This week I have highlights from Alabama, Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Oregon.

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This week I have highlights from Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey and Alabama.

In Virginia, Bacon’s Rebellion has a great post on the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority asking people to put up YouTube videos about how miserable their commutes are. The NVTA is hoping that the northern Virgina legislators will see them and will create NVTA taxes and fees and enact a statewide transportation plan. The second half of the post asks, since NVTA is a partial state agency, if it is wrong to use state money to lobby for state funds.

Howard County Maryland Blog has an update on the status of legislation that would create a state spending database, the bill just passed the Maryland House and Senate and is waiting for the governor’s signature. Also the Howard County Council has unanimously approved a measure to have a county level spending database created by 2010.

In Missouri, the Turner Report posts about how Gov. Matt Blunt has two siblings that are registered lobbyists in the state of Missouri. I wonder what Thanksgiving dinner is like?

In New Jersey, the Ruins of Trenton has a post on a bill that would allow municipalities and government entities to satisfy public notice requirements for certain announcements by placing the notices online. The bill just passed assembly and is on its way to the state senate. Assemblyman Cryan said it best "With Internet access and usage continually on the rise, it makes good sense to allow the public to access meeting notices and other government documents electronically." I couldn’t agree more, however, newspapers aren’t too happy. Currently all notices have to be posted in newspapers which means government agencies have to buy a a large protion of ad space.

In Alabama, Doc’s Political Parlor has a great post discussing a statement made in the state senate by State Senator Scott Beason. Sen. Beason asked the body if the legislature was “shirking” their duties by having the people vote on laws. Beason said, “It is up to us to look at the issue, study the issue, debate the issue, come up with the best possible legislation for the people of the state - the best we can do. Then it’s up to the people to decide if what we did was right.” The discourse about what the job of the legislature is and how much citizens should participate is definitely more topical now with more participartory tools and the internet. Sunlight has recently encountered this discussion in response to our latest project PublicMarkup.org.

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This week I have highlights from Virginia, New Jersey, Alabama, Hawaii, and Maryland.

In Virginia, Vivian J. Page, highlights the city of Norfolk, VA’s new YouTube channel. The channel has videos about what is going on in the community. This is a great use of available technology to get messages out to the community.

In New Jersey, Blog the Fifth, discusses Rep. Scott Garrett’s new chief of staff, Amy D. Smith. Smith is a Capitol Hill veteran and also a former lobbyist. She lobbied for the firm Bartlett, Bendall, & Kadesh LLC. Makes you wonder about the revolving door and the perception of conflict of interest.

Mooncat at Left in Alabama highlights Follow the Money’s new Legislative Committee Analysis tool. This new tool shows you the top contributors to committee members and who has contributed to the committee as a whole and what industries are giving money.

In Hawaii, Poinography, talks about providing bloggers with legal protection if they grant a source anonymity. Hawaii state house is considering a bill that includes bloggers under shield protections.  However, this bill is not scheduled for a hearing.

Also in Hawaii, iLind.net, got a response from his Sunshine Blogger Request request to Gov. Linda Lingle’s office for emails. Half of the emails requested were provided the other half were withheld under executive privilege. This is a pretty interesting read to see what was learned from this FOI request and to see what the governor considers executive privilege.

Maryland Politics blog has a great post on what Montgomery County’s senators are working on by providing a list of sponsored bills for each state senator. This is a great reminder that people should be checking out their state government sites, as well as, OpenCongress.org to see if the bills their elected officials are championing are being passed and if you agree with them or not.

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This week I have highlights from New York, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Maryland, Delaware, Hawaii, Alabama, and Iowa.

In New York, the Fighting 29^th, gives us an update on last week’s story about Rep. Kuhl’s trip to Brazil. The story produced by WHAM-13 notes that after the original story Rep. Kuhl’s office sent the news station a list of the expenses except for how much the air travel was. Apparently the government does not disclose how much military travel costs. After Rep. Kuhl’s office sent them an itinerary with flight hours they figured the airfare cost $28,000. I wonder why they wouldn’t disclose that?

Keystone Politics in Pennsylvania highlights the open records legislation that has been approved unanimously by the state house and is being sent to the governor to sign. This right to know law makes all government records public unless the document’s custodian can prove that they are classified.

Lowell at BadLand Blues highlights an interview with the governor about a bill regarding open government. The governor feels that open disclosure could violate privacy rights of citizens. The interview also gives the sponsor of the bill a chance to respond to the Governor’s accusations.

The Howard County Maryland Blog highlights the Maryland Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2008. This bill is being sponsored by Howard County delegates and will allow citizens to see how the state of Maryland spends tax money.

DelawarePolitics.net talks about the nepotism in Delaware. He would like to know how many family members of elected officials are being employeed by Delaware. Fair question maybe its time for people to investigate these links like we did in Congress is a family business.

ILind.net of Hawaii talks about his involvement the Sunshine Blogger Project. The goal of the project is to find out whether America’s governors archive the e-mail correspondences that go into and out of their offices. More importantly can they provide copies of those e-mails when members of the public request them. ILind request covered all governmental emails sent or received by the governor’s office during the four day period of February 1-4, 2008. Hopefully the bloggers participating in this project can get some positive disclosure.

In Alabama, Doc’s Political Parlor, talks about the new state senate bill that will ban PAC to PAC contributions. It does not, however, ban PACs from giving to political parties which could create a loophole. The loophole is being actively discussed and will be PACs contributing to parties, who will then, contribute to another PAC. Two steps forward one step back.

In Iowa Cyclone Conservatives points people to the Facebook and MySpace pages of Reps. Steve King and Tom Latham and Sen. Chuck Grassly. It’s great to see elected officials taking advantage of a new medium to connect with constituents.

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I have been keeping track of local blogs that do a great job of informing people about what is happening in Congress, state level, and local level politics. These blogs provide valuable information and I am taking the time each week to point out some highlights from around the country. As promised, here is this week’s update on Sunlight in the states.

In Alabama, Left in Alabama talks about how Gov. Riley is going to support Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Joe Turnham’s proposal to post, immediately, on the state’s Web site all flights using state planes, including information regarding passengers, destinations, and the purpose of the trip. The measure even goes as far as to penalize lawmakers if they do not reimburse the state for private trips. I’m sensing a recurring theme, considering the New York ethics commission also recently commented on the use of state planes for political purposes.

In Hawaii, there have been some discussions regarding the definition of journalism because of a proposed shield law, which would legally safeguard journalists from disclosing the sources of both published and unpublished information in state courts, but would not offer the same protection for bloggers. The official Hawaiian House blog recently defined Hawaii’s reasons for this decision, which blogger Poinography disputed in a very good point-by-point rebuttal.

In Illinois, Woodfordtaxfacts.org has been keeping tabs on the progress of Woodford County’s official Web site, which, deserves kudos for providing RSS feeds and a eLibrary with minutes from County committees and the County Board. Woodfortaxfacts.org also deserves a tip of the hat for emphasizing that transparency and access are important so people can take ownership of their government.

Thanks to Tom Cusack for alerting me to his blogs, Oregon Earmarks Blog and Open the Government News and Issues. These are great examples of a local blogger working toward transparency.

Keep up the great work on the local level. My love of reading blogs cannot be squelched, so please keep recommending local blogs that do a great job talking about local level issues affecting government transparency, ethics and technology.

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Keeping track of congressional information starts at the local level, and blogs do a great job of informing people about what is happening in their own backyard. I have been reading local blogs for quite a while and have been very impressed with the coverage on local ethics issues and congressional information. So I would like to highlight every week some blogs that do a great job covering issues that deal with transparency, ethics, and corruption.

In Alabama, Flashpoint describes a recent earmark that funded buying 20,000 smoke detectors for residents in Madison County, and questions its necessity.

Arizona’s Espresso Pundit and BlogforArizona.com both agree that the best way to make public announcements from government agencies is not through a newspaper but that Arizona should put them online on a searchable government Web site.

Georgia Porkbusters gave a rundown of who in the Georgia delegation requested earmarks in the upcoming defense appropriations package.

South Carolina has a new government watchdog blog, the Palmetto Truth Squad. Their goal is to find “verifiable examples of waste, mismanagement and fraud in South Carolina state and local government.”

New York Rochester Turning is reporting that the New York State Ethics Commission recently released an advisory opinion on the use of state aircraft for political purposes.

In Alaska, Sen. Ted Stevens has taken up quite a bit of blog space recently. The Anchorage Daily News takes some space to talk about the earmark controversies surrounding Alaska’s congressional delegation. Here Sen. Stevens did an interview with the Daily News editorial board. If you go to the bottom you can see his, rather interesting, response when questioned about his legal controversies.

These are just some highlights of what is going on at the state level. Please feel free to contact me (at nthompson at sunlightfoundation dot com) if you have any tips on what is going on locally. I am specifically in search of more local political news blogs in Alaska, so if anyone knows of any, please let me know.

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