Making Government Transparent and Accountable
The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Underlying all of our efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the public's confidence in government
The Sunlight Foundation Blog
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State of the City
Gavin Newsom the Mayor of San Francisco has started putting his State of the City addresses on You Tube. You can go his You Tube page, which is branded and integrated really well with the City of San Francisco’s government page, and watch the whole speech or specific topics. Unlike Obama’s You tube broadcast the mayor of San Francisco allow users to respond with comments or a video response. This is definitely a great way to give people a chance to learn about the city on their own time and gives them a chance respond to the Mayor in a public forum. I hope the responses are monitored by Mayor Newsom’s staff and are addressed by the Mayor. If that happens a real interactive relationship between citizens and their local government will be created.
This is of course not perfect. The videos are under a restrictive copyright and they are not downloadable. I hope with public pressure these issues can be solved. If citizens want more openness they should get it and the Mayor should respond to what his citizens want.
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Labeling Lobbyists
Would you talk to this man?
The San Francisco Examiner reports on a proposed bill by San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly that would require lobbyists to wear identification badges when they contact city officials. This seems kind of silly to me. Lawmakers know these lobbyists and should know when they are being lobbied. They don’t need to read badges to figure out what is going on. If anything greater and more timely, as in immediate, disclosure to the public should be implemented and not some sort of cattle branding.
(Pictured above: The Open House Project’s John Wonderlich, our lobbyist for Big Transparency.)
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San Francisco to Pass Public Financing Law:
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will take up – and likely pass – a proposal to allow for the public financing of city mayoral contests, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Leaders of both of the two major San Francisco political parties – the Democrats and the Greens – support the reform measure, although Democratic Mayor Gavin Newson believes that the current campaign for public financing targets him and his campaign which outspent his Green Party opponent, the President of the Board of Supervisors Matt Gonzales, nearly 6-1.
