Transparency coast to coast

This past weekend I was in Baltimore at a national open government retreat working on recommendations for the next President on how to make the federal government more transparent and accountable.

Among the 70 individuals at the retreat were representatives from OMB Watch, National Security Archive, ACLU, Society of Professional Journalists, OpenTheGovernment.org, League of Women Voters and Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press to name a few.

WPC has been working with these groups for the past year on the 21st Century Right to Know Project. One of the recommendations I made that may be incorporated in the final report produced is for the next President to issue an open government executive order modeled after the one signed by Florida Governor Charlie Crist.

The federal bailout bill also was discussed at the retreat. There is serious concern about the level of secrecy being included in the draft bailout proposal. Here is a memo that was worked on at the conference that is circulating amongst open government groups. Here is the language of the bailout proposal.

Continuing our transparency efforts, last week I also participated on a panel on government transparency in Phoenix at the annual meeting of the State Policy Network, the national organization of state think-tanks. I announced WPC's recommendation for a tax transparency website that would provide an online searchable database of all tax rates in the state. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer endorsed our recommendation shortly after its release. Other SPN groups may now take our recommendation to their own states for their lawmakers to consider.

I’ll provide updates on both these efforts (Baltimore/Phoenix) as they develop.