed last year, a South Dakota reporter was able to discover that a Canadian company was getting state tax incentives for building a crude oil pipeline. Democratic state representatives jumped on the issue as a lesson about secrecy in government. While the Freedom of Information Act-like law may be reaping rewards for state reporters, however, the state's transparency website will ...
Citizens United: Colorado’s response
The Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case has rendered 24 state election laws unconstitutional. The 5-4 ruling in favor of Citizens United reversed a provision of the McCain-Feingold act that prohibited any electioneering communication—defined as advertising via broadcast, cable or satellite that is paid for by corporations or labor unions. Many states have acted fast to counter corporations’ ability to spend endless amounts of money to influence elections by passing laws that force disclosure of all independent expenditures in near real time. The Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group has decided to report what each of ...
Continue readingCitizens United: South Dakota’s response
The Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case has rendered 24 state election laws unconstitutional. The 5-4 ruling in favor of Citizens United reversed a provision of the McCain-Feingold act that prohibited any electioneering communication—defined as advertising via broadcast, cable or satellite that is paid for by corporations or labor unions. Many states have acted fast to counter corporations’ ability to spend endless amounts of money to influence elections by passing laws that force disclosure of all independent expenditures in near real time. The Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group has decided to report what each of ...
Continue readingLocal Sunlight
Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series... View Article
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