Sunshine Standard – Model transparency language

by Kate Piercy All interested in government transparency, check out this new website,sunshinestandard.org, created by Sunshine Review. The website aims to provide citizens and elected officials with model legislation and tools to launch reforms and expand the amount of information available about government. As Michael Barnhart of Sunshine Review explains, “State and local governments, and school districts,...

by Kate Piercy

All interested in government transparency, check out this new website,sunshinestandard.org, created by Sunshine Review.

The website aims to provide citizens and elected officials with model legislation and tools to launch reforms and expand the amount of information available about government.

As Michael Barnhart of Sunshine Review explains, “State and local governments, and school districts, have an affirmative obligation to proactively share the information people need to hold officials accountable for how tax money is spent and how the people’s business is conducted. We must set the bar for state and local government transparency.”

Barnhart suggests state and local governments all need to meet a “sunshine standard” so there is a consistent pattern across the board for government to be defined as “transparent.” The standard includes:

1. Budgets for current and previous years, with a graph showing increases or decreases over time to help citizens evaluate and understand trends in local government spending, including spending for salaries. The checkbook register and credit card receipts should also be posted.
2. Open-meeting laws should be posted, along with notices about public meetings of the governing board, minutes of past meetings, and a schedule and agendas for future and past meetings.
3. Public officials should be listed online by name with contact information, e-mail addresses and the elected official’s voting record. The names of key administrators and their contact information, including e-mail addresses, also should be posted.
4. Building permits and zoning applications should be available for review and downloading. In addition, citizens should be able to submit and track applications online.
5. Audit information should be available for online inspection, including report results, audit schedules and performance audits of government programs.
6. Contract rules should be posted, along with bids and contracts for purchases over $10,000, as well as vendors’ campaign contributions to government contract decision makers.
7. Lobbying contributions to any publicly funded lobbying associations that contribute taxpayer money to other associations should be disclosed.
8. Public records should include the name of the person who is in charge of fulfilling open-records requests, along with contact information for that person.
9. Tax information should be comprehensibly posted in a central location, including and accounting for all state “fees” such as driver’s licenses, all tax documents for all elected officials and identified sources of revenue for each department and agency.

For more on this, read Barnhart’s take and be sure to visit http://sunshinestandard.org.