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Transparency baby steps

Originally published in the Frederick News-Post

Government Transparency

by Marta Hummel Mossburg

OP-EDS

Everything related to government is public by definition. It follows that the government should do everything in its power to make each document and action accessible to state residents, save for the few qualifying as confidential.

That's why it's a good thing that starting this month there will be live broadcasts of Maryland Board of Public Works meetings, where many state spending decisions are made, including the recent controversial vote to spend about $50 million on slot machines in Cecil County. Starting with the next legislative session, House of Delegates committee meetings will also be broadcast live and residents will also be able to listen to Senate hearings.

And those interested in the legislative session will also be able to access a bill's status in real time free of charge instead of once a day for those who did not pay an $800 fee.

Sunshine does not guarantee cleaner and more responsive government, but it makes it much easier to achieve. Because of the changes, residents won't have to take state-issued news releases at their word. They can watch and listen for themselves.

But the changes should not be construed as any great victory for transparency in the state, which should focus its attention on making more important data available and understandable.

Key information including public employee salaries, benefits and pensions are not available online. And despite Gov. Martin O'Malley's winning an award for the state's presentation of stimulus data, deciphering the information is nearly impossible and much of it is incorrect. As the Maryland Public Policy Institute's John J. Walters has shown, federal and state data on the $787 billion program often conflict, and companies often give only the vaguest descriptions of how the money they received was used, if at all.

The state does also not make public the names of loan recipients, the terms of the loans it grants or the basis for providing loans to particular businesses. And it does not provide the names of those whose houses were "weatherized" using federal stimulus dollars, making it impossible to independently review the program.

Nor does the state make public the names of nonprofits and businesses receiving less than $50,000 each of the $1 billion in grants the state hands out each year. And the descriptions given for how groups receiving more than $50,000 used the money provide only the vaguest hints of its purpose. "Minority outreach," "capacity building" and "prevention" are three common descriptions. And conversations with many grant recipients show that much of the financial information in the grant's database is wrong.

Over the past four years of making Public Information Act requests of state and county agencies, many have refused to provide information, when granted, in any form but a PDF or a hard copy. That has made it nearly impossible to analyze information quickly and is especially egregious because the original information came from a spreadsheet.

These issues mean that Maryland has more "fake transparency" than substantive transparency that forces "disclosure of politically controversial decisions," as J.H. Snider, an open government advocate, wrote in The Washington Post earlier this year.

If leaders really care about making Maryland government open and responsive, they would prioritize publicizing politically sensitive information like that listed above, not the made-for-TV blabbing of politicians who know they are on camera.

Marta Mossburg is a senior fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institute. You can contact her at mmossburg@mdpolicy.org.