New Jersey is looking at two bills that would reform exiting open meetings and open records laws in the state. Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) introduced the bills which are designed to broaden access to government records and increase transparency. The bills follow a year of harsh criticism over the state officials love/hate relationship [...]
Maryland is trying to give local business owners more incentive to grow the economy with a series of measures. They’ve launched an online database of all financial incentives available for job creation, and economic development. The database will support a variety of other online tools for business owners, designed to help them while also increasing [...]
New York is looking at a new measure that aims to increase transparency in the state government. The bill will require the Assembly to make meeting materials available to the public online either before or at the start of meetings.
Officials in Arizona are pushing for increased transparency in the state, in the wake of questions raised over dealings between state officials and lobbyists. Secretary of State Ken Bennett and State Representative Kimberly Yee are pushing a new measure that would put more sunlight on the financial disclosure statements and lobbyist filings of the state’s [...]
Governor Nicki Haley of South Carolina is in hot water over emails deleted by her office. The Charleston Post and Courier uncovered the deleted emails after asking for emails from both her office and the state Department of Health and Human Services. The emails returned from the Department showed responses from the Governor which had [...]
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie campaigned on promises of bringing increased transparency to New Jersey. Early on in his administration he launched a transparency website designed to highlight public information from state offices. Despite that, New Jersey last year the state comptroller issued a blistering report highlighting just how opaque the state really is. Now, [...]
Massachusetts Treasurer Steve Grossman is making good on his campaign promise to bring the state’s finances online. Massachusetts Open Checkbook, a website detailing the state’s expenditures will go live later today in an effort to increase transparency. The website will contain not only expenditures, but contract details as the state works to lower overall contracting [...]
Kentucky is opening the records of cases in which child abuse or neglect resulted in a fatality or near fatality. According to a directive from Governor Steve Beshear, the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) can redact personal identifying information, but, the the records of these incidents must be made public. The Governor [...]
Iowa Governor Terry Branstad is working to increase the transparency of his office with a new website. The website will allow visitors to track open records requests made to his office. Branstad has come up against criticism in the past for a lack of transparency in his administration and has slowly been working to correct [...]
Maryland and Tennessee are working on new open government initiatives. The Maryland General Assembly started its first open government committee yesterday. The committee will study the state’s legislative process and make recommendations on how to improve the overall transparency of the state legislature. In Tennessee, state lawmakers are looking at a new measure that would [...]
