The power and potential to inform about budgets

'Tis the season for budget hearings in local governments across our land. Budgets are not particularly sexy. But budgets are important for the conduct of local government. Budgets are where local governments enshrine priorities by encasing priorities in specific allocations of cold, hard cash. The city council bloggers around the country who write about budgets have been doing a great job educating people. As you might expect, there are lots of different approaches.

Douglas Athas of Garland, Texas, tells people just how much in debt their government is on their behalf. He's got a real gift among us council bloggers for his use of graphics to explain things. I don't know issues in his town, but in Lakewood, Wash., if 45 percent of our budget went to pay debt the voters woulda strung us up by now.

Matthew Petty of Fayetteville, Ark., finds himself in dialogue not only on his blog but on Facebook and the papers over the 'T word:' Taxes.

Seattle's Tim Burgess directs people to video.

Alderman Garry Schroeder of LaSalle, Ill., gives some heck to the local newspapers and his peers on the council, but more importantly, says he's setting the record straight on a proposal.

And in what I thought was the funniest post, playing with references to clairvoyance, Dallas' Angela Hunt talks about what happened after the previous budget was passed and what collisions may be expected this year. She also has some budget town hall video on her blog, which combines very well with the printed material including a third element, Excel spreadsheets of her own design. Impressive.

As I read or skim all these items, I think: how did all these things get said and distributed *before* all the digital tools we have today on the Internet? Just looking over our partial compilation of the city council members who blog can get you excited about the growing potential of digital democracy.

Photo credit: And thanks to East Carolina U for a great mood photo of money!

Washington Considers Creating an Agency to enforce Open Meetings and Records Laws

The Washington state auditor, Brian Sonntag, and attorney general, Rob McKenna, have set up an open government task force to get at one of the big problems with Washington state open public meetings and records laws. Right now, the only way you can enforce them is to go to court.

A slew of references about current issues, controversies and potential solutions for issues about open government can be found at the attorney general's website.

Clearly, what a lot of members of the group seem to be moving toward is formation of an agency that enforces public records laws and open meetings laws. The idea is that there has to be something better than the current system. If I am unhappy with an agency's response in Washington, I have pretty much one choice: sue. And that means hiring a lawyer, dealing with courts, and delay. That's expensive and slow, as a famous case out of King County shows.

If the idea of an agency doing this sounds strange, it's actually not a new idea at all. The committee that met yesterday morning in Olympia got on the phone with the chief enforcement officer of Pennsylvania's open government laws, Terry Mutchler. She says that the agency has the power to command governments to follow the law and give citizens what they want. That certainly sounds appealing. And they also have credibility when they have to explain to citizens that certain records may not be available under the law. More information about what they are doing in Pennsylvania is available here.

The direct link to the Penn agency is here. Take a look. It's impressive.

Here's the handbook and guide for citizens

Here's something that anyone would find useful: A list of what requests have been approved, or not.

And here's something that at least *ought* to prevent lawsuits: informal mediation between the requestor and the agency.

The committee also discussed something that most of us never expected to come out of the public records act. There is a small, but significant group of people who file bizarrely huge numbers of records act requests that cities have to respond to. In Lakewood, we have one fellow who we figure costs us $40,000 a year in staff time. Ms. Mutchler of Pennsylvania said nearly every government she knows of has one of these folks.

It would only inflame these folks if I speculate on why they do it, and the reasons vary. Let's just say that even advocates for open government who were at the table in Olympia generally agree that this is a problem and, to an extent, real squandering of public resources. This problem is much trickier to solve, because citizens do have a right to inquire of their government.

And finally, for another view: A guy I used to work with who thankfully is still at The Olympian, Brad Shannon, wrote a news story about the meeting.

The committee will meet again in November to recommend something, presumably, to the Legislature. I'll post an update then.