A new legislator signs on . . . a retired one weighs in
Jun 29th, 2007 by JamieB
In a press release his office issued this week, freshman Representative Mike Vereb (R-Montgomery) announced that one of his top priorities is to bring about a more transparent state government. Some excerpts:
• Over the past several weeks, the issue of government transparency and the public’s access to government records has come under fire. . . . One of my top priorities since taking office has been to bring more trust and integrity back to state government.
• Voters sent a loud and strong message to the legislators in Harrisburg; they were tired of the way their government was being run. They demanded a change.
• Among the topics discussed by the [Speaker’s Legislative Reform Commission] was public access to government documents. I strongly supported the need for easier access to public records.
• The public has a right to know what their government officials are doing with their hard-earned tax dollars.
• The only way to instill trust back into government is to give constituents access to public documents and to act transparently.
• It is only through government transparency and full access to public documents that a true, democracy for the people by the people, will occur, and I will continue to fight for such access.
Former Representative Larry Roberts recently commented on this blog that he had long tried to change the Open Records Law.
“Being unable to change the law and after getting a tremendous amount of criticism from my local media,” he wrote “I posted all my monthly expenses on line on my web site. Unfortunately, my actions got very little attention.
“Legislators get a monthly report of expenses and balances in their accounts and this is the report I posted on line. I suggest that others who are in favor of Open Records post their expense reports on their web sites too. This can be done voluntarily without changing any law.”
OK, so with more and more lawmakers expressing support for open records reform, will we actually end up with something different from – and better than – what we have now? And should we concentrate our efforts on specific changes we want to see or on persuading people to agree on general principles – such as the critical importance of transparency, the presumption that public records belong to the public, and the need to have the legislature’s records covered by the right-to-know law?
I’m interested in your views. My thought is that right now we focus on getting people to declare, for the record, their support of the principles. From those principles should come specific – and meaningful – reforms.
At least that’s the, perhaps naive, hope.
The devil is in the details. Supporting transparency is like supporting baseball, apple pie and the Fourth of July. Exhilarating and expected of you, but in the end meaningless. Consider Lloyd Huck’s recent letter to Harrisburg Patriot News concerning extending the law to cover state-related universities. He states quite clearly that he is ,”a strong supporter of transparency on the part of public institutions.” But turns around in the next sentence and says “I believe that Penn State makes available all information important for the public to know.” He’s in favor of transparency as a general principle, but thinks thing are fine the way they are. Unless people are pinned down on the specifics their support of transparency is a meaningless as Huck’s.
BTW, I take a close look at Huck’s letter here.
Yes.
But first things first. We have never even had much lip service in the past, so to get people to publicly accept . . . and even call . . . for a fundamental change is a big step. It is only the first step, however, not the end of the trail.
I guess we must distinguish between generic support of transparency and generic support of more transparency. The former, as expressed by Huck, is meaningless. The latter is not quite as meaningless, but nonetheless gives one no idea of what the speaker has in mind. Further, keeping a tally of those who have gone on record generically for more transparency may have a downside. Once a generic support for more transparency is made by a legislator and touted here, public pressure on them for change may subside. If they are pinned down to specifics, public pressure can be directed at the points at which their support for change is the weakest.
That at least is my take on things.
Cheers,
veblen