Red Clay Citizen

Transportation: A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

Credit to Kevin Siers who draws for the Charlotte Observer, which published this.

Sunlight as Disinfectant

If you haven't already, check out the Capitol Monitor -- a transparency project that keeps sunlight on North Carolina's politics, non-profits and interest groups. MSM: keep your eyes on this project.

(PS: I don't think they're supposed to use the "o" but rather the "a" in capitol -- only DC should use that. We'll forgive them the typo, considering what they're doing for transparency.)

(Update: maybe the Capitol Monitor is using metonymy (or is it synecdoche) here by referring to the capitol building.)
-Max Borders

Which One of These Men is Lying?

Looks like business as usual again in Raleigh as budget-makers stage behind closed door meetings to determine how to spend your tax money.

As this N&O article notes:

"House and Senate leaders held such a meeting on Thursday morning. But when a News & Observer reporter tried to enter, they barred him."

So much for government for the people, by the people. When a news reporter is kicked out of a budget negotiation meeting - what are we to infer from the dealings in that meeting? What are these lawmakers doing that they don't want reported to the public?

But then the plot thickens:

"Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand, a Fayetteville Democrat, could not cite a reason under the public meetings law why a reporter would be excluded. But he said the meeting had nothing to do with the budget.

'Because we were just hearing a report from staff," Rand said. "It had nothing to do with negotiations.'"

And then there's this:

"Budget negotiators were the only ones attending. A glimpse into the meeting showed Dan Gerlach, senior budget adviser to Gov. Mike Easley, and legislative fiscal workers addressing the lawmakers.

Gerlach left several minutes later.

What were they meeting about?

"Talking about the budget," Gerlach said as he walked away."

So, either Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand or Governer Easley's top budget aide Dan Gerlach is lying about what was being discussed in that meeting. 

Why all the secrets and lying? And more important, why do liberals in this state want to entrust more of our money and power in the hands of these folks?

Poor City Attorney Burdened by Transparency

This poor, poor Charlotte city attorney, burdened by transparency, laments the types of information requests his department receives:

McCarley said Charlotte officials had no objection to requests like The Charlotte Observer's standing request for all e-mails and paper correspondence sent or received by Mayor Pat McCrory, City Manager Curt Walton and two city department heads. He then read a list of "the other kind" of public records requests: "Disgruntled, unsuccessful bidders wanting to know everything about a bid process and the other people in it, bloggers wanting information for their shots at the government, the alternative press who has no particular sense of reasonableness in what they ask for, the gadflies and the Libertarians who will admit to you they are looking to bog down government, potential litigants shopping for a claim, political opponents of current officials, and then the idly curious."

Hmm, are bidding processes closed (it's certainly not unusual for some N.C. contracts to be ol' boy relationships)? Are bloggers just a nuisance? What, pray tell, distinguishes the alternative press from the mainstream press--and what constitutes a reasonable request? Wouldn't more gadflies have prevented that abomination-on-tracks from being built in Charlotte at the expense of taxpayers who'll never, ever use it? Don't political opponents need information to make the case that they'd be better in the job? Is the curious citizen not an engaged rather than an idle one--or should civic life be left to our minders because they know what's best for us?

The above-quoted list may all seem like cases of annoyance to a bureaucrat who believes he and his pals raison d'etre is to dream up ways to spend your money and control your affairs. But if the government bureaucrat shirks his responsibility to be open because it is inconvenient, he has forgotten his real reason-to-exist: to serve the people who put him there. That service comes with all the inconvenience of dealing with the hoi polloi. Once you, gentle reader, wipe those crocodile tears from your face, remember that Mac McCarley is one of the many functionaries who earns a government paycheck to serve you -- not to ensure his work is hassle-free. Transparency is his duty.
-Max Borders

Government transparency: Beyond the e-mails

By now, you've all heard about the hot water Governor Easley's administration has gotten itself into regarding all those deleted e-mails.

Now that Easley & Co. have focused public attention on government transparency, this report comes out. As summarized in this Greensboro News-Record article:

"North Carolina scores only a hair's breadth above a C in the latest national report card on government management.
At least it isn't New Hampshire, which rated a D-plus. But it isn't Virginia, Utah or Washington, either, which scored the only A's (A-minuses) in the nation.
The less-than-stellar B-minus comes in a Pew Center evaluation of state governments."

More from the N-R article:

"'As things stand,' the report says, 'the governor's budget document is the place where the transparency ends. Some budget information published by the legislature can be difficult even for experts to follow,' the report adds, 'and public input in legislative hearings is in most cases severely limited.'

The study does not even mention perhaps the most irksome feature of the state budgeting process, where lawmakers slip additions into the final budget bill at the 11th hour, devoid of any meaningful debate or discussion."

Greater transparency on behalf of our state government is something I address in our recently released Budget Blueprint, with the following recommendations:

- Create a transparency Web site. Like the federal government and several other states, North Carolina should create a free, publicly searchable and user-friendly Web site that publishes every aspect of state government spending. The Web site should also provide information on tax credits and grants provided to businesses, nonprofits, community development projects, and other entities.

- Follow procedural rules when crafting the budget. The Legislature should be held publicly accountable by disclosing on the General Assembly Web site every item and provision that violates procedural rules. Unbeknownst to most voters, the General Assembly violated its own rules more than 100 times last session by including new budget items and provisions at the last minute (after both chambers passed a version of the budget); changing items that had already been agreed to in both chambers’ budgets; and providing more money for items than was proposed in either chamber’s budget.

The time is right for North Carolina state lawmakers to do the right thing and open up their books so that average taxpayers can easily see how their tax dollars are being spent.

Easley e-mail panel eclipses "Sunshine Week"

The e-mail panel Governor Easley has named is HEAVILY stacked to favor less transparency in government. Just one of the members, Ned Cline, is not a current employee of government at one level or another. Four of them could be considered to work directly for the governor in the executive branch. That would be a majority of the panel for math challenged individuals. The advisor to the panel also works for the state.

Does anyone think eight individuals, drawing taxpayer funded salaries, are going to make any dramatic changes that might make government more open and transparent - including their own job?

Who is representing the press? Who is representing groups advocating for open government? Who is representing the taxpayer who pays for all of this? Oh yeah, Sunshine Week was last week, we don't need to worry about any of that anymore.

I can't wait until next March to once again celebrate "Sunshine Week" followed by a total eclipse of the sun!

NORTH CAROLINA EDUCATION LOTTERY TO HELP FIGHT RECESSION

For Release: IMMEDIATE 

Contact: (877) 9NC-PLAY

         

EDUCATION LOTTERY TO HELP FIGHT RECESSION ANNOUNCES "INSTANT TAX REBATE" SCRATCH-OFF

RALEIGH - The North Carolina Education Lottery (NCEL) is going to help keep the economy from going into a recession. The North Carolina Education Lottery is introducing a new “INSTANT TAX REBATE” scratch-off game in conjunction with the issuing of “Tax Rebate” checks from the federal government.

The federal tax rebates in North Carolina will total billions of dollars and we need to insure that money is not wasted on frivolous spending but goes to supporting education. Since education is the ultimate economic development tool, this will spur the economy in North Carolina and help keep the country out of a recession.

This instant scratch-off ticket will have over $350 million in total cash prizes, which is a spectacular average of over $100 prize payout per household!

If we can convince half of the households in North Carolina to spend half their federal tax rebate on this game we estimate that the NCEL will gross over $1 billion. If the federal government would do the right thing and give a rebate to poor people and lower income families, who don't pay taxes, it would make our job easier as they are our target demographic (we also target mathematical illiterates and people not in full possession of their senses). If this would happen the Sky's the limit for potential sales!

The $300 million “INSTANT TAX REBATE” game is a $10 ticket with top prizes of $10 million. Players who scratch their way to win the $10 million prizes will be paid in installments of $500,000 over 20 years. There are also over 500,000 prizes between $50 and $500 and over 5,000 prizes from $1,000 to $50,000.

These tickets will be available in stores and check cashing centers when government tax rebate checks start arriving in lottery ticket consumers mailboxes!

# # #

                              THIS IS A PARODY!

Technology, Incentives & Transparency

Ryan Beckwith has been complaining of late - and justifiably so - about the lack of transparency in N.C. government. Much of this murkiness has to do with usability. In this latest post, Beckwith touches on the disparate and disjointed Web sites that allow people to access information on state government:

Consider a newly registered voter. You've misplaced your registration card, but you'd like to check up on your representation in the legislature.

Let's see. You could go to your local Board of Elections and check. Who runs that again? The county? Hopefully you know that, but you could be forgiven for forgetting.

You could go to the State Board of Elections Web site and search its voter database. Another click and you can see your voting districts as well.

Now, then, who represents the 17th House District and the 8th Senate District? It doesn't say.

You have to go to the legislature's Web site for that and search again. Make sure you open a new window in your browser, though, since you may forget the district numberss by the time you click on Representation, click on Representation again, select a House District and hit go, then repeat the process for the Senate.

Civitas, as small as we are, has tried to put this info together, but our Citizen Legislature has limitations -- (limitations that might be overcome with adequate funding from concerned citizens ;). Still it's perhaps more of a clearinghouse than what's available by your government. Which prompts the question: why is it so hard for government to make things easy for users?

The answer is: incentives. Government has no positive incentives to make itself more transparent or to make life simpler for users. Unlike Google - which profits from its usability - the government has only a minimal incentive to comply. If there is no statutory directive to be transparent or user-friendly, then they have even fewer incentives.

There are some ways to bring more sunshine, however:

- Citizen coders could start either a wiki or other technology that allows a distributed community to build a one-stop open source platform for state government information.
- Legislation might allow the government to contract a tech company to come in and do some work to unify the disparate legacy technologies that currently frustrate users.
- Active citizens could form a non-profit devoted to government transparency in North Carolina. The foci of this org could be technology and transparency.
- N.C. Universities could form a coalition/consortium that includes poli sci and computer science students working in collaboration to make government more transparent while giving students real world experience.
- The News & Observer could hold a contest for the best plan to increase transparency. Offer a prize of, say, $2000 and publish the best ideas.
- To repeat: big donors could donate to Civitas to flesh out Citizen Legislature to make it everything we (you) want it to be.

(Update: My 15 mins never felt so good. Plus, Beckwith is right: Gov't has a disincentive to be more transparent. That's why the people have to step in sometime clean house. Power to the people.)
-Max Borders

Parton Theater: Lawyers only real winners as taxpayers go on Paying!

Taxpayers need to follow the money while the Randy Parton Theater meltdown happens.  We now have our three law firms feeding at the public trough.  Don Carrington keeps reporting on the travails of Roanoke Rapids and the floundering Parton Theater with his latest Dolly Speaks Out to Support Brother story detailing the hiring of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice to represent the city of Roanoke Rapids in this dispute.  Carrington had already reported that Ernest Pearson, a lawyer with the Sanford Holshouser law firm, has signed checks from funds advanced by the city to his own firm. And let us not forget that Randy Parton has a lawyer from the firm Poyner & Spruill LLP representing him. Since Parton was given a very large sum from the city up front and they have already forgiven him a $475,000 advance - taxpayers are really the ones footing his legal bill in the end.

Let's look at this again:

• Parton yearly artist fee - $1.5 million
• public money invested in a risky scheme- $21 million
• Lawyers continuing to make money - Priceless

As has been said many times, follow the money.

State Auditor to More Closely Monitor Tax Dollars

State Auditor Leslie Merritt announced that his department will take the lead in tracking federal and state grant money being funneled through local governments to non-profits. He estimates that roughly $180 million in tax dollars are handled this way. Merritt had this to say:

“OSA’s new initiative should confirm whether my suspicions are true that both the State and local governments believe that the other is monitoring the $13 Billion in grants, but neither is doing much monitoring,”

That's right - $13 Billion in grants (federal and state dollars) go to local governments. Of this $13 billion, $4.1 is federal dollars, and $8.8 billion is state tax dollars (FY2006 figures). Far and away the largest recipient of grant money are local boards of education, with a total of $6.7 billion in state dollars. It should be a bit concerning to North Carolina taxpayers that so much of their money is being disbursed with such little oversight. Kudos to the Auditor for making an attempt to bring some additional transparency into how our tax dollars are spent.

General Assembly: Welcome to the Swarm

Attention bloggers, media, and concerned citizens: This is your chance to start the digging. If you want a one-stop-shop on the North Carolina state government - particularly the General Assembly - you have found your site. Campaign contributions, Personal Financials, bills and more. Come. Play. Scrutinize 'em till they can't stand it no more...

Welcome to the new Citizen Legislature.

-Max Borders

(PS: We want this to be useful to everyone in making state government more transparent. If you find bugs or something you need, please contact us.)

What? Nobody Wants to See Him?

Apparently, the taxpayer-funded debacle that is the Randy Parton Theater in Roanoke Rapids is having trouble filling the 1,500 seats for shows.

So now they have gone out and hired a public relations/marketing firm to advertise the theater for them.

Did they ever think that it may be the product that is the problem?

"Come see Randy Parton!  Sure, you've heard of him!
He's Dolly's brother!  He had two top-30 hits in 1981!"

Wow, who wouldn't want to pack up the family and drive out to Roanoke Rapids to see that?

What's next in the name of "economic development?" The Frank Stallone theater in Sylva?

Distributed Investments Reporting

Some NC bloggers with spare time are combing through the pension portfolio put together by gubernatorial candate and State Treasurer Richard Moore. Check it out here at Under the Dome (see also the comments).

More Transparency in Funding is Good

Chloe Gossage has a good piece about recent changes in review processes for line items, non-profs, etc. who will have to justify their funding. This means more transparency in Raleigh--which is always a good thing.