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Government Transparency and Ethics Reform in Louisiana
An issue that is near and dear to my heart, considering that I live in Louisiana, is that of recent government ethics reform initiatives from Governor Bobby Jindal. He was the focus of a recent New York Times article mentioning the "extensive package of ethics bills" passed recently. One such bill includes House Bill 1 which "Enacts personal financial disclosures for the vast majority of elected and appointed officials in state and local government for the first time in Louisiana’s history". Not everyone is happy about these changes. My favorite quote in the New York Times article: "The volume of grumbling suggested real change was afoot. 'This is huge,' said D. W. Hunt, a veteran lobbyist at the Capitol. 'This is a sea change. This will seriously, dramatically change things. The meta-theme is the transparency.' " Can you see the sweat on his forehead? Louisiana is considered to rank low nationally on state ethics, but according to a statement issued by The Center for Public Integrity, these bills may put Louisiana in the top tier of states with tough ethics rules. Hopefully this will be the case, but we shall have to wait and see... Continue reading
EPA Guilty of “Bad Faith” in its Library Closures
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) announced that Federal Labor Relations Board Arbitrator George Edward Larney ruled that the EPA acted in bad faith when it abruptly ordered to close seven of its ten regional libraries during the past two years. The arbitrator did not order EPA to re-open the closed libraries, because Congress already ordered them to restore the libraries in pg. 35 of a statement attached to FY 2008 budget (H.R. 2764) passed on December 26th, 2007. Later this month, the EPA is supposed to report to Congress as to how and when it will reopen the libraries with the $3 million that was allocated for them to do so. Hopefully, the EPA will pay heed to the public's input (including the library and depository community) in regards to planning the restoration of these libraries. PEER Associate Director Carol Goldberg echoes this sentiment, stating that "EPA employees are not the only ones negatively affected by library closures; the public now has a much harder time learning about toxic sites in their neighborhoods, the effects of new chemicals or even their local ecological history...while this ruling is a welcome development, EPA should not continue to shut the public – which is paying all the bills – out of the planning for restoration of these invaluable assets." Continue reading
Government Agencies Tweet @ Twitter
While updating my Twitter account recently, I noticed that womenshealth.gov created their own Twitter account and added me to their network. Kudos to the government agencies who are jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon and getting their information out to the community! That got me wondering what other government agencies have created Twitter accounts, so I did some hunting and found a previous FGI blog entry and an article from CNET News stating that NASA wants to tackle Web 2.0 initiatives in order to "save itself from turning into a dinosaur in the Internet age". It took awhile, but I finally found the official NASA Twitter account, which I stumbled upon via the NASA Edge website and their Twitter page. The U.S. Department of State created a dipnote Twitter account for alerting users to new posts on their DIPNOTE Blog. Many non-profit organizations, such as the American Red Cross, created "tweet" alerts during the recent tornado outbreaks in the south. The Sunlight Foundation is "tweeting" public laws as they are signed. And of course, FGI is on Twitter as well! Even Presidential candidates like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton update their Twitter accounts. I can't find one for John McCain, but it looks like Mike Huckabee joined the Twitter bandwagon too. If you find any other government agencies using Twitter, please post a comment to let everyone know. [Editor's note 6/5/09: I deleted the link to Ron Paul's twitter account as it was not actually from Ron Paul. Thanks Erin for alerting us!] Continue reading
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