No WhiteWash!

The Show blog is looking for someone to help with open records requests.  See below

We need help! We are looking for people to make open records request to our local governments. Its easy, but you have to stay on top or they wont give them up.

This will be a volunteer position. We do this at a cost and make no money, we do it for love of town, State, and Country.

Contact us here

“The General Assembly hereby declares it to be the policy of this State that the formation of public policy and decisions is public business and shall not be conducted in secret.” Title 8, Chapter 44 (T.C.A. 8-44-101-201)

Ironically, one of the outcomes of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government’s 2004 public records audit, the first such statewide audit in Tennessee, is that lawmakers are filing more bills to close records.

In this year’s session, Tennessee legislators filed three times as many exemptions to open meetings, open records laws than normal.

Read more via Spotlighting “Sunshine issues” also spurs open government opponents – Random Mumblings.

Privacy bill stalls: Public access to information about handgun-carry permit holders should remain public.

Score one for open access to public information.

The Tennessee Senate this week unexpectedly — but wisely — failed to pass a bill to shut off access to records identifying more than 220,000 handgun-carry permit holders in the state

Read more via Editorial: A victory for open records : Editorials : Memphis Commercial Appeal.

Continuing a commitment to government transparency, Governor Phil Bredesen today announced a new TN.gov Web site where citizens can see how tax revenues are spent.  The new site is www.tn.gov/opengov.

“This makes it easier for taxpayers to access information by aggregating data in a centralized place on the state’s Web site,” Bredesen said. “The commitment to openness and transparency I made from the beginning of my administration takes another important step forward with the introduction of this new tool for citizens to access information about state spending.”

Information available at Tennessee’s Open Government site includes:

• Vendor payments, organized quarterly and by department
• Travel expenses paid to all state workers, including cabinet-level out-of-state travel
• Employee salary information

The site is managed by the Department of Finance & Administration, which includes the state’s budget office, the state accounting and payroll divisions as well as the state’s information technology network.

“Establishing this site to make basic information available to taxpayers is part of our continuing effort to make it easier for citizens to see how their taxpayer dollars are being used,” Commissioner Dave Goetz said. “We look forward to gathering input from the General Assembly and citizens of Tennessee as we develop the next levels of information we can make available online.”

The new site brings together information already available, but now accessible at one location, such as public meetings involving state agencies, state audits and financial reports, state contract opportunities and tax collections, as well as budget information.

Citizens can also access a link on the site to give feedback to state officials on the information made available, and what they’d like to see made available as the site matures.

Since taking office in 2003, Bredesen has pushed open the doors of government spending by holding open budget hearings, streamed live on the Internet.  Bredesen also led the move toward a higher level of ethics in government by establishing an ethics committee in 2003 that led to the creation of the Tennessee Ethics Commission.  He set new demands for disclosure from executive branch leadership employees and also pushed for more online access to information related to physicians and health care facilities, as well as information on certain criminal offenders.

There are many Web sites focusing, in whole or in part, on Freedom of Information and open-government issues. While we’ve listed many here, we’re sure there are some we’ve missed, so please be sure to e-mail us with suggestions.

Interested in working for transparency? Scroll to the bottom of the page to view the Sunlight Foundation’s transparency jobs postings.

• Alabama Center for Open Government
• American Society of Newspaper Editors
• The Associated Press and Freedom of Information
• The Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida
• The Lucy Burns Institute
• Californians Aware: The Center for Public Forum Rights
• California First Amendment Coalition
• Center for Democracy and Technology
• Coalition of Journalists for Open Government
• Common Cause
• Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission
• Copley First Amendment Center
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy
• Foster Pepper Local Open Government Blog for Washington State
• The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center
• Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas
• The Freedom of Information Center at the University of Missouri
• The First Amendment Foundation
• First Amendment Project
• Get Grandpa’s FBI File
• Georgia First Amendment Foundation
• Government Attic
• Hawaii Office of Information Practices
• Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan: Ensuring Honest and Open Govt. Resources
• Indiana Coalition for Open Government
• Indiana Public Access Counselor
• Investigative Reporters and Editors
• Iowa Freedom of Information Council
• The James Madison Project
• Judicial Watch
• Maryland Foundation for Open Government
• Massachusetts Campaign for Open Government
• The Media Coalition
• Minnesota Information Policy Analysis Division
• Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information
• Missouri Attorney General’s Sunshine Law Page
• National Coalition Against Censorship
• National Freedom of Information Coalition
• National Institute on Money in State Politics
• National School District Honor Roll
• The National Security Archive
• New England First Amendment Center
• New Jersey Foundation for Open Government
• New Mexico Foundation for Open Government
• Newspaper Association of America
• New York State Committee on Open Government
• North Carolina Open Government Coalition
• Ohio Attorney General’s Site for Sunshine Laws and Public Records Resources
• OpenCongress.org
• OpenTheGovernment.org
• Open Oregon: A Freedom of Information Coalition
• Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette First Amendment Fourm
• Project on Government Oversight
• Project Vote Smart
• Public Citizen
• Radio-Television News Directors Association
• ReadTheBill.org
• The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
• Society of Professional Journalists’ Freedom of Information Resources
• South Dakotans for Open Government
• Student Press Law Center
• Sunlight Foundation
• Sunshine in Government Initiative
• Sunshine in Missouri
• Sunshine Review
• Tennessee Coalition for Open Government
• Texas Attorney General’s Open Government Pages
• The Thomas Jefferson Center for Freedom of Expression
• The Virginia Coalition for Open Government
• Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council
• Washington Coalition for Open Government
• Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna
• WatchOurCity.com

A bill that would exempt the emails of state legislators and their staff from the Tennessee Open Records Act has died today in the Tennessee General Assembly.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Henry Fincher (D-Cookeville), withdrew the legislation at the opening of a House subcommittee hearing. Fincher’s bill would have seriously undermined the public’s right to obtain important information to hold their elected representatives accountable.

“It is fitting that the bill most hostile to open government in Tennessee would die this week,” said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson, noting that Monday, March 16, marked the beginning of “Sunshine Week.”

Sunshine Week is a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. All week, news media, civic groups, libraries, schools and nonprofit organizations like the Tennessee Center for Policy Research will highlight the need for open, transparent and accountable government.

Unfortunately, it is still very difficult for the public to obtain information from their elected representatives in Tennessee. For example, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research was forced to sue the state after the Department of Finance and Administration failed to turn over public records.

“If my organization has to drag government officials into court just to obtain public documents, does the average citizen have any shot at holding the government accountable?,” Johnson asked.

Thankfully, several bills are appearing before legislative committees this week to create a more open and accountable government in Tennessee. The Taxpayer Transparency Act, a bill to put all state spending online, will be heard on Wednesday in both the House and Senate.

In celebration of “Sunshine Week,” the Tennessee Center for Policy Research encourages all state legislators to support these efforts to promote government transparency and accountability in Tennessee.

By Jane E. Kirtley

Kirtley is the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota. An attorney and former journalist, she was the executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press from 1985-1999.

Do you want to know what your government is up to? What it’s doing with your tax dollars? When it will propose a new health care policy? Where it’s sending young men and women to fight? How it’s regulating banks and bailing out the financial industry? Why children in our public schools aren’t performing as well as their counterparts in other countries?

Of course you do. It’s your right to know these things. Dozens of state and federal laws say so.

But governments have a million excuses for resisting those laws. They’ll say that disclosing information will endanger national security. Or invade someone’s privacy. Or make it tougher to compete in the global marketplace.

Some of those excuses may sound pretty reasonable. Once in a while, they’re probably justified.

But most of us are at least a little bit skeptical when the government says “No, you can’t have that information.” The government’s business is the public’s business. Unless there’s a very good reason, we expect government to tell us what it’s doing, and how it’s doing it. In other words, we expect it to be accountable to us. After all, we’re paying for it.

The Bush administration didn’t see it that way. It expanded government’s power to conceal more and more information about its operations, while increasing its authority to collect more and more information about each of us. Many state and local governments followed suit. Secrecy became the order of the day.

President Obama says he wants to change all that. On his first day in office, he issued a series of policy statements declaring “a new era of openness.” He’s promised that “transparency and the rule of law will be touchstones of this presidency.” He’s pledged to use the Internet to encourage the public to help create government policy.

Whether you voted for Obama or not, this is good news. If you’re a supporter, you’ll expect Obama to maintain the two-way flow of information that characterized his presidential campaign. If you’re not, you’ll want to keep tabs on everything his administration does. These policies will help make that possible.

Everything won’t change overnight. Undoing years of secrecy will take time, and some of Obama’s initiatives have already prompted both praise and criticism. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ announcement in February that he would revise the 1991 policy forbidding the news media to photograph flag-draped caskets containing military remains arriving at Dover Air Force base is just one example.

Some view the new policy as a way to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country, and to remind the public of the cost of war. Others contend that the media’s presence will distress surviving family members unnecessarily, and encourage the use of the images for political purposes.

Similar debates will continue on the state and local level, too. Should the public have access to concealed weapons permits? Should government employees’ e-mails be subject to disclosure? Or would this violate individuals’ privacy?

Different states will answer these questions in different ways. But the president is right: we should presume that government information is open to all of us, unless there’s a very good reason why it shouldn’t be. For much too long, government officials have acted as if this decision belongs to them alone. They concluded that what they’re doing is none of our business, and told us to get lost.

The president’s directives have sent a clear message. It’s time to open the doors of government, and let the public in. And we won’t settle for anything less.

What is Sunshine Week?

---

Sunshine Week is a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include print, broadcast and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools and others interested in the public’s right to know.

Sunshine Week is about the public’s right to know what its government is doing, and why. Sunshine Week seeks to enlighten and empower people to play an active role in their government at all levels, and to give them access to information that makes their lives better and their communities stronger.

Sunshine Week is a non-partisan initiative whose supporters are conservative, liberal and everything in between.

How can I participate?

---

Anyone can be a part of Sunshine Week. In the first two national Sunshine Weeks, not only journalists, but also students, teachers, private citizens, librarians, civic leaders, public officials, bloggers, non-profit groups were involved.

The only requirement is that you do something to engage in a discussion about the importance of open government. It could be a large public forum or a classroom discussion, an article or series of articles about access to important information, or an editorial. The extent to which you participate is up to you.

Participation is not about how much you do; it’s about doing it.

Is Sunshine Week making a difference?

---

The coverage, commentaries and activities promoting open government during Sunshine Week have led to some tangible, meaningful changes to people’s lives and the laws that govern them.

The Sunshine Week initiative is increasing public awareness, it’s coming up more often in policy conversations, and the efforts of participants are being cited as real forces for moving the public away from simply accepting excessive and unwarranted government secrecy.

People also are playing more of a role in the actions that affect their communities. They now are learning what kinds of information they have a right to see, where to get it, how to get it and what to do if someone tries to keep if from them.