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 Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Texas.

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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 Pennsylvania, Tennessee, New Jersey, Maryland, and Louisiana.
(more…)

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

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This week I have highlights from Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Hawaii and Louisiana.

In Pennsylvania, Above Average Jane has a great post summarizing what bills passed State Legislature during the week.

In Mississippi, Y’all Politics posts about ethics reform legislation that passed the state legislature and is on its way to be signed by the governor. This bill would increase the number of persons who must file economic interest disclosure forms, would create more enforcement of open-meeting laws and would make public-record law improvements.

In Hawaii, Poinography has a follow-up to a previous post about how citizens cannot find voting information sorted by legislator. In response, he wrote a "script to download all of the bill status pages and to pull out the voting information for each legislator." Inquirers can find a link in the fifth paragraph of the above post to download the data. This is great work. Thanks Poinography!

In Louisiana, The Daily Kingfish has a great post highlighting the useful features of GovTrack and how it allows citizens keep track of their Congressional delegations.

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This week I have highlights from South Dakota, Tennessee, New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

South Dakota War College reported that the South Dakotans for Open and Clean Government ballot committee has gathered enough signatures to place the South Dakota Open and Clean Government Act on the November ballot. This legislation contains the following provisions:

Taxpayer funds could not be used to lobby or campaign for partisan political agendas, including increased taxes.

Legislators and their staff would be unable to use their legislative positions to secure a “golden-parachute”, state-contracted job.

The “pay to play” system — where state contracts are traded for campaign donations — would be outlawed.

A simple, searchable website with information on all state contracts over $500 (excluding employment contracts), would be launched so citizens can know how their money is being spent.

War College also highlights some of the features of Legistorm including a map of the travel that Sen. Johnson and his staff have taken.

South Dakota Watch has a great post about how much openness in government is too much and what should be considered bad transparency. This is in response to a article in the Argus Leader about the crimes that Sioux City Council candidates some of which are just traffic violations.

BillHobbs.com, in Tennessee, wrote a great post about his efforts to get the state of Tennessee to respect his Open Records request regarding a tape of construction being done at the governor’s mansion. Even though the tape is state property and should be available under open records laws, the governor’s office wouldn’t let Mr. Hobbs obtain a copy of the tape unless he pays $200 for a DVD.

In New York, Room Eight reports that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has formed fake organizations, that she can report to the council during budget enactment, that receive state money. Then for next year use the money given to the fake organizations to do political favors.

In Pennsylvania, Policy Blog, is responding to an interest discussion on whether the budget process is legitimate if legislators list programs to be funded and then let the governor decide which ones get the money.

In Delaware, Down with Absolutes goes through the process of winning a state contract.

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This week I have highlights from Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New Jersey and New York.

In Oregon, Open Government News and Issues, spends some time talking about using Legistorm’s database containing information on privately funded congressional travel. Oregon’s own Senator Smith, and his staff have taken trips totaling $190,000 or more. Rep. Blumenauer has 70 approved trips for a total $156,000.

Pennsylvania’s KeyStone Politics blog highlights a tentative $400 million contract granted to Unisys for managing the state’s data center. Gov. Rendell’s approval of this contract caused a stir in the state house when lawmakers asking why competitive bidding wasn’t considered.

South Carolina Politics Today highlights a new state spending database. The new website allows people to find itemized agency spending by month, as well as year-to-date agency spending by several categories. State expenses are broken-down by whether General Fund, an earmark or federal money was the source of the funding. This data can also downloaded by anyone. Good Job South Carolina!

In New York an interesting conversation is happening between three New York bloggers (Rochester Turning, Fighting 29th, and the Ontario Republican) and the local television station 13WHAM’s blogger about whether bloggers are journalists and traditional media. Read this ongoing conversation about the changing nature of news and media.

Earmark Corner:

Pennsyltucky Politics blog talks about Rep. Todd Platts pledge to not request earmarks. Rep. Platts has claimed earmarks have been used to do some good things for the district but the process of getting them needs to be reformed so he won’t be requesting any in the upcoming appropriation bills.

In South Caronlina, Palmetto State Progressive, reports that Sen. DeMint has supported $30 million in defense department earmarks despite his well known opposition to them.

In New Jersey, Blog the Fifth, has a series of posts on identifying who the recipents are of the $2.5 million in earmarks that Rep. Garrett sponsored. Some digging revealed that $1.5 million, that is for 2kw Military Tactical Generator Improvements, went to Dewey Electronics. The other million, was for Lightweight Munitions and Surveillance System (LMSS) for Unmanned Air & Ground Vehicles, went to Imperial Machine & Tool, Inc. Good sleuthing Blog the Fifth!

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While we work on more transparency for Congress it’s important to note that federal efforts for openness can have a positive effect on state government. On the flip side the states can take the lead on disclosure or they can be less open this makes them great places to see how transparency is valued. Let’s see what the states are up to:

Pennsylvania passed the Right to Know law that makes most government records public. There are 30 exemptions that would keep records sealed these mostly deal with safety and private information. People can request documents by mail, e-mail, fax or any other electronic means as provided by the agency. Response to requests shall be made within five business days.

Mississippi is in the dog house with a slew of new legislation that would close the door to the public by giving various groups exemption to the open meeting or public information laws. This includes exempting airlines from open meetings, judicial nomination advisory committee, also law enforcement.

The Washington senate approved legislation, senate bill 6818, that would require the state have a state expenditure website set up by January 2009

New York City has a Citywide Performance Reporting (CPR) online tool performance tracking tool that will help make City agency performance transparent and accountable. From this database you can find out how state agency’s performance is based on themes. Themes are groups of related government services.

Salary Database’s on a state level have become more prevalent. 15 states have databases that are maintained by local newspapers. Iowa, Georgia, and Oklahoma have state sponsored databases. WikiFoia has a great list of them all and where you can find them.

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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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It looks like Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has decided that the Department of State’s recently announced policy to hide the locations of public polling places is a bad idea. Rendell rescinded the order to hide the polling place locations over the weekend.

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At first I thought this was a joke, but it’s not. From the Keystone State we hear that Pennsylvanian officials have decided not to publish the locations of its polling places. What?

The spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State said that they made the decision after considering the bombings in Spain days before the 2004 national elections. (Did anyone tell the folks up in Pennsylvania that the bombings in Spain were of trains, not polling places? Wouldn’t it be more logical to beef up security around train stations and rail lines rather than hide the location of polling places?)

Besides running afoul of the state’s open records law and making coordinated statewide voter-mobilization strategies more difficult, Pennsylvania’s action will make it that much more difficult for citizens to vote. America has enough trouble with its elections without playing hide and seek with the voters. This is beyond ridiculous.

Hat tip: Allison.  Update

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