TRANSPARENCY IN GOVERNMENT

 

TRANSPARENCY IS THE KEY TO GOOD GOVERNMENT

Ever since I filed my first open records request in November 2004 and my first open records lawsuit in February 2005 I have been convinced that transparency in government is the most important tool in honest government. When a politician gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar, his cohorts proclaim that we need a new ethics code. Then they write up a set of complex reporting and gift standards and proclaim that everything is settled, that is until the next incident.

The truth is that no one can stop the borderline ethics violations such as giving jobs to unqualified cronies, giving no bid contracts to friends by setting bid restrictions that only the friends can meet and seeing that legal business goes to supporters and contributors. There are many ways to bend and stretch the ethics codes and politicians are savvy at finding loopholes.

I have been pushing and recommending for some time the use of the internet to use as a bulletin board for transparency in government. Now with the explosion of blackberrys and iphones and with the introduction of new and advanced software there is no excuse for politicians to not put every important document on the internet.

Recently I looked at the City Council Agenda on the internet. I noticed that there were two proposed ordinances that were listed on the agenda. One was an ordinance to provide for Minimum Energy Efficiency in Rental Properties, Ordinance #5292. The other was an ordinance to amend Chapter 2, Article XI, Code of Ordinance, City of Memphis so as to Change the Reporting Requirements for Small Businesses, Ordinance #5293. I contacted Councilman Jim Strickland and asked him why the full text of the ordinance was not put on the internet. He, as a councilperson, of course had the full text of the ordinances sent to him in electronic format. He checked with the council staff and was told that the law only required that the full text be published in the Memphis Business Journal and that it was published weeks ahead of showing up on the agenda for action.

He urged the Council staff to change the procedure and they agreed to publish the full wording of the ordinances and also the resolutions on the internet which they are hopefully now doing. Then I decided to check with the Shelby County government and to my surprise I found that they had been doing this since May of 2008 and I found that the program and webpage was outstanding. You can see this at http://agendapub.shelbycountytn.gov. Not only do they publish all resolutions and ordinances but they publish contract awards. They purchased a program called S.I.R.E. and it seems to work quite well.

Upon further checking I found that the City has a similar program called GRANICUS which could provide similar information but they chose not to provide the same level of disclosure as the County Commission. Also it is to be noted that Shelby County government did not outsource their IT (Information Technology) department like the City of Memphis did when they gave the work to ACS in a controversial contract.

We are making progress in transparency with these developments but it is a work in progress. The next thing that I would like to see is for all public contracts put on the internet with the wining and losing bids exposed and with the reason for the selection of the wining bidder explained if the winner was not the low bidder. The Mayor of Memphis has the contract authority whereas the Shelby County Mayor must get Commission approval of all contracts. Maybe that is why the City Mayor's job is more attractive to politicians.