In December, the City of Bellevue made three new datasets available online. Together they help show how the city has grown over the last two decades as part of the larger Seattle region's boom.
Continue readingWhen Bellevue, Wash., launched its open data portal last month, it made a conscious effort to present targeted datasets that would be useful to residents.
Continue readingAlthough the U.S. lags in LLC transparency overall, the state of Washington stands out for its corporate disclosure. This "better practices" state, however, can still make strides in transparency before becoming a "best practices" state for others to emulate.
Continue readingIt's still an open question whether the allegations brought against Scott Walker will end his career, but they could signal the beginning of the end to loopholes that wealthy donors use to keep their names out the public eye.
Continue readingCandidateverification.org is providing background checks for political candidates running for public office and bringing transparency into the electoral system.
Continue readingWashington State's nearly $30 million ad war has come to an end, as voters struck down a referendum that would have mandated labeling of any products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It was the most expensive referendum battle, but the public does not have a clear picture of how, when or on what stations TV ads were purchased, as local stations appear to be relying on a loophole in a regulation to avoid disclosure.
Continue readingDisclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.
Jason Mercier is the Director of the Center for Government Reform at Washington Policy Center. He is also a contributing editor of the Heartland 
Institute's Budget & Tax News, a columnist for Northwest Daily Marker, a contributing author at State Budget Solutions, serves on the board of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, and was an advisor to the 2002 Washington State Tax Structure Committee.
In 1972, Washington State voters overwhelmingly enacted Initiative 276, providing citizens with access to most records maintained by state and local government. The new law created the Public Records Act (PRA). The preamble to the PRA says:
“The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have created.
An article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer examines the difficulty of searching for lobbyist contributions in the Washington state disclosure databases.... View Article
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