Open Government Austin

Losing campaign ahead of its time

2006-05-15T09:57:00.000-07:00

Well, we lost. It was ahead of it's time, I suppose (or perhaps just the victim of scurrilous lies by the opposition) but the open government online amendment failed big at the ballot box. Personally I'm stunned at the margin. I mean, how often in a campaign does a judge say negative attacks are "misleading"? In the end it didn't matter - repetition trumped verity. Surprisingly, with strict message discipline, outright fabrications work well as a campaign tactic in the short run, expecially if, as in this case, the folks who buy ink by the barrel are on their side.

Which was the other odd part about this campaign: It forced the local Austin print media, the Austin American Statesman and the Austin Chronicle, to choose sides: Are they insiders and power brokers, in which case they benefit from secrecy? Or are they journalists who benefit from public information? News flash: They're insiders. They'd rather be gatekeepers for the news than let everybody see information themselves online. After all, then why would we read them?

As a result, there was a bizarre, near 100% media blackout on any positive news about the campaign, while the smallest bureaucratic errors by the Save Our Springs Alliance meritied front page headlines questioning their integrity. No one could buy enough media to counter that barrage. (Thanks to Ken Martin and The Good Life for bucking the trend.) For myself, I've never really seen the news pages at the Statesman used so blatantly to promote a political agenda before, even back in the days of Roger Kintzel. It seems a new day has dawned at the local daily. After this, they should make it official and formally merge the news and opinion sections. Why bother any longer with pretense?

Thanks to everybody who helped on the campaign and supported the cause of open government. Now help hold the feet to the fire of those who claimed they're REALLY for open government just not for this amendment - they'll get a chance down the road to show us whether such declarations real, or just opportunistic lip service aimed at thwarting openness.

Sign building party tonight!

2006-05-10T10:32:00.000-07:00

Build Signs! Put them up!

Build signs tonight, Wednesday, beginning at 5pm at our Headquarters! Come by any time after 5 to help up build over 1,000 signs!

We need these signs up by Thursday morning, and you can help make this happen.

Haven't been to our office yet?

We are located at 505 Willow. Click here for directions.

You will have the option of building or delivering signs, or both!

We are almost there. This has been an exciting campaign and with your help we will be victorious on May 13th.

Visit Our Website

Women for Clean Water Press Conference

2006-05-10T10:23:00.000-07:00

Community leaders Shudde Fath, Brigid Shea, and Mary Arnold, among others, will be holding a press conference tomorrow, Thursday, at High Noon at City Hall.

______

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
5/9/06
ATTN: POLITICAL ASSIGNMENTS DESK
PRESS CONFERENCE

Environmental Integrity Is Good For Business
Women for Clean Water
Thursday, May 11, 2006
High Noon, City Hall Plaza

Contact Persons: Abbe Waldman, 736-5802; Susan Bright: sbright1@austin.rr.com

Speakers:
Shudde Fath, Treasurer of Save Barton Creek Association and member of Electric Utility Commission-442-2718
Brigid Shea, former Austin City Council Member and co-founder of the SOS Alliance-698-2025
Mary Arnold, has served on Austin's Planning Commission, the Parks Board, and the Water and Wastewater Commission-350-5847
Marcia Lucas, Owner of El Interior, a long time Austin business
Abbe Waldman, Austin Realtor full time since 1983, longtime community activist-736-5802

Women for Clean Water speak out against Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) move onto the Barton Springs watershed, endorse Props 1 & 2 on the May 13 city ballot.
Shudde Fath and other longtime Austin women activists and business persons are calling for AMD to move off the Barton Springs watershed and urging citizens to vote "Yes" on Props 1 & 2.

Our community values both the environment and the economy. These interests should not be pitted against each other. Businesses move to Austin and do business here because they value clean water, large lots, greenbelt views, low density and deed restrictions which protect their neighborhoods. People stay here because of creeks, clean water, greenbelts, and scenic beauty. Recent reports published in the Austin American Statesman show the opposition to Props 1 & 2 is paid for by the Real Estate Council of Austin, the Home Builders Association and developer attorneys who tell us Clean Water and Open Government are too expensive.

We say the cost to the people of Austin and to our economy of losing Barton Springs and permanently damaging the aquifer would be immeasurable. We say Barton Springs is priceless.

We say the cost to Austin businesses and our economy of losing the watershed which provides sole source drinking water for 50,000 residents would be immeasurable. Without water and green space, there is no economic growth.

Women for Clean Water call on the people of Austin to work together for Smart Growth which directs major employment centers onto the Desired Development Zone, away from environmentally sensitive land. Austin's Smart Growth plan is the product of thirty years of debate, discussion, and far-reaching community consensus that began in the 1970s with the Austin Tomorrow Plan. In the 1990s under Mayor Kirk Watson, the City of Austin adopted Smart Growth as city policy. Citizens then reaffirmed those same principles at the regional level with Envision Central Texas.

We should be working together and could if AMD would act responsibly and move its 850,000 square foot corporate headquarters off the Barton Springs watershed.

Barton Springs is the soul of our city and water is the core of our economic engine.

# # #

Last day to early vote!

2006-05-09T10:13:00.000-07:00

Today, Tuesday, marks the end of early voting.

Get your early voting locations here.

Mobile voting locations are as follows:

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Dan Ruiz Library
1600 Grove Boulevard
10 am - 7 pm

Conley-Guerrero Senior Center
808 Nile Street
2 pm - 5 pm

Rollingwood Municipal Building
403 Nixon Drive
7 am - 7 pm

Bee Cave Elementary
14300 Hamilton Pool
7 am - 7 pm

Crystal Falls Golf Clubhouse
3400 Crystal Falls
7 am - 7 pm

Manor Middle School
10323 Hwy 290 E.
8 am - 12 pm

Response to Cousar and Slusher

2006-05-08T10:41:00.000-07:00

Jim Cousar, an attorney working for the Real Estate Council of Austin (RECA), and former councilmember and current city employee, Daryl Slusher published a guest editorial in the Austin Statesman opposing Prop. 1. Here is a response.

Slusher and Cousar most prominently argue that all e-mail would have to go online.

This is simply not true. The Amendment sets an overall policy goal of placing all public information online “as expeditiously as possible” and “to the greatest extent practical.” This goal is set in the framework of efficiency and the city’s own ongoing efforts to manage its business online. The City would determine what is "practical" based on budget, legal, and technical constraints.

The Amendment then sets out very specific measures. Two of these specific mandates directly address e-mail and read as follows:

“In order to better preserve written electronic communication for public disclosure, the City must establish a system that automatically archives all incoming and outgoing electronic communication that deals with City business to and from [top city officials].” (Section 3(c)(1))

“Public information also includes the following categories that must be produced in response to a public information request: . . . Email or other written electronic communication to or from a public official concerning City business is public information, including communications to or from privately owned email accounts or computers.” (Section 4(E))

This second provision is a restatement of current Texas Public Information Act law. It was included because there is reason to believe that City officials are not retaining or producing this public information when it is requested as required by law.

These two provisions make clear that e-mail is to be preserved, not deleted, and produced when requested. It says nothing about placing email online. Further, the City’s own information officer has agreed that posting email online is “not practical” because of the cost and difficulty of screening email for various exceptions to public disclosure.

Cousar and Slusher also argued that the Open Government amendment would expose “informers” or whistleblowers. The amendment preserves all exceptions to disclosure under state and federal law except for a few, very specific “optional” exceptions that are circumscribed. Criminal investigation files, attorney-client and attorney work product files, personal privacy and personnel files retain all their protections, with the lone exception of making police misconduct records public to the same extent they are public at the Travis County sheriff’s office. Nothing in the amendment requires disclosure of the contents of conversations between anyone – meetings with top level city officials must be identified only by “subject.”

The City is fully capable of managing its internal HR investigations as well as external citizen complaints of possible wrongdoing within the framework of the amendment and without compromising privacy, security, or internal affairs.

Finally, to be clear, the City’s inflated cost estimate for implementing Prop. 1 was thrown out of the ballot language because City representatives admitted that the basis of the estimate (that literally all information had to go online in contradiction with privacy laws) was not reliable and was not required by the amendment. The City’s information officer has confirmed the estimate of $2-3 million for upfront implementation of the mandatory provisions of the amendment that was determined by the Liveable City independent study.

In short, this amendment will cost less, and do more for Austin.

Toll roads and the propositions

2006-05-08T09:56:00.000-07:00

Check out Sal Costello's post about the new KLRU piece on tolls here in Austin. He gives links to where you can watch the video for yourself.

Section 2 A(2) of the Clean Water amendment, helps stop toll roads here in Austin by forbidding the City to support the tolling of roads based on increased growth over Barton Springs.

(2)The City must not support any toll road project, as an expansion, extension or conversion of a roadway located in or leading to the Barton Springs watershed, that relies on projections of toll revenue collections that predict any significant traffic increase from or over the Barton Springs watershed to support financing of all or part of the project.

Even though traffic can get bad out in that part of town, experts agree that cities "cannot build their way out of a traffic problem." Building more roads leads to more growth which leads to more traffic. It also leads to a polluted aquifer. We must find ways to support our existing population while prohibiting damaging increased development.

The Open Government Online amendment, Proposition 1 on your ballot, will make sure that bad deals, such as the toll road projects foisted upon us, are out in time for the public to react to the problem. In part one of the video, you'll notice that the Statesman's reporter talks about how the toll road deal was sprung on Austin with only three months for the public to react before a vote. The OGO will help give Austin more time to actually and effectively participate in our city government.

Monday's mobile voting

2006-05-08T09:32:00.000-07:00

Mobile voting for Monday.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, is the last day for early voting. Please go out and exercise your right to vote!

Here are today's mobile voting locations and times:

These are, of course, in addition to the regular early voting locations.

Monday, May 08, 2006

The Park at Beckett Meadows
7709 Beckett Road
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Summit at Lakeway
1915 Lohman's Crossing Road, Lakeway
3:30 pm - 5:30 pm

Bee Cave Elementary
14300 Hamilton Pool
7 am - 7 pm

Rollingwood Municipal Building
403 Nixon Drive
7 am - 7 pm

Winters Building
701 West 51st Street
8 am - 5 pm

East Rural Community Center
600 West Carrie Manor Street, Manor
8 am - 6 pm

Vietnamese Senior Center
8222 Jamestown Drive, Building C
9:30 am - 10:30 am

Friday's mobile voting

2006-05-05T07:39:00.000-07:00

Here are today's mobile voting locations and times:

These are, of course, in addition to the regular early voting locations.

Friday, May 05, 2006

Northwest Rural Community Center
18649 FM 1431, Suite 6A Jonestown
10 am - 6 pm

Del Valle ISD Administration Building
5301 Ross Road, Del Valle
4 pm - 6 pm

Rollingwood Municipal Building
403 Nixon Drive
7 am - 7 pm

Bee Cave Elementary
14300 Hamilton Pool
7 am - 7 pm

Services for the Deaf
2201 Post Road
8 am - 10 am

Travis County Courthouse
1000 Guadalupe St.
9 am - 5 pm

Huston-Tillotson University
900 Chicon Street
Noon - 2 pm

Mobile Voting for Thursday

2006-05-04T08:45:00.000-07:00

Here are today's mobile voting locations and times:

These are, of course, in addition to the regular early voting locations.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Town Lake Center
721 Barton Springs Road
10 am - 6 pm

Rollingwood Municipal Building
403 Nixon Drive
7 am - 7 pm

Lago Vista ISD Administration Building
8039 Bar K Ranch Road
7 am - 7 pm

Manor High School
12700 Gregg Manor Road
8 am - 7 pm

South Rural Community Cente
3518 South FM 973, Del Valle
9 am - 5 pm

Mobile voting for Wednesday

2006-05-03T10:26:00.000-07:00

Here are today's mobile voting locations and times:

These are, of course, in addition to the regular early voting locations.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Lago Vista City Hall
5803 Thunderbird St
10 am - 6 pm

Montopolis Recreation Center
1200 Montopolis Drive
4 pm - 6 pm

AIDS Services of Austin
7215 Cameron Road
8 am - 10 am

Travis Building
1701 North Congress Avenue
8 am - 6 pm

Bluebonnet Elementary
11316 Farmhaven
8 am - 7 pm

Travis County Courthouse
1000 Guadalupe St.
9 am - 5 pm

St. Edward's University
3001 South Congress Avenue
Noon - 2 pm

Today's mobile voting locations

2006-05-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

Here are today's mobile voting locations and times:

These are, of course, in addition to the regular early voting locations.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Lago Vista City Hall
5803 Thunderbird St7 am - 7 pm

LBJ Building
111 East 17th Street
8 am - 6 pm

Sam Houston Building
201 East 14th Street
8 am - 6 pm

Decker Elementary School
8500 Decker Ln
8 am - 7 pm

Travis County Courthouse
1000 Guadalupe St.
9 am - 5 pm

Watson misrepresents OGO

2006-05-01T15:01:00.000-07:00

The letter was recently sent by Karin Ascot to Kirk Watson

____________________

Dear former Mayor Watson,

I was disturbed to hear your misrepresentations on the robocall I received today with your voice recording. Opponents of the charter amendments (Props 1 and 2) have been using ridiculous tactics to scare people away from voting for open government, and it’s sad to know you have jumped on the bandwagon. I was particularly annoyed at two particular assertions you made.

In the first place, you are surely aware that the Open Government Online amendment would not invade people’s privacy. It would merely give citizens more insight into business at city hall. Yes, it might slow things down a bit and get a little messy, not what the mayor really wants when he’s in the midst of a big deal; but this is our government and our money, and the public process is important, even when inconvenient for elected officials.

Contrary to frequent assertions, the amendment does not require emails to go online instantly. The language reads, “The City must, as expeditiously as possible and to the greatest extent practical, make all public information available online in real time and accessible to the public.” It requires email to be archived. There is no Big Brother provision to bug phone calls of citizens to city hall. There is no requirement for a stenographer to be present when a council member meets with a developer, only a provision that the public is entitled to know that such a meeting occurred. The hysterical and exaggerated claims of your side certainly make a person wonder what there is to hide, as you all continue to distort the truth even in the face of Judge Yelenosky’s ruling.

Even more offensive, however, is your claim about the amendments being drafted in secret by a small group of people. -- Of course this objection is rather disingenuous, considering that SOSA and other non-profits do not, like the government, collect taxes and make laws, so it is really not the same thing at all as when council makes decisions without public input. -- But the real point is that you personally were contacted by SOS well before the petition drive began and were asked for your input; but you never took time to respond. It might be fair for you now to say you don’t support the amendments, but to complain about their being written in secret when you yourself were contacted multiple times is outrageous. For a seasoned attorney and council member like yourself, it should have been a matter of a couple of hours to analyze them and offer an opinion at a time when your comments could have been usefully incorporated. Instead you refused to participate. Your actions certainly throw your motives into question.

Karin Ascot
Austin

Early voting begins today

2006-05-01T12:14:00.000-07:00

Today marks the start for early voting! Get out there and show your support for Props 1 & 2!

Find out early voting locations here:

CleanAustin Early voting locations

We also have an excellent mobile voting program here in Travis County. These are today's early voting locations:

Monday, May 01, 2006

Manor Elementary School
600 E. Parsons
10 am - 7 pm

Lago Vista ISD Administration Building
8039 Bar K Ranch Road
10am - 6 pm

Englewood Estates
2603 Jones Road
4 pm - 6 pm

Heatherwilde Assisted Living
401 South Heatherwilde Boulevard, Pflugerville
4 pm - 6 pm

Summit at Westlake Hills
1034 Liberty Park Drive
8 am - 10 am

Westminster Manor
4100 Jackson Avenue
8 am - 10 am

Stephen F. Austin Building
1700 North Congress Avenue
8 am - 6 pm

Parsons House
1130 Camino La Costa
Noon - 2 pm

Heritage Park Nursing Center
2806 Real Street
Noon - 2 pm

The Good Life endorses Props 1 & 2

2006-04-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

And some local news links.

The Good Life Magazine endorses Props. 1 & 2
"While critics have labeled the lead proponents as special interest groups we view them as public interest groups. They are fighting for our legitimate right to be more informed citizens." 4/27/06

"Why Do They Say 'Open Government' and 'Clean Water' Like They Were Bad Ideas?"
The Good Life Magazine 4/27/06

Cost of Austin's Prop. 1 hotly debated
"The 30-page document states it would take about $2 million to $3 million to get things up and running, not the city's estimate of $36 million."
News 8 Austin 4/26/06

Indy report reveals OGO costs less

2006-04-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

Independent local research group Liveable City has released its non-partisan study of the Open Government Online Amendment, Proposition 1 on the May 13th ballot. The major conclusion is that the cost of the OGO will be less than 1/10 of the City's first cost estimate. The City of Austin has now confirmed Liveable City’s cost estimate, and Clean Austin has confirmed Liveable City’s report as accurately reflecting the priorities set out in the amendment.

From Liveable City:

Liveable City released two studies examining the hotly contested Open Government (Proposition 1) and Clean Water (Proposition 2) Charter Amendments in the upcoming May 13 City of Austin Election. The ballot studies are intended to help Austin voters sort out the critical issues, including arguments by supporters and opponents, and possible impacts of passage of the proposals.

Two separate teams of Board members worked on the ballot studies over the last two months. The studies uncovered the fact that 122 developments had been grandfathered over the aquifer since 1999, and that a more focused open government online plan could cost less than 1/10 of the City's current estimate.

In other good news, start looking for our TV ads, which start today!

CleanAustin volunteer party tonight!

2006-04-27T07:34:00.000-07:00

With free stuff, and that is free as in BEER!

Please come to our Volunteer Party this Thursday night at 7PM. Free Beer and Pizza!! We'll make yard signs and do other campaign tasks that must get done to win this election. Please pass this invitation on to your friends in Austin.
WHAT: Volunteer party with pizza and beer
WHEN: Thursday night - tomorrow - at 7PM
WHERE: Clean Austin campaign headquarters, 505 Willow (downtown near the Convention Center, one block south of Cesar Chavez and one block west of Red River).

Thanks to Black Star Co-op for the beer!

If you can't make the party on Thursday, you can still help! Sign up to volunteer at CleanAustin.org or just call the campaign office at 476-5100.

Understanding "G" Files in Austin

2006-04-25T07:58:00.000-07:00

"G" files is the term used to refer to the secret police misconduct files here in Austin. "G files” include misconduct complaints submitted against Austin police officers by citizens or by other officers and the files of subsequent investigations. Currently, only about 3% to 7% of these files are available to the public in Austin because the file is available for public inspection only in cases in which the officer was found guilty AND was disciplined with 3 or more days of leave. Any less discipline than a 3-day suspension and the whole file is secret.

Why does Austin accept this relatively low level of transparency with respect to its police? Austin voters voted to "opt in” to Chapter 143 of the Civil Service Code along with about 70 other Texas cities, including Houston and San Antonio, in 1949. At the time Austin voters “opted in” to the Civil Service Code, the “G” files were public—it was decades after Austin voters had voted to “opt in” to the Civil Service Code when the police unions successfully lobbied the Texas Legislature to get the Civil Service Code changed to make the “G” files secret. All Chapter 143 cities follow the same guidelines about police "G" files, unless they have used meet and confer contract negotiations to override these civil service rules.

It is important for comparison purposes to note that over 2,000 other Texas law enforcement agencies, including the Travis County Sheriff's Department, are not under Chapter 143 and thus have close to 100% of their "G" files available to the public.

One common point of confusion in Austin is whether or not this issue is governed by state law. Although Austin has opted to be governed by Chapter 143 civil service, a “state law,” another state law allows the City of Austin to override any state law in its "meet and confer" labor contract with the police association. Therefore, in Austin, the City literally chooses which parts of the state civil service law it will agree to follow and which parts it will agree to override with the meet and confer agreement. Simply put, the City of Austin is governed by whichever state laws it chooses in the meet and confer contract.

Greater Transparency in "G" Files

There is a clear public interest in allowing access to "G" files, specifically the ability to:

Understand performance patterns of individual police officers
Understand overall performance patterns of the police force in Austin
Understand the management responses to complaints in general as well as certain types of complaints in detail create protection for complainants who are less likely to suffer retribution when there is a public record that they have filed a complaint against the police

Early voting is May 1-9. Election Day is May 13th.

Hear ACLU grill candidates on Prop 1 and city issues

2006-04-23T17:18:00.000-07:00

The ACLU will host a candidate forum Monday night, 6:30 to 8:30 so our members can query the candidates about their positions on Prop 1, and ask other questions relevant to individual liberty in Austin. Everyone is invited to attend!

Where: Cafe Caffeine, 909 W. Mary
When: 6:30 for mingling, and 7 pm to start the first panel of candidates.

For the ACLU, Prop 1 does something critically important for Austin--it opens records about police misconduct. That's why it is a major priority of ACLU's Central Texas chapter. It takes the entire community working together to counter the powerful forces responsible for the system we have today. We may not get the opportunity to make these positive changes again in our lifetime!

The ACLU worked for years to implement civilian oversight of police, but the system negotiated in secret meetings between the city and the cops is toothless and gagged. Members of the civilian review board cannot even talk to the public about what they learn without facing criminal penalties. That's absurd. Why create civilian oversight if the civilians are prohibited from telling the community what's wrong with the system! This super secret oversight process--with sealed misconduct records that even victims cannot peak into--was designed to fail, and it has failed.

Proposition 1 gives the public a voice in the design of the civilian oversight system by opening the now-secret negotiations to the public and requiring the city to STOP maintaining police misconduct records in sealed files.

With police misconduct information available under a public information act request, victims' families can learn exactly what happened to their sons and daughters, and you can learn why a handful of problem officers continue to divide our police force from the community it serves. Finally, our civilian oversight board will be able to analyze the problems it sees and bring real solutions forward to the Council and the citizens.

The City had the opportunity to do this on its own four years ago. We begged them, and the ACLU stood side by side with many other organizations to protest the secret process and the final, overpriced agreement. But we were told this was all the Austin Police Association would agree to...and the city can't do anything without their agreement.

It's time to end the stranglehold the Police Association has on this community. They work for us! Good behavior on the job is not an option. Its a mandate, and one that can finally be enforced if Proposition 1 passes. Its time for a change. And our city officials have made it very clear that they won't implement this change on their own.

Negative mailer misrepresents Prop 1

2006-04-23T16:35:00.000-07:00

Over the past few days, Austin voters got a big, colorful card in the mail making the same old false claims about Prop 1--in particular, it repeats the false claim that the charter amendment would cost $36 million and requires email to go online. We've debunked this falsehood on numerous occassions, so this time I'll just remind readers that email is among the "categories that must be produced in response to a public information request" (Section 4, first sentence), not on the narrow, specific list of things that must be put online.

Think about it: If email was online, there would be no need for a public information act request. All the language about email in this amendment merely ensures that email will be retained so that if a citizen files a request for Brewster McCracken's emails related to Stratus/Freeport, they will still exist.

Instead, Prop 1 will put the following basic information online: development agreements, tax abatement agreements, big city contracts, policies and procedures that affect the general public, the records of our public meetings (agendas, minutes and transcripts or audio recordings), the city's legal docket, and a calendar of meetings and calls about official business for our city's top officials. That's all good stuff, the kind of thing that will really change the way the city does things--for the better.

Because it does so many good things, Prop 1 is endorsed by the Sierra Club, the SOS Alliance, Tx PIRG, the ACLU, the Gray Panthers, the SEED Coalition, Texans for Public Justice, the Greens, Save Barton Creek Association, Consumers Union...in fact almost all of our good, local advocacy groups back it.

Who opposes it? The Real Estate Council of Austin (RECA), Stratus/Freeport, Temple Inland, and the developer lobby law firms. Mike Blizzard, a paid consultant for Stratus/Freeport, has been the lead voice for the EDUCATE PAC that sent that big card. Does this sound familiar? It's the same special interests lining up once again to keep Austin's citizens from exercising control over Austin's government.

Why a citizen's charter initiative?

2006-04-19T07:58:00.000-07:00

Organizations have sought a more open city government for years to no avail. The primary example of this is the ACLU's fight over police misconduct records. The ACLU and other local organizations participated in months-long negotiations with the police association and the city over police records, finally accepting a very narrow opening that allowed only complainants to see the investigation file on their own complaint. The city and the police association then turned around and eliminated this carefully crafted compromise in favor of additional secrecy—criminal penalties for civilian review board members who reveal anything they learn.

The people of Austin have been told that under no circumstances will the police association agree to any transparency provisions through the current, secret meet and confer process. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, "meet and confer" is the name given to the negotiations between the police union and the city. These negotiations result in the contract that governs many aspects of how APD is run by setting the terms that the officers, as a union, agree to as part of their employment. It includes items far beyond just officer pay, and currently includes many provisions ensuring secrecy.

City officials should be able to simply make transparency a non-negotiable item on the city's side of the table, but they will not do so. Police misconduct records are key to an accountable force and opening up these records is no more than what is already the norm for most departments. As far as the negotiations themselves, open meet and confer negotiations are now required by state law for cities starting a new meet-and-confer program. If we don't bring Austin in line with the rest of Texas, we will be an anachronism that allows for unnecessary secrecy.

In addition to allowing more transparency, opening up the meet and confer process will bring more balance to our budget. The last meet and confer process resulted in the city tying up all future sales and property tax revenue without any public discussion. This will leave only city utility revenue in the future to pay for other city services, such as libraries and parks. The city's own budget summary states that the salaries negotiated during the last (secret) meet and confer "are already out of line in comparison to other major Texas cities – on average our police officers’ salaries are between 18 percent and 33 percent higher than the average salaries of their counterparts in the major Texas cities." Given the budget dollars involved in meet and confer and the impact on all other aspects of Austin’s budget, we desperately need an open meet and confer process.

These are reasonable changes to the police process, but there is no alternative to a ballot initiative to getting them changed in Austin—not because they lack public support but because of a single special interest that exerts too much power over city management and council.

The same holds true for economic development agreements. Companies will not agree to public negotiations if it's left up to them. They have no incentive. Long experience has shown that city staff cannot be counted on to bring the public in early in the process, although they have some discretion. Instead, the City typically announces a done-deal and tries to move it quickly before public debate becomes serious--as they've tried to do with the Guerrero / Green Water treatment deal. State laws protecting third party information (company information) allow for a great deal of secrecy and cannot be overturned by an ordinance or a charter amendment.

Only a clear policy at the city that companies must negotiate in the open to apply for tax breaks can get us a truly transparent process. Because of powerful special interests wanting secret giveaways, this couldn't come to fruition except through a ballot initiative, and couldn't be a permanent part of Austin life unless it was in the charter.

Hearing tonight about surprise Guerrero deal

2006-04-17T07:36:00.000-07:00

The Parks and Recreation Board is meeting tonight (Monday, April 17) at 6:30 p.m. to discuss the City's surprise idea to move place a Green Water Treatment Facility on top of one of a handful of East Austin parks. The move was a surprise to the whole community, as Council has been secretly negotiating the deal in closed session.

This has been another case of "done deal first, public disclosure second." The public is just now finding out about a major project mere weeks before Council votes on the issue. Perhaps if Council had opened up discussions with the community earlier in the process, there wouldn't be such an outcry going on right now. If the Open Government Online amendment (Prop 1) had been in place, the people of Austin might have been a part of the process.

Today's Statesman has an editorial asking "Is a park the right place for water plant?"

Come out and express your views at the meeting tonight:

6:30 PM
One Texas Center
3rd Floor Conference Room
505 Barton Springs Road

Agenda available here.

Tax abatements weren't difference maker in Samsung move

2006-04-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

Do tax incentives really make the difference when attracting corporate jobs? Not in the Samsung deal. New York offered double the incentives Austin did, but they're still moving here. Reported the Statesman:

State and local governments ponied up an estimated $233.4 million in tax abatements and other incentives for the project. The State of New York, which is trying to build up its chip industry, offered more than $500 million in incentives.

Samsung chose Austin because of its existing investment here and because Austin has a large high-tech work force and a network of support companies that New York's proposed site, north of Albany, lacked.

Central Texas has about 15,000 chip industry workers and is home to the main manufacturing center of Applied Materials Inc., the world's leading maker of chip manufacturing equipment. Dell Inc. also is a key Samsung customer.

"If it was just based on actual dollars, we would probably be in New York, no question about it," Cryer said.

Lots of people disagree about whether tax abatements are necessary to recruit and retain businesses. According to this academic literature review (pdf, p. 10), "Many economists have been prompted to question why municipalities continue to offer abatements indiscriminately when they have been shown to be largely ineffective and resource-wasting."

By their own admission, Samsung's decision to build a factory here was primarily based on workforce and client factors, not tax abatements that amount to a pittance spread out over two decades compared to a $4 billion investment.For the most part, though, we cannot actively debate the value of these deals in Austin because they are secret until just before a public vote.

Austinites who'd like to participate more fully in discussions about tax abatements should support Prop 1 on the May 13 ballot. If Samsung would have moved here anyway (the New York option lacked the necessary labor pool and supplier network), why should homeowners and local businesses pay a disproportionate share of the increasing tax burden for our city's growth?

Whatever you think about the deal, Austin at least deserved to have that public discussion before city negotiators foisted Samsung's long-term tax burden onto average citizens.

Some winners and losers under the OGO

2006-04-14T10:35:00.000-07:00

Like any change, there will be some winners and losers under new legislation such as the Open Government Online (OGO) amendment. There are several groups that will benefit from greater openness and transparency here in Austin:

Austin Taxpayers – The amendment will save money in the long term from streamlining the open records process, by giving Austin better development and tax abatement deals, and by exposing waste and inefficiency in city government;
Neighborhoods – The amendment will allow neighborhood groups to be early and effective participants in the development projects that directly affect their property values and their quality of life;
Community groups and individual citizens – Any community group or individual citizen that wishes to become more active in local politics will quickly and easily get the tools and information needed to become active participants in local issues;
Press – Members of the press will get complete and timely access to important issues and will, in many cases, not have to go through the laborious and sometimes expensive process of open records requests to get crucial information. The role of the press will be enhanced because reporters will be able to review complex documents in the timely fashion they need to meet tight deadlines, and the public still needs the independent and balanced assessment reporters can provide;
Council members – Council members need effective access to information about the City more than anyone. Opening up many of the records and information contained in the Open Government Online Amendment will allow Council members to more quickly and efficiently keep tabs on the wide variety of activities that make up City business;
City staff – Much like council members, city staff need effective and quick access to important documents. Under this amendment, policy manuals and other crucial documents will be available online for quick and easy reference;
City Auditor – The City Auditor’s office, which oversees Austin business, will have quick and easy access to important contracts and other documents needed for the effective oversight of city affairs;
Companies doing business with the City – Companies wishing to do business with the City will gain because they can get better feedback on their bids by easily analyzing winning contracts. This will allow them to become more competitive for future contracts by gaining insight into the contracting process;
Police officers – The majority of police officers follow all the rules and do their jobs without any taint of misconduct. Because police misconduct files are hidden, the majority of honest cops get the taint of misconduct every time there is an allegation of misconduct that can’t be cleared up or balanced by information about the actual record of most officers.

Some groups will not, of course, benefit from the Open Government Online Amendment:

Police officers with a history of misconduct – The small minority of officers that have committed some sort of misconduct will lose some of the secrecy that currently surrounds their behavior.
Special interest lobbyists – Any lobbyist or group that depends on keeping their meetings with officials a secret will lose the edge over the public that secrecy brings, but they will no doubt change with the new policies and continue to meet with council members and provide input into the processes that affect them.
Corporations bringing proposals not aligned with community interests – The Open Government Online Amendment makes community groups and neighborhood associations early participants in the development process. Any corporation trying to bring a development that is not aligned with community interests will no longer be able to use secrecy and delayed notices to shield their efforts.

Charter amendment would open police misconduct records

2006-04-13T05:22:00.000-07:00

I first became aware of the City of Austin's decision to close most police misconduct records after the infamous Cedar Avenue Valentines Police Riot in 1995, when more than 80 officers descended on a junior high schoolers' Valentine party and maced or beat up most of the African American kids there. The episode happened in my neighborhood and involved longtime family friends.

When we tried to use the public information act to investigate records of officers involved in that incident, we drew nearly a blank - almost nothing was publicly available. But if the same incident had occurred involving a Travis County Sheriff's Deputy, we learned, all those records would be open.

Since that time, working with ACLU of Texas' Police Accountability Project, I've seen the same situation continue to thwart civil rights groups and families of police brutality victims who can't get information about controversial cases. Under Texas' civil service law the City can choose to close most records about police misconduct, but more than 2,000 other Texas law enforcement agencies operate right now with the same information public.

Some opponents of the Open Government charter amendment have obfuscated how this key provision would work. The proposed change regarding police records is essentially similar to that proposed by the Sunshine Project for Police Accountability in 1998, and unanimously recommended by the Austin charter review commission in 2002. In 2001 then-state Rep. Glen Maxey, now leader of the CleanAustin.org campaign, carried legislation that would have opened some of these records - the bill passed the Texas House but died for lack of time in the Senate. So these are records the community has been seeking to open up for a long time.

Here's a clearcut summary of the provision on police records from CleanAustin.org in their section by section analysis (Word doc):

Under the Texas civil service code, which covers records about misconduct for Austin police officers, two personnel files are described. Cities "must,” maintain a file where public records about discipline are kept, and "may" keep a second file where they can store records that become closed (Local Government Code 143.089 a-g). All civil service cities (about 70) including Austin use the two-file system to close as many files as possible, while the disciplinary files of the other 2,400+ Texas law enforcement agencies are governed by the more generous Texas Public Information Act (Government Code 552.108). By maintaining only the mandatory file under this amendment, APD records will be open to the same extent they are presently open down the street at the Travis County Sheriff's Department and in most other cities.

So the new amendment doesn't propose any radical new revelation of police records -- it would only open records about allegations of police misconduct to the same extent as they're presently public at police departments in Dallas, El Paso, and "down the street at the Travis County Sheriff's Department." It's an elegant and much-needed fix -- a decisive exercise of local control to open critical records to the public.

The Open Government charter amendment would also make negotiating meetings public between the City of Austin and the police officer's union over their "meet and confer" contract. A new law that took effect last year covering most other Texas cities made their labor negotiations public, so this provision just brings Austin into compliance with established practice throughout the rest of Texas.

Most police officers never engage in serious misconduct. But for the few who do, they deserve the same public scrutiny as sheriff's deputies or police in Dallas and El Paso. Transparency, really is all we're talking about. Police administrators would still make all disciplinary decisions, it's just that the public would know a lot more about the outcomes.

Debate Thursday at St. Edwards over Props 1 and 2

2006-04-10T13:12:00.000-07:00

Please mark your calendars and plan to attend!

Public Forum on Prop. 1 and 2

OPEN GOVERNMENT ONLINE AMENDMENT
&

SAVE OUR SPRINGS AMENDMENT

Moderated Debate & Question/Answer Session

This Thursday, April 13, from 6:30-8:30pm, a public forum on this decade’s two most important Austin charter amendments will take place at St. Edward’s University.

SAVE THE DATE

WHEN:

Thursday, April 13 2006, 6:30-8:30pm (doors at 6:00)

WHERE:

St. Edwards Campus: Jones Auditorium in the Ragsdale Center—the debate will be in Room 100, on the west side of the bottom floor (Ragsdale is the long building in the middle of campus).

WHO:

Speaking In Support:
Bill Bunch, Executive Director of Save Our Springs Alliance
Glen Maxey, former State Representative and Clean Austin Campaign Director

Speaking In Opposition:
Gus Garcia, former Mayor
Daryl Slusher, works for Austin Energy and former City Council member

Presenting the most passionate, informed, and open discourse on these crucial issues, Thursday’s forum is designed to thoroughly expose, educate, and involve the public in the “Open Government Online” and “Save Our Springs” debates.

Debate hosted by the Environment Science and Policy program of the School of Behavioral and Social Sciences at St Edwards University.

Free parking for event. Campus Maps at: www.stedwards.edu.

Austin can't afford secrecy

2006-04-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

How much will the Open Government amendment cost? No one knows, though we know for sure the City's cost estimate is vastly overstated and the City conceded in court the amount would not be enough to require a tax increase.

The real question is how much would open government save? Business and governments, including the City of Austin, already are racing to do their work on the Internet because it is so much more efficient.

Just as important, how much would we save by changing the culture of city hall to reduce the influence of special interests? If public scrutiny means the City refrains from approving just a handful of these all-too-common back-room-deal tax giveaways, like the ones to Home Depot and AMD where all the important decisions were made behind closed doors, the amendment would assuredly pay for itself.

The question isn't can we afford open government in Austin. The question is whether Austin can afford continued secrecy surrounding how the City conducts business.

Brewster, you lost, not us

2006-04-06T14:21:00.000-07:00

Brewster McCracken made a sound bite/statement that was nothing more than misinformation aimed at persuading the other council members to follow his lead on quashing Proposition 1 at Monday’s special session to fix the City's illegal ballot language. This incorrect statement has been caught up by several media outlets around town, and so some context and accuracy needs to be brought up in order to stop this misstatement from spreading.

The Chronicle described the events thusly:

Describing the e-mail clause, he [McCracken] virtually blew raspberries at the audience. "That was litigated and you all lost. ... [T]his language has been upheld as being accurate," he said, generating chamber-rattling boos and catcalls of "Liar!" and "Shame!"

This is referring to his, and other council members', insistence that emails will go online. This mistaken interpretation remained in the new ballot language under section (b):

(b) to require that private citizens' emails to public officials be placed on the City website in "real time," including emails or electronic communications between private citizens and public officials in all City departments, and limit the ability of citizens to keep private the details of these communications, unless legal exceptions apply;

The truth about this interpretation and the fact that the amendment does not require emails to go online has been blogged extensively on Open Government Austin, and is available here, here, and here. But I digress; this post is about the court ruling and its interpretation.

McCracken adds error upon error and somehow thinks that the Court ruled that emails must go online. Nothing could be further from the truth—that is why he generated such a harsh reaction that day. He repeatedly referred the audience and the rest of Council to page 10 of the hearing transcript (not the written ruling), where the court discusses the “any” and “all” issue. He took out this quote:

“all private emails to any public official in all city departments, and the last, to all city departments, may very well be correct.”

But the whole paragraph actually reads:

The only instance [using “any” and “all”] I had in mind was with respect to the [first] ballot measure, was all private emails to any public official in all city departments, and the last, to all city departments, may very well be correct. I don’t know that there are any city departments that would be excluded but certainly private citizens emails to any public official because there are exceptions that apply.

The exceptions the judge is referring to in the last sentence are all of the privacy laws that protect private information from being disclosed, online or off. We won on that one – though the ballot language still does not accurately reflect these protections in the amendment.

But Brewster is off on a different tangent. Brewster wants to turn “may very well be correct” into a pronouncement that the amendment requires all email to go online. I don’t know about you, but my dictionary refers to the word “may” as a “contingency or liability; possibility or probability.”

The judge simply did not express an opinion as to whether emails were required to go online.

What was important to his ruling was that the Council had grossly overstepped their bounds by portraying the amendment as somehow overriding all of the privacy protections that the law grants us, and that the amendment preserves. This is a simple matter of the pecking order of city government, which is explained here. We won on that issue. The court just didn't rule on the interpretation of the amendment.

So no, Brewster, we didn’t lose.

Council fails scorecard... so far

2006-04-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

What with the court ruling that they committed illegal electioneering, and their poor attempts to fix it in a special session on Monday (except for Danny Thomas!), I know that the City Council has been busy.

No one has filled out the Open Government Scorecard.

Last week, I sent out the Open Government Scorecard by fax, email, and regular mail to all members of City Council to see how they respond. The Scorecard is an easy, step-by-step, walk through each specific reform asked for by the Open Government Online Amendment. It was designed to put aside some of the Council’s arguments that they support open government but that they do not support this amendment and to get each one to commit to reforming our city government.

The lone official response that I have received so far is from Lee Leffingwell, and he declined to fill out the Scorecard.

Mr. Leffingwell almost immediately sent back a response by email. He actually refused to answer the Open Government Scorecard because he wants to keep his open government ordinances secret. I am not kidding. This was said without one single shred of irony.

Here is the exact language he used, when asked if he would answer which open government reforms laid out in the Open Government Online Amendment he supports:

I AM STILL IN THE DISCUSSION STAGE WITH REGARD TO WRITING THE ORDINANCE, AND SO CAN'T COMMENT ON ANY ASPECT OF YOUR SCORECARD AT THIS TIME.

You can read it for yourself here.

Apparently, it is important to keep discussions on open government a secret. Sounds more than a little funny to me. Secrecy must be a requirement of the job.

He wouldn’t commit to a timeframe for his plan to introduce his set of reforms either, leaving the voters with serious doubts as to whether he is just offering this possibility as yet another way to (ab)use his power as an elected official to try to dissuade the voters. When specifically asked about whether he would commit to opening up the City’s AMANDA system, which he seemed to say at the press conference, he declined to answer directly. He instead used a looser phrasing, saying only that this information “should” be posted online. Too bad he didn’t take the opportunity to address the more practical “how” and “when” rather than giving a bland wish to open up this process. The Open Government Online Amendment, however, does require this system to be open.

Leffingwell also seemed to acknowledge that the City's cost estimate is too high and their interpretation too broad when he stated he referred to the cost "potentially required" by the amendment. Now if he would just take the next step and realize what the OGO actually requires to be placed online and what THAT would cost, we would be approaching a rational debate on the topic. If he would fill it out, the Open Government Scorecard might help clarify things for him.

I went to check the mail this morning to see if anyone else had bothered to respond, but no Scorecards were waiting in the box. I called each Council member’s office to ask if they were planning on responding, but either got voicemail or a staffer saying that they will check on it. I am still holding out some hope that one of them will take a small amount of time to answer the simple questions I asked. But since I said April 3rd for a deadline, this is your update.

Email the council and tell them you want them to answer the scorecard.

Congratulations Danny Thomas

2006-04-03T17:15:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Danny Thomas for being the only member of the Austin City Council willing to say the obvious: The ballot language approved by the council for the two citizen-initiated charter amendments did not meet the "fairness" standard laid out last Thursday by Judge Stephen Yelenosky in his judicial order. (See the Statesman's coverage.) Here's the new language:

Proposition 1:
Shall the City Charter be amended: (a) to provide online access to public information, which for the most part is already available, by creating an online electronic data system for most city communications and documents at taxpayer expense; (b) to require that private citizens' emails to public officials be placed on the city website in "real time," including emails or electronic communications between private citizens and public officials in all city departments, and limit the ability of citizens to keep private the details of these communications, unless legal exceptions apply; (c) to require that the heads of all city departments, all city manager's staff and all City Council members and their staff post online in real time information about meetings and phone calls with private citizens; and (d) to prohibit the city from exercising state law protection for information that could expose the city and taxpayers to greater financial and legal liability and risk?

What do you think of it? I think it's still misleading, though better than before.

Judge Yelenosky criticized the City's original language for containing only negative examples and no postive ones. He said the problem could be solved by eliminating all examples, or by including positive ones. But the council merely edited the existing language, and added no counterbalancing positive statements about the amendments. As several speakers pointed out, that's not complying with the order in good faith.

Council also included language making mistaken claims about email that the judge said "is misleading." All of section (B) in the ballot language is just flat out false. Nothing in the amendment requires emails to go online except where the council determines it's "possible," "practical," not violative of privacy rights, and not exempted by other state or federal laws. The judge said those caveats should be included if putting emails online was discussed, but the council kept much of the old language in there.

Even the first section (A) is technically false - the amendment does not require creation of a system to put all city documents online. It requires certain, specified documents to go online in a specified timeframe, and tells the City in the future to put more records online when the council decides it's "possible," "practical" and doesn't violate anyone's privacy rights. What they're claiming here is much broader than what the amendment really does.

They did take out the City's bogus cost estimate after the judge pointed out in his order the city conceded no tax increase would be necessary. Section (C) is mostly accurate but skewed and incomplete. Section (D) is pure argument, not descriptive of the amendment at all.

Brewster McCracken continued his disingenuous, defiant stance, claiming openly from the dais that the judge approved portions of the ballot language as acceptable when in fact the judge expressly called those sections "misleading"! At least Councilmembers Thomas and Kim had the grace to be more contrite. The rest seemed angry, defiant, not in a mood to more than minimally comply with the order. As CleanAustin.org spokesperson Ann del Llano pointed out, this was the first time in Texas history a court has had to overturn ballot language and order a city council to make it more fair. Never in the history of this state has that happened before.

Bottom line, City Council still wants to play games. They like to make up impractical schemes where putting records online would create problems, then pretend the amendment "requires" them to implement whatever they just made up, no matter how stupid, ignoring what the amendment really says. That may be an effective campaign tactic, but the judge said they shouldn't do it on the ballot.

Even so, this is the language voters will see May 13. Mail ballots must go out soon and it's too late for the language to change again. Even if the judge rules the language is still unfair, the only remedy would be to overturn the election if we lose. So let's don't lose.

Will the City respect a judge's order? We'll know soon

2006-04-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

New ballot language should be approved this morning for the Open Government Online charter amendment after a district judge told the Austin City Council their attempt to mislead the public was improper.

Read the judge's order for yourself (pdf). That's what I'm doing while I'm waiting in City Council chambers for them to get out of executive session.

Judge Stephen Yelenosky last Thursday told the City they must identify the chief feature of the amendment, which is public information - the current ballot langague only lists misleading, negative information without even stating the purpose of the amendment.

Yelenosky also said that the City must not to claim public email must go online, "because significant exceptions apply," and told them they could not claim the amendment would require a tax increase, since the City admitted to the judge that it would not.

The City Council should view this second opportunity to draft ballot language as a chance to redeem themselves - they tried to pull a fast one last time and they got caught. Now if they do the right thing, all would be forgiven. If they continue to try to thwart voters' right to a fair election, though, Austin voters will remember it, I bet, for a long time.

The councilmembers are all filing back in now, so I'll end this and post more when we know more.

Plaintiffs' proposed ballot language

2006-04-03T05:36:00.000-07:00

I figured that all of the Open Government Austin readers out there would like to know the proposed language sent to Council for today's court-ordered rewrite at 10AM at the City Council (Ceasar Chavez and Lavaca):

“Proposition 1-- Shall the City of Austin Charter be amended to place certain public documents on the Internet, to place additional information on the Internet to the greatest extent practical and protective of privacy, to ensure that public records are archived, to open certain new information when requested under the Public Information Act including police misconduct records, and to conduct public meetings to negotiate economic development agreements and the police meet and confer contract?”

Glen Maxey, former state representative and plaintiff in the suit, said that "The city has a chance to make democracy work." We will find out what the council does starting at 10. I'll be blogging it as soon as possible on the City's free WiFi in the Council Chamber.

Statesman Editorials just can't get it right

2006-04-01T08:34:00.000-08:00

Whoever is writing these editorials on open government just can't get it right.

In today's Statesman, in the Asides section, the writer mentions Thursday's decision by District Judge Stephen Yelenosky that the City of Austin's ballot language misrepresented the amendment. In describing the Open Government Online amendment, the writer states that it would:

"force city officials to reveal all conversations, e-mails and phone calls online instantly."

The judge specifically ruled this interpretation misleading.

Pay attention editorial writers. I know that what you write are opinions, but these must be based on facts. Judge Yelenosky specifically ruled that "the use of 'any' and 'all' where exceptions apply" is misleading. It was illegal for the City to frame this amendment as requiring all information to be online when only public information can go up. This means that the amendment protects your privacy rights because only public information is being considered. This is a simple matter of the pecking order of government. This amendment absolutely in no way, shape, or form requires information private by law to go online. Your medical records, library records, other private matters are protected by state and federal law. This is a fact.

It is also a fact that the amendment only has a relatively short list of information that is required to be placed online. Anything else, such as email, is up for Council to decide. This amendment does not require email to and from City officials to go online. If it goes up, it will be because your Council members want it to, not because of the amendment. This is a fact as well.

It is also misleading to say that it requires calendars and phone logs "instantly". The phrase used is real time. Much has been made of this phrase, and we have discussed it here. The end result is, that Council defines it by ordinance. It is not instant and it only applies to calendars, phone logs, and certain development information. It is a goal and a standard for the Council to use, so that they do not delay reporting their activities or developer information untill such time as it is meaningless. Every other item is to be placed online is on a basis that Council is free to decide. This is a fact too.

Everyone welcomes free and open debate about the amendment. That is what we are supposed to have in a democracy. Part of that free and open debate is an ethical opinion page that will use facts to form their opinions and a Council that won't use their position as a bully pulpit.

Wynn misrepresents timeframe

2006-03-31T13:27:00.000-08:00

Mayor Will Wynn, speaking to In Fact Daily, tried to blame the City's illegal wording of the ballot language for the two amendments on short notice:

"It is a big challenge to take an ordinance [ed. note, this is actually an amendment] that one hadn't seen before. We had to (analyze it) in a few days. How do you condense four or five pages into four or five sentences? We want to get it right."

"A few days"? The amendments became public documents before December 1st 2005 (over 3 and 1/2 months ago) when petition signatures started. The City's own cost estimate is dated for January 27, 2006 -- clearly they were reading and analyzing the amendment long before March 9th when they finally set the language. The SOS Amendment was even on the agenda the week before council set the language on March 9th.

Apparently, misrepresenting things to the public is just a habit for the Mayor.

"The city government one"

2006-03-31T12:46:00.000-08:00

Judge Yelenosky half-jokingly said yesterday that the City could just name the two propositions "the one about the springs" and the "the one about open government" in order to meet the legal standard of identifying the issue for the voters.

He might be joking, but I agree.

On Monday, I hope that we can just have very simple language for the voters so that they can identify the two propositions. What is wrong with "the open government one" or -- if even the use of the word "open" is too biased for Council -- "the city government one"? The voters only need to know which one, so why not keep it as simple as possible? The Chronicle thinks that our suggested language paints too prosaic of a picture, and that the city's (now illegal) version only paints death and destruction.

I think that our language was pretty reasonable, but even if, why not we just clear the playing field alltogether and just have a very short, very simple phrase stating which amendment is which.

The actual names of the amendments, Open Government Online and SOS, seem to be the simplest way to do it.

If you think so too, please follow this link to email the entire council and tell them just that.

McCracken says inaccurate ballot language won't change much

2006-03-31T05:22:00.000-08:00

In this morning's Austin American Statesman, we find that City Councilmember Brewster McCracken, rightly dubbed "Brewster the Bully" by environmentalist Robert Singleton, declaring he would press the city council minimally comply with Judge Yelenosky's order.

McCracken said he expects that the new language will look almost identical to the earlier language with some minor tweaking to address the judge's specific concerns, such as removing the cost estimate and some of the examples. He anticipates that other contentious issues, such as the statement that e-mails to any public official will be placed online in real time, will remain in the final wording.

The judge specifically said the language about emails was inaccurate, so I wonder what McCracken's thinking? I also wonder why he thinks he gets to decide this matter for the other six councilmembers, with no public input? The new language will be decided at a hearing Monday at 10 a.m. Contact them before then to ask for accurate, descriptive, ballot language for these two amendments.

City of Austin spanked over misleading ballot language

2006-03-30T15:11:00.000-08:00

SWEEEEEEEEET!

Score one for the good guys.

Judge Stephen Yelenosky this afternnoon declared that the Austin City Council's proposed ballot language regarding the Open Government Online and Clean Water charter amendments was misleading and ordered it changed. The judge told the City to rewrite the language by Monday afternoon.

Maybe voters and the media will now start to ask: Why did the City propose misleading ballot language? What do they have to hide? That question seemed to hang in the air this afternoon while the judge announced his ruling before an elated audience and a stunned city defense team.

Judge Yelenosky declared that the structure of the ballot language was not descriptive but was "tantamount" to an argument. He relied on a prior ruling related to ballot language authorizing the South Texas Nuclear Project nearly 30 years ago in a case where language was ruled legal because it was NOT argumentative.

Yelenosky criticized the City's language for naming examples that were not representative of the amendment and that were exclusively negative -- thank heavens somebody with some authority noticed! He also faulted the City for using the words "any" and "all" in the ballot language when the amendment included substantial caveats where records wouldn't actually go online.

The most satisfying part of the ruling, to me, related to cost: the judge pointed out that the City of Austin conceded during testimony the amendment would NOT compel a tax increase, despite ballot language approved by City Council falsely claiming the amendment would require a tax hike of $.03 on the dollar. The City's wildly overstated cost figures relied on an estimate that Yelenosky said "was not sufficiently certain." The City had claimed the Open Government amendment would cost $36 million in the near term, but the judge's ruling put the lie to that figure.

Kudos to the plaintiffs, including the founder of this blog Jordan Hatcher, and the citizens of Austin who now will get an opportunity to vote on fair ballot language that accurately represents the amendment.

Court update and the new Chronicle

2006-03-30T09:33:00.000-08:00

We got to get started right at 9AM in Judge Yelenosky's court. The hearing is underway as I write this. Buck Wood, election attorney for the plaintiff's started with the testimony of Kathy Mitchell, of the ACLU, and Glen Maxey, former state representative.

The issues for today are whether the language amounts to prohibited electioneering and whether the court has jurisdiction to hear a dispute about the ballot language at this stage of the game.

In other news, the Austin Chronicle is out and has coverage about the amendments and last week's press conference. I noticed one thing I would like to point out.

King's article, Greens vs. Greens, has Ted Siff quoted as saying "part of the reason for the bond election postponement [from May to November] was the introduction of these amendments." On the opposite page, in Beside the Point, Dunbar addresses the same issue and states that

"The latest council spin is that the "open government" amendment pushed the bonds back to November – because the cost is so high, those poor bonds would just have to be re-jiggered. Never mind the fact that the decision to delay the bonds was made before the signatures were dry on the amendment petitions."

Supporters of the Open Government Online amendment met early on with the City of Austin about the impact of the amendments and the City had already decided to delay the bonds. The bond delay is not a result of this amendment, and we believe that when the dust settles that the amendment will cost far less than what the City says and not have any impact on bond money.

Off to court

2006-03-30T05:48:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, I, along with such community leaders as Glen Maxey, Ann del Llano, and Jeff Jack are plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the City of Austin over the ballot language. The suit alleges that the City has wrongly used its power to set the ballot language to electioneer and misrepresent the amendment.

Today, we get our time in court.

The case is on the 9AM docket call, which means we should go sometime this morning. Open Government Austin will be bringing you the latest developments as soon as we know. Luckily, you can get free WiFi in parts of the courthouse.

Petition available here.

Open Government Scorecard

2006-03-29T08:28:00.000-08:00

I have created an Open Government Scorecard that accurately reflects the specific reforms set out in the Open Government Online amendment.

This Scorecard was sent on Monday to all members of the City Council with a request that they send a response back by next Monday, the 3rd.

Several council members, local media pundits, and council candidates have been responding to the Open Government Online Amendment by saying: “I like open government, just not this amendment.” Certain council members have made amorphous promises to make some open government ordinances someday—regardless of what the voters decide in May. They have not, as of yet, committed to either a timetable or to specific open government reforms. They say that they agree with the goals of the amendment, but not its implementation.

So, let's all take a step back from the politics and look at what the amendment really is: The Open Government Online Amendment is a request for a very specific list of reforms on a very specific timetable. It is, in effect, a position statement.

Will the opponents state their position?

I hope that this Scorecard will allow for a debate based on the amendment and its goals and not on erroneous interpretations and will allow the voters to see where the objections truly lie.

Open Government Scorecard
Letter to Lee Leffingwell
Letter to Council

KUT covers lawsuit over misleading ballot language

2006-03-27T13:27:00.000-08:00

Listen to KUT's coverage of the citizen lawsuit to overturn Austin city council's misleading ballot language on two citizen-proposed initiatives - the Open Government Online and Clean Water chater amendments.

Complaints against police won't be destroyed if charter amendment passes

2006-03-26T14:33:00.000-08:00

I just attended a forum sponsored by the Gray Panthers at the AFL-CIO building in Austin where advocates for the Open Government Online charter amendment got to go head to head with two Austin city councilmembers debating the subject for the first time that I've seen. Lee Leffingwell and Betty Dunkerly were there representing city council, while ACLU Central Texas chapter president Kathy Mitchell and Colin Clark of the Save Our Springs Alliance were on the dais representing the Open Government amendment.

I wanted to respond to one misrepresentation of the amendment in particular that I have firsthand knowledge about as director of the ACLU of Texas' Police Accountability Project - the public/private status of police records. As the Texas Observer put it in it's March 24 issue, over the years I've filed "a slew of massive open records requests" with Texas law enforcement agencies, so though I'm not a lawyer, I know this subject pretty well.

Leffingwell rightly told the group that the debate over what police records should be public hinged on an optional, secret personnel file the city is allowed to keep under the state civil service codes - the file is authorized under the Local Government Code Section 143.089(g). Austin voted to opt in to the state civil service code about five decades ago, but the Legislature gave "civil service" cities the option to close police misconduct records in 1989; Austin and about 72 other police departments immediately created these secret files and began keeping all records about police misconduct in them.

Leffingwell mistakenly told the crowd that if Austin PD couldn't keep this secret file, they'd have to destroy information including "complaints" against police officers and other critical data.

That's not so. Proposition 1 is carefully crafted to make public only records that state law--including the Civil Service Code--allows cities make public or confidential at their local discretion. It's simply untrue that records about police misconduct would be destroyed if the charter amendment passes. The public would just get to see more of them.

Texas civil service law only governs records for 73 cities, and then only if municipalities CHOOSE to keep a secret file. They don't have to. More than 2,000 other law enforcement agencies including the Travis County Sheriff, the Dallas Police Department, El Paso PD operate just fine with all that information public. Changing the rule would put the City of Austin at no greater disability than those other cities--and gives citizens key information about police misconduct.

Leffingwell tried to say, confusingly, that the city would have to "negotiate" this reform with the police union and that it was too expensive to "buy" that concession from them. The police union could just decide not to enter a meet and confer contract, he said, and the law would revert back to the state civil service code.

That's also incorrect, in fact, his comments entirely missed the point: After the amendment passes, the city would have no authority to maintain that secret file under ANY circumstances when the current meet and confer agreement expires.. The union could choose not to negotiate, it's true, but that wouldn't change the city's obligation not to maintain the optional secret 089(g) file. Those records would still become public.

Bottom line: These records about police misconduct are public at the vast majority of law enforcement agencies in the state. There's nothing radical about wanting them open, they were open before 1989, and the city will face no grave detriment if and when it happens. The only people who don't benefit are scared bureaucrats who want to conceal police misconduct, and a small number of misbehaving officers.

Most officers never engage in serious misconduct, but when they do the public has a right to know what's happening at the police department in their name. Opening up those records is just one of the great things about the Open Government charter amendment, but in my opinion it's one of the most important.

More people every year requesting records from APD

2006-03-25T11:29:00.000-08:00

One popular aspect of the Open Government Online charter amendment is the section opening up records about police misconduct in Austin to the same extent as the Travis County Sheriff and hundreds of other Texas law enforcement agencies.

More people every year are requesting records from APD. According to data reported to justify their budget, APD responded to nearly 2,400 open records requests in 2005 - a 54% increase in just two years. Most officers never engage in serious misconduct, so this this affects only a few cases in aggregate, but the number of requests is growing and often when families or community groups seek open records from police, it's about an incident that's critically important to them and to the community.

Open Records Requests Submitted
To the Austin Police Department

2003	2004	2005	2006 (est.)
1548	1913	2387	2,500

Source: APD Budget Performance Measures

Austinites sue over misleading ballot language for Open Government, Enviro charter amendments

2006-03-25T09:59:00.000-08:00

A group of Austin voters affiliated with the Clean Austin campaign have sued the City of Austin to change the misleading language placed on the May ballot regarding the Open Government Online and Clean Water charter amendments. Jordan Hatcher, founder of this blog, is one of the plaintiffs along with former state Rep. Glen Maxey, Jeff Jack, Paul Robbins and Ann del Llano..

Read the plaintiff's petition here. Discussion of the Open Government Online amendment begins on page 8.

Austin city attorney David Smith told the American Statesman the law didn't require that the ballot language be accurate, only that a voter must be able to identify the measure. If that's actually the legal standard, it's the only way the City can win because the current ballot language is blatantly misleading. As the petition states, the city's approved ballot language "completely ignores key portions of the Amendment while portraying the Amendment as hostile to specific provisions of the Amendment. These include voter hot button issues of protection of privacy and cost-efficiency of city government."

A hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled Thursday, the Statesman reports.

Visit CleanAustin.org

2006-03-24T17:18:00.000-08:00

Visit the new Clean Austin campaign website supporting the Open Government Online and Clean Water charter amendments on the local May ballot.

RELATED: Check out the new Clean Water Austin blog.

More on the pecking order of city charters

2006-03-24T08:40:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday, I stated "It is ridiculous to claim, as they do, that somehow this amendment requires the City to ignore state and federal law that shields your privacy." I also said that "Any 6th grader can tell you that state government trumps city government, and that the federal government trumps the whole thing."

I would like to expand this with some relevant law, which thankfully is available online.

The Texas Constitution has some very specific language about the role of city ordinances. Article XI Section 5 specifically states:

No charter or any ordinance passed under said charter shall contain any provision inconsistent with the Constitution of the State, or of the general laws enacted by the Legislature of this State.

Thus, it is a matter of Texas Constitutional law not to place material private by state law online.

As to the U.S. Constitution, I refer readers (and council members) to Article VI, which states:

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

This is what is known as the Supremacy Clause, and it establishes federal law as the kingdaddy of them all.

So what we have is the pecking order of government. The OGO Amendment itself recognizes this order, and your right to privacy. It states:

SECTION 2: Privacy Protected. Nothing within this amendment should be interpreted in a manner that would violate an individual’s existing constitutional or common law rights to privacy.

This is why Leffingwell, McCracken, and the other council members are just plain wrong about this idea of private emails going online.

Leffingwell: Put your money where your mouth is.

2006-03-23T14:57:00.000-08:00

Something Leffingwell said yesterday kinda bothered me. Well okay, more than one thing bothered me, but one thing in particular bothered me as the kind of thing that politicians use as an argument but rarely follow through with their position to its logical conclusion.

Lee Leffingwell, Council Member for Place 1, spoke out against the Open Government Online amendment. One of his main criticisms all along has been aimed at the Initiative and Referendum process whereby Austin citizens get to directly participate in City government by having enough registered voters (here, 20,000) sign a petition asking for their issues to go to the ballot. He thinks this process is flawed because the amendments are not subjected to the same process as City Ordinances.

So Council Member Leffingwell, I will expect you to lead the charge on an amendment to the City of Austin Charter striking Article IV out of our charter. And I will expect to see you down at the Texas Legislature fighting Initiative for Texas in their efforts to bring I & R to Texas. And finally, I suppose that you will have to lead a charge to amend the Texas Constitution, Article XI Section 5, which reads "Cities having more than five thousand (5000) inhabitants may, by a majority vote of the qualified voters of said city, at an election held for that purpose, adopt or amend their charters."

That is, if you really mean it about Initiative and Referendum.

Electioneering over OGO on the steps of City Hall

2006-03-22T14:13:00.000-08:00

Instead of working on City business, Councilmembers Leffingwell, Kim, McCracken, and Dunkerley took time out to electioneer against Propositions 1 (OGO) and 2 (SOS) on the very steps of City Hall today. This was basically a repeat performance of the last City Council meeting, where the members repeated their unfounded allegations about the Open Government Online amendment amidst a scattering of support.

Leffingwell, apparently ignoring his own CIO's report on the amendment, stated that the City had already committed to allowing public access to the new AMANDA program and that these costs were not reflected in the cost estimate. He is wrong on both counts. AMANDA is the City's new system for development permitting that would require all communications and documents about developments to become electronic. In point of fact the AMANDA system did not, before this amendment came along, include public access. The City specifically is trying to charge a quarter of a million dollars to provide the public with this access. You and I would not recieve access but for the OGO amendment just being proposed.

All of the council members repeated the erroneous claim that the amendment requires all citizen email with the City to instantaneously go online. This is plain wrong as well. As has been covered here here and here, this argument is just wrong. It is THE reason why the City's cost estimate is so inflated. Leffingwell and his fellow council members “neglected” to mention when talking about the amendment the high costs of tax giveaways. Costs that outweigh this amendment even when you accept the City's inflated figure.

Leffingwell, McCracken and company also would have you believe in an inverted and backwards view of how the law works: Any 6th grader can tell you that state government trumps city government, and that the federal government trumps the whole thing. It is ridiculous to claim, as they do, that somehow this amendment requires the City to ignore state and federal law that shields your privacy. Your right to privacy is specifically protected in the amendment and it does nothing to abrogate your rights to keep private information private or to magically overturn state and federal law. See here for more about how they are wrong about the privacy implications and their interpretation.

OpenGovAustin will be responding to the rest of the hogwash when it hits the press. Stay tuned.

Some newspapers support open government

2006-03-20T11:02:00.000-08:00

The San Jose Mercury News has proposed it own Sunshine Law as part of the recently concluded 2006 Sunshine Week. Unlike some less-than-supportive coverage on the part of the Statesman, the Mercury News used its own attorney to create a comprehensive ordinance opening up the City of San Jose to greater scrutiny. Much like the Open Government Online Amendment, this proposal opens up the City to greater scrutiny from the public. Similar to our amendment the San Jose amendment was born out of the frustration of the community at surprise development deals that state open records law allowed:

The weakness of [California open records law] has been particularly obvious in San Jose lately. Several major initiatives were formulated behind closed doors: a baseball stadium proposal for a downtown neighborhood and a downright loony plan for a soccer stadium with an $80 million public price tag.

For the ballpark, land purchases began before there was any serious public discussion of the location. The community finally revolted at a recent council meeting, and the plan has slowed down.

The soccer proposal eventually was disowned by the council, but only after city staff had shopped it to the professional soccer league. Staff members don't take the initiative to wave around an $80 million offer unless they've had assurance that elected officials support it. Only the public was out of the loop.

Whenever we go to discuss the OGO with neighborhood groups, they voice similar concerns that they have been left out of the loop on development directly affecting their homes and neighborhoods.

Also similar to the OGO, the proposed San Jose ordinance would require taping of closed sessions in order to "discourage the council from conducting inappropriate closed-door discussions." Taping of executive sessions is required under Section 6A of the OGO. The San Jose paper has even gone one step further than the OGO by calling for "an independent task force or commission that includes community representatives" to oversee San Jose's compliance.

That's not a bad idea.

If only the amendments were written in iambic pentameter ...

2006-03-19T07:11:00.000-08:00

This has made the rounds all over town via email, but it's a worthy read. A local literary icon tells why she backs both citizen intiatives amending Austin's city charter:

What I Like About the Clean Water and Open Government Charter Amendments

By Susan Bright
3/12/06

Daryl Slusher's complaint that it was silly to put the phrase "happy hour" in the city charter led me to want to read our founding document, something I've never done, though Max Nofziger once asked me to help rewrite it, which may be an indication that it's outdated. I suggested iambic pentameter or rhyming couplets which caused Max to look at me oddly, so if a committee met to revise the Charter in the 90s, I wasn't invited. Looking for it this morning, I found zip on the city website. [editor's note: You can find the charter from the City website under "Code compliance," then all the way at the bottom "City codes," then to the American Legal Publishing site and there is the charter.]

I live in Austin because of Barton Springs, so it is important to me to be on the right side of work to protect the Springs and our aquifer. The damage to everything I care about done behind closed doors and in response to corporate pressure at every level of government has never been more horrific. The Open Government amendment gives us an historic opportunity to change business as usual, here and now, at city hall by making transparency the law. The Clean Water Amendment will make it the law that the City work relentlessly to save Barton Springs and our aquifer.

Several features of the Clean Water Amendment are brilliant. The City will have to direct development away from the Edwards Aquifer recharge and contributing zones, stop undermining the SOS Ordinance, and stand up to Grandfathering claims. And it gives us tools with which to fight Grandfathering by writing it into law that any bankruptcy on the land (remember Gary Bradley) negates the grandfather claim and the "new" project has to comply with current regulations. (Cool!) It further says no incentives, cash or otherwise can be awarded to a corporation or any of it's subsidiaries or spin-offs (remember how Freeport McMoRan morphed into Stratus) to develop property in Austin. It means we can't pay polluters. And they can't change their name, move someplace else, and get paid either.

I'm not one of those who thinks we need tax paid incentives to reward rogue corporations with changed names and new suspenders for going into the preferred development zone. I think we need tough restrictions that say, go there or be prepared for endless legal battles, fines, and huge project delays. And corporations that took subsidies in the past even though they built in violation to SOS will have to pay those subsidies back. And if there has ever been a change in the building plan for a grandfathered tract, the grandfather claim will be null and void, and the new plan will have to comply with SOS. I like this. Why do we allow some people (read "Corporations") think they're above the law?

I am amused by people who tell us some features of the Clean Water Amendment won't stand up in court. How many times have we stood before the City Council and listened to Council members and City legal employees tell us that? How many times have we been told this or that is a "done deal," was a done deal before public input. The city staff's job is to keep the City out of court, not aggressively fight for our right to clean water. This amendment will change that. Cool.

Toll roads? The city won't be allowed to spend money on toll roads that lead to or cross the aquifer or contributing zone. The same thing goes for infrastructure or utilities and support services that help development on the Barton Springs Aquifer. How anyone who claims to be an environmentalist can object to this is beyond me. Are we going to have a bit of work to do to enforce it?

It's good work. Bring it on. We had to fight long and hard for the SOS Ordinance, against many of the same arguments and corporate entities we're facing now. (See the SOS rebuttal to what they are calling a "Political Insiders PAC" to defeat the Amendments.)

There's been a lot of talk from opponents of these amendments about conflicting levels of laws - state law trumps local law, federal law trumps state and local, but no one is admitting that international contracts can and do trump all of the above. If ever there was time for a huge home rule movement, this is it. Here, now -- in our town, we have the opportunity to stand up for local rule, in the context of protecting something Austin deeply loves, Barton Springs. Dubai backed down in response to a huge popular movement against their take over of American ports. We must all be activists, all the time.

If I could get hold of the City Charter I bet I'd find old passages which by today's law are illegal, or obsolete, which have fallen away -- like the deed restrictions on old properties all over town that say no person of color can engage in the purchase or sale of this property or gain from it in any way except for work as servant or groundskeeper. That language is still on the books, but it's inoperative, thanks to a huge popular movement called the Civil Rights Movement. We must work together. It drive me nuts when environmentalists can't work together because we need everyone's talents, energy, wisdom.

The provisions in these SOS Charter Amendments which won't stand up in court will fall away until higher law changes to reflect populist convictions that government be transparent and that water resources, like our beloved Barton Springs, be preserved. The intent will remain in the charter where it can be cited to strengthen the SOS Ordinance and other environmental initiatives in the future.

But until and unless developers whose projects are in violation of SOS take the City to court, the Amendments will be law. The city can't permit in violation of its Charter. Moratorium anyone?

About transparency in local government:

The back room deals flying around these amendments have given me a wake up call re. the necessity of an Open Government Amendment.

Surprise! The City is opposed to both amendments. There was movement back channel to draft an alternative Clean Water Amendment to go on the ballot at the same time the SOS Amendments appear, to confuse voters, to gut the SOS Amendments. Maybe it won't happen, maybe it will.

Let's see: amendments signed by more than 40,000 people, drafted by SOS in collaboration with several dozen leading environmentalists and attorneys v. amendment drafted by about 5 people back channeled and slipped onto the ballot at the last minute. Which is more democratic? How do you want your City government to work?

The Council approved extremely negative ballot language to describe the Amendments thinking to define them away. The 40 plus thousand people who signed petitions to get these amendments on the ballot deserve better treatment. At public meetings and in back rooms paid developer "lobbyists" are picking apart the wording line by and they're not all disclosing who they work for. I find this incredibly depressing.

Ever wonder how we got CSC, one of the largest military contractors in the world next door to the new City Hall, down the street from the TX Capitol? Did you and I provided cash and tax incentives to lure them here? Was it a done deal? Can you lookup information about how it happened?

Until an in-depth study has been done to prove costs estimates for putting Austin Government on line, the imaginary price tags are just that.

So, in addition to the probability that one could actually find a copy of the City Charter were the Open Government Amendment to pass, what else do I like about it?

In the first place, it guarantees individual privacy at the same time it ensures open, on line government.

"Section 2: Privacy Protected. Nothing within this amendment should be interpreted in a manner that would violate an individual's existing constitutional or common law rights to privacy."

This is an amendment the city will have to settle into. Only Council members, their staff, City Manager, her/his staff, and Heads of Departments are required to post their calendars and work emails. [editor's note: Actually emails must only be archived, not automatically published online.] Everyone will be required to do their city work on the job, in the open, and not in private. What a concept.

I can't find where it says police investigations and secret security work set about by first responders will be on line for terrorists to read, or that crime tips will have to be posted in real time, presumably giving violent offenders on route to a crime of passion the opportunity to log on to the city website to see if anyone is watching them. I have to agree (respectfully) with the SOS answer to Daryl Slusher's piece that some of those claims are "bizarre." You can read the SOS rebuttal for yourself and the charter amendments here.

Susan Bright, poet and publisher
Plain View Press

Deconstructing KXAN...

2006-03-18T18:03:00.000-08:00

Jim Swift, over at KXAN, recently did a piece on open government. As his story had a few inaccuracies and some misleading statements, I would like to take the time to set the record straight on a few things.

First, the meat of the problem.

Mr. Chapman, who Mr. Swift interviews, pulls out as an example crime information used by gun dealers in Los Angeles to promote guns in high crime areas. This was taken by Swift to be an example of openness "jeopard[izing] the safety and privacy of citizens."

I'm sorry but I don't see the connection.

Owning a gun is legal. Marketing guns to customers is legal. Neither one has anything to do with privacy of citizens. Could crime information be the privacy invasion Swift or Chapman was thinking of? I don't see how. The rights of society to know the when and where of crimes outweighs the rights of suspected criminals. This is a decision we as Americans made long ago and the OGO does nothing to change the status of crime info as an open record. To put this information online is, in fact, a decision that the City of Austin made long ago as well. That is why you already can get crime information online here in Austin. But I couldn't get the City's "Crime Viewer" software to work, and the crimes sorted by neighborhood page shows that crime apparently stopped in Austin in 2003. Only the text files available online show up-to-date information about crimes. Crime information, I note, that does nothing to even remotely invade privacy.

How about security? This blog isn't about gun rights and laws, but it is a hard stretch for me to tie the OGO Amendment to the debate about gun ownership. We shouldn't hide the community from knowing about the crimes that happen sometimes in their own backyard, and to say that the OGO somehow harms the safety of the citizens of Austin is downright misleading.

Next, I need to clarify an inaccuracy in the report. The local organization that fights for your cyber-liberties is called EFF-Austin, and I am on the Board of Directors. EFF-Austin has a rather unique history. As it states on our website, we were originally intended to be one of the first chapters of another organization, the Electronic Frontier Foundation or EFF. However, EFF decided long ago not to have chapters and we continued to exist as a separate entity with the name “EFF-Austin”. We were, in fact, formed out of the very first legal case that the EFF had which involved a dispute between Steve Jackson, one of our founders, and the Secret Service.

Thus Gary Chapman is on the Board of Advisors of EFF-Austin, not the EFF.

I would also like to take this opportunity to explain EFF-Austin's position on the Open Government Online Amendment. EFF-Austin has officially endorsed the OGO Amendment. In fact, I was present and contributed to the drafting of the amendment and currently work on the campaign to get the amendment passed. Chapman is, of course, on our Board of Advisors, but does not officially represent EFF-Austin. EFF-Austin fully supports the Open Government Online Amendment and supports an open and accurate debate about it.

Open government costs less

2006-03-17T08:48:00.000-08:00

Open, transparent government always costs less than closed-door, insider dealmaking. The recent history of Austin is littered with examples of wasteful deals done before the public was informed that a proposal was even under consideration.

Just one example: the $100 million cash check cut by the City of Austin to the LCRA for a 50 year water deal. Hundreds millions more in payments are contemplated over the coming decades. Ken Martin of Good Life magazine exposed how the city kept this deal secret for many months while city and LCRA officials negotiated behind closed doors. Had the Open Government amendment been in place city hall observers would have known this deal was in the works. With public and media scrutiny, the City would have learned before the deal was cut that it had better, cheaper options for securing the city's water supply.

Sen. Cornyn explains why openness is bi-partisan

2006-03-16T08:37:00.000-08:00

In an interview in today's Statesman, Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) explained why open government is a bi-partisan issue and why more conservatives should care about transparency. Cornyn is working with Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy on the Senate's version of the OPEN Government Act discussed by Rep. Smith yesterday.

Cornyn explained that though “they don't agree on a lot of other things,” the two Senators are “on the same page when it comes to open government.” Cornyn also had this to say about why conservatives should care about this issue:

I've always been amazed by the extent to which conservatives haven't recognized the inherently conservative argument in favor of open government. If the people are going to be in charge, then the people need to know what's going on and hold their elected officials accountable. To me, that's the ultimate conservative argument in favor of open government – also, the ultimate argument in favor of democracy.

If some of the informal conversations that I've been having are any indication, Austin's Open Government Online Amendment is something that also cuts across party lines. Nobody wants wasteful insider deals when it comes to how their tax dollars are spent, and this is just the kind of reform that will help prevent wasteful spending.

More on how the City of Austin exaggerated its Open Government Online cost estimate

2006-03-16T08:07:00.000-08:00

I've written earlier how the city legal department's grandiose assumptions about the scope of the Open Government Online amendment caused the City of Austin's IT department to overstate its cost estimate. Then a city staffer revealed on his private blog how the choice of software for the job might save millions in licensing fees from the City's estimate, even with their cadillac assumptions. Now cleanwater-cleangovernment.org has posted a document pointing our additional places where the City's cost estimate is overstated. Here's the complete text:

Why the City of Austin Cost Estimate for the Proposed Open Government Online Charter Amendment is Inflated

Fearing public scrutiny of excessive lobby influence, Austin city officials have issued an estimate of $36 million for implementing the Austin Open Government Online charter amendment. The city's figure dramatically overstates the real costs. The City’s estimate has little to do with how the amendment would actually be implemented. Instead, the city merely multiplied out current costs and assumed the most cumbersome possible methods of implementation in order to come up with the highest cost possible.

In reality, the shift to a paperless system and dramatic economies of scale would mean the costs will likely be much lower than the city has stated. All over the globe companies are investing in paperless systems to SAVE money – only in Austin city government, we’re asked to believe, are such savings impossible to achieve. Here are the main reasons the City’s costs are overstated:

* The City's estimate assumes City business will still largely be done by paper, and thus a large part of the cost estimate consists of hiring a bunch of people to scan and organize documents. This is absurd – it’s the technological equivalent of estimating costs for photocopying by calculating how much it would cost for monks to transcribe every document by hand. The shift to paperless information systems is already in process because it saves large sums of money.

* The City’s estimate incorporates large expenditures to create functionality not required in the amendment – for example, staff and systems for vetting and placing online email correspondence for council members, city managers and department heads in “real time.” While that would be expensive, it’s simply not required by the amendment.

* The City admits its estimate completely excludes expected savings from more efficient operations and eliminating the need for the staff and copying costs required for responding to public information requests.

* The City calculates $7 million in costs for its EDIMS document management system by taking costs for scanning technology and software licenses it currently uses, then assuming virtually every city computer would require a copy. Current licensing arrangements require every computer to have a separate license, but other web-browser-based systems would allow many City employees to access the system without each desktop computer having a separate license. Rather than estimate costs based on these cheaper systems, the City assumed it would only use the technology it currently employs, generating this astronomical figure.

* The City admits that its staffing figures – estimated at $6 million per year, recurring – are the “softest” figures in the estimate. Staffing costs are inflated because of false, highly politicized assumptions that govern what that IT department was asked to cost out. Thus, even though the amendment does not require real-time publishing of email online (it leaves all such decisions to the city council to decide when they implement the charter amendment through ordinances), the cost estimate includes hiring many new staff to vet hundreds of thousands of email each month to put online in real time. Since the city’s estimate takes into account no possible savings, it ignores the possibility that changing protocols to use paperless systems would decrease, not increase, staffing needs, e.g., if the city had to respond to fewer open records requests.

* The city misreads the amendment to require immediate transition to online disclosure of all public information. This leads to millions in consulting costs for immediate implementation. The truth is that only a few areas of city business must be posted online within one year of passage; the remainder must be done as “expeditiously as possible” and "to the greatest extent practical." This “practical” basis means implementing public disclosure of city information on the internet as soon as it becomes possible, on a timeline that makes sense, in a practical manner that would SAVE taxpayer money, not cost them more.

* The City estimates it will need more than 1,500 new desktop computers to implement the system, but most of these are replacements they’d have to purchase anyway. Plus, if the city used a browser-based document management system instead of the specialty software it currently uses, most of those hardware purchases would be unnecessary.

* The City estimates more than $10 million would be required in consultants’ fees, but its estimate contains almost no detail about what those consultants would do or how the number was arrived at. While some consulting costs might be necessary, this number appears to have been plucked out of thin air.

* The City estimates roughly $1 million to give the public access to information they already intended to give to developers, city vendors and candidates for tax giveaways. This is likely dramatically overstated since they already planned to give people outside city government access to most of this information. Giving the public direct and timely access is only a minor change to the city’s system. With greater public scrutiny citizens can help eliminate wasteful spending and needless tax giveaways.

Austin isn't alone

2006-03-15T10:55:00.000-08:00

Open government, open records, and gaining access is not just a problem here in Austin. The federal government is having problems with access as well.

Two of our Texas legislators are working to improve access at the federal level. U.S. Representative Lamar Smith and Senator John Cornyn are sponsoring the Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National Government Act of 2005, or the OPEN Government Act. This act will increase the effectiveness of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to get information out of the federal government. In today's Statesman, Rep. Smith explained that FOIA “performs a vital check on the federal government ... [and] protects our open system of government and ensures that the government responds to the American people.” Rep. Smith and Sen. Cornyn designed the OPEN Government Act to “give the public more access to information and more insight into the workings of government.”

Sounds to me if you just substitute “Open Government Online Amendment” for FOIA that the two pieces of legislation have the exact same rationale.

Today's Statesman shows why we need the OGO

2006-03-15T10:49:00.000-08:00

This editorial in today's Statesman reads like a laundry list of why we need open government and explains why there has been such a negative reaction on the part of the City to this amendment. Among the list are the need for development information to be easily accessible, the need to know about civil suit settlements, the need to know about Police misconduct, and the need to prevent backroom development deals. All things that the Open Government Online Amendment will require the City to disclose.

The editorial also shows why the City doesn't like it. As the author put it, top City officials are falling prey to the urge to “hold secrets, hide documents and keep voters and taxpayers in the dark.” This helps to explain why the Initiative and Referendum process is the only way this kind of clean government can happen. Only outsiders, with no stake in keeping the secrets, can get this sort of reform out for a vote. The City Councilmembers and other top officials such as the City Manager, with a direct incentive to keep the public outside of the system would never come up with this kind of reform on their own. As a result, concerned citizens organized and pushed for reform by asking (and receiving) the signatures of over 20,000 registered Austin voters to give the people of Austin the chance to say how their government should be run.

Using open source and free software...

2006-03-14T08:04:00.000-08:00

Scott Brown, City employee and open source / free software advocate, has just posted this comprehensive plan on how the City can implement the Open Government Online amendment by using or modifying existing open source software packages. For those readers unfamiliar with the term, "open source / free software" describes a type of software that allows anyone to change it (not something normally allowed) for free. Yes, that means in this case both free as in beer and free as in freedom.

Open source software was an inspiration for parts of this amendment. By allowing anyone to see how the software works, and to change mistakes or add suggestions, the open source process creates better, more flexible software. The OGO amendment aims to do the exact same thing. By allowing all Austinites to have access, we will have a better, more flexible City government.

Austin's Open Government Online Amendment Analyzed

2006-03-12T12:38:00.000-08:00

"What's really in Austin's Open Government Online charter amendment? Is it really so detailed and incomprehensible? See for yourself.

"Jordan Hatcher of the Electronic Frontier Foundation-Austin and Kathy Mitchell, president of the Central Texas chapter of the ACLU, have produced this section-by-section analysis of the proposed Austin charter amendment and what it does. Here's the document (rtf)."

From ACLU of Texas

On privacy and practicality: Must emails go online?

2006-03-12T10:18:00.000-08:00

SECTION 3: Open Government Online. The City must, as expeditiously as possible and to the greatest extent practical, make all public information available online in real time and accessible to the public.

A commenter points out the crux of the confusion about Austin's Open Government Online charter amendment, and it's good to get the issue out on the table, because it's exactly the City's misleading argument: Many are pretending that the sentence above must be interpreted to say the City has no choice but to put every conceivable scrap of information in city government available online immediately, including citizen emails to city council.

At that point, of course, the sky would fall, Austin would have no choice but to raise taxes, litigation would bankrupt the city, blah, blah, etc. ... anyone who was around during the SOS campaign in 1992 or the developer-environmental feud since then has heard all the arguments before. But is it true that sentence leaves the City no discretion?

Our commenter describes exactly how city legal staff got to the conclusion that email must go online in real time. Plucking liberally from different sections of the charter amendment - while ignoring the one, specific section about email - the anonymous commenter finds:

SECTION 3: Open Government Online. The City must, as expeditiously as possible and to the greatest extent practical, make all public information available online in real time and accessible to the public.

then "public information" is defined:

SECTION 4: Public Information.
The term “public information” means information that is required to be produced under Texas Government Code § 552.021. Public information also includes the following categories that must be produced in response to a public information request:
...
(E)EMAILS RELATED TO CITY BUSINESS. Email or other written electronic communication to or from a public official concerning City business is public information, including communications to or from privately owned email accounts or computers.

Thus, says our critic, "This clearly requires e-mails to or from a city official to be posted on-line in real time."

But does it?

Let's review. First, the writer ignores the specific section on email in the charter amendment; for the record it only requires additional archiving. Taken together, the section defining email as public information and the section requiring it to be archived ensure that no one deletes their email--the purpose of that language. But to the point, if the amendment passed would the sentence quoted above require publishing email online?

Under current open records law, emails to and from city officials about city business are public information already subject to personal privacy restrictions and various public information act exceptions. I've probably looked at thousands of emails about government business over the years, certainly I can say hundreds without thinking twice, in response to public information act requests to various agencies. So whether emails are public information isn't anything this amendment can change: it's already true. The council could choose to post them online right now if they wanted, but because it's technically impossible (or at least $36 million-type expensive) and also impractical, and potentially privacy invasive, and for a variety of other reasons, they choose not to do it.

So what would be different? The charter amendment REQUIRES council to put certain information either online or in the case of email, to be archived, then it tells city council to put other public information online to the greatest extent "possible" and "practical," and where it wouldn't violate personal privacy. But council gets to decide how to define possible and practical, just like state law gets to define whether emails are public information and the courts have defined personal privacy.

The Open Government Online charter amendment tells the city to presume information should be online if it's possible and practical to do so and if it doesn't violate anyone's privacy. Practical, meaning cost-effective, practical meaning it doesn't violate anyone's rights or give unfair advantages, practical meaning it's reasonable from a management perspective. Practical gives the city council all the leeway it needs to decide that certain public information needn't be online. Practical lets them decide to publish information in two weeks instead of "real" time when there's procedural or structural reasons to do it that way. And the amendment specifically tells the City to protect people's privacy and never to construe the amendment in a way that doesn't.

To concoct impractical, privacy-invading scenarios then claim they're required ignores the intent and plain language of the charter amendment. There will be a lot of public information besides email the council will decide is impractical to post, in real time or otherwise, and the amendment gives them complete discretion to make that judgement.

They're putting a pricetag on a decision they haven't made yet, assuming the grandest, most expensive possible vision for what could be a much smaller, less privacy-invasive project if they approached it with the seriousness that would be required after passage.

The whole line of argument is a distraction, a temporary way to avoid talking about the things in the amendment the Mayor and Brewster McCracken are really unhappy about - like making more information public about lobbyist influence and tax giveaways, or information about police misconduct at APD that's already public at the Travis County Sheriff and more than 2,000 other Texas law enforcement agencies. And yes, their meetings with lobbyists.

For most city information, though, with the exception of a few, specifically mandated items, the city council will still control exactly what goes online. Yes there are several things in the amendment specifically required to be published online or archived, and some of those will cost money. But they're pretty specific, in most cases making public information the city already maintains for insider use, anyway. Email would fall into the category of public information the city must post only if it's "possible" and "practical" to do so. Because this is only a charter amendment to be implemented through city council-approved ordinances over which they'll excercise complete control, the city council will get to define those terms, what's practical and impractical.

In theory they could choose to put email online in real time - just as they could choose to do so now if they wanted - if they decided it were "possible" and "practical," but in reality I doubt they ever would. And I doubt from their recent rhetoric that any of them think $36 million would be practical, either. This whole public debate has devolved into silliness.

There are some legitimate critiques of the things that ARE in the Open Government Online amendment - for example, the Mayor thinks that if the public knew the details of city tax giveaways it would reduce his ability to cut back room deals. That may well be true. But the issue is getting drowned out by the council's and opponents' opportunistically broad claims about the amendment's scope.

If we're going to vote on the amendment, we should debate what's actually in it.

John Kelso had better be choking

2006-03-12T08:56:00.000-08:00

The following was sent in response to the Austin Statesman's humor columnist John Kelso, who recycles false allegations about the Open Government Online charter amendment. Here's the note I wrote to Kelso, cc'd to Statesman editor Rich Oppel, on behalf of ACLU of Texas:

Mr. Kelso:

If you're going to do satire about the Open Government Online charter amendment, that's fine and I say have fun. But when you tell your readers "seriously" then state something completely false, that's a smear job. Specifically:

"Seriously, one of the ridiculous features of the amendment that would put ALL of the city's public information online is that you'd be able to call up what your City Council members had to say during happy hour — as they said it.
"I'm choking if I'm joking."

That's just wrong. If councilmembers had a meeting at happy hour (and a meeting is different from a casual conversation, which doesn't have to be recorded), under the amendment they would only have to disclose (later, when they get back to their office) that they'd had a meeting and who they met with. What you've written is patently false and deserves a correction . For you to claim such conversations would be public is TRULY a joke. Choke away. Indeed, your whole description of the amendment was flawed. Like the amendment's opponents on council, your interpretation plucks out one word, "all," without including any of the caveats in the same sentence, like saying the city should only do so when "possible," and to the extent "practical."

It's funny to me that, as a humorist, you don't see the real irony here: If your doctor or accountant was handling your business with a drink in their hand, you'd have a field day with it, and most people would think they should know if that's the case. But you're actually DEFENDING city councilmembers' right to secretly handle city business while inebriated. Now that's funny. When lobbyists who bill by the hour go home from their happy hour meetings with councilmembers, they record the meeting in a lobby log and report it to their clients who pay the bills. For councilmembers, taxpayers foot the bill. It's not asking too much to require that if they're going to do city business tucked away somewhere in a bar instead of city hall, that they disclose it just like the lobbyist across the table from them does to their employer.

I can assure you that if the amendment contained any of the privacy-invading aspects that you and the City Council's misleading ballot language claim it does, the ACLU of Texas and the ACLU Central Texas chapter wouldn't be supporting it. But the negative spin you're promoting is false. The amendment simply doesn't require anyone to put email online or record conversations in bars. These are smear attacks, not factual ones. The plain language just does not support the interpretations given - the amendment has been misrepresented by its opponents and by your newspaper.

Though I know any appeal to reason may be lost here, I'd also ask you and your paper to remember that this is just a charter amendment. The city council would get complete control of how to INTERPRET what's "possible" and "practical," so there's really no danger they'll interpret it to require what you're ridiculously, but "seriously" claiming.

I'll be looking for that correction. Or news of your recent asphyxiation.

Sincerely,
Scott Henson
ACLU of Texas Police Accountability Project

When you assume ...

2006-03-11T16:07:00.000-08:00

False assumptions lead to false estimates.

I wrote earlier about how the city's assumption that the Open Government Online amendment required them to put constituent email online in real time caused them to overstate their cost estimate. (The charter amendment itself actually only requires that they archive it for a longer period of time - an expense, but not on the scale the city describes.)

To assume that the city's incoming email would have to go online in real time would cost a lot of money, but the amendment doesn't require that. When you make that assumption, though, there's a lot of extra, expensive stuff you get to build into your cost estimate. So how much would we save by not doing it? Here's Peter Collins (from the closed-caption transcript of the city council meeting on the city's website) on what costs he assigned in his $36 million cost estimate to that phantom expense (sorry about the caps, that's how it is on their system):

I WOULD HAVE TO HAVE A CONTENT MANAGEMENT TEAM THAT WOULD SOMEHOW MANAGE ALL THE E-MAIL. AND, FOR EXAMPLE, JUST FOR COUNCIL, THE MAYOR'S OFFICE, COUNCILMEMBERS, MAYOR PRO TEM AND CITY MANAGEMENT DOWN TO THE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR LEVEL, JUST TO THROW A LITTLE VOLUME OUT, JUST EXTERNAL E-MAIL AND INCOMING E-MAIL IS ABOUT 100,000 A MONTH. THAT DOESN'T COUNT INTERNAL E-MAIL GOING BACK AND FORTH MAYBE TO THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT OR MAYBE TO HUMAN RESOURCES, SO THAT NUMBER COULD GET A LOT HIGHER.

AS FAR AS YOUR TELEPHONE LOGS, IT'S PROBABLY ABOUT 26 CALLS A MONTH ALONE THAT WOULD HAVE TO BE LOGGED AND NOTED. BUT AS FAR AS WITH THE REALTIME, THE OTHER APPLICATIONS, WE ACTUALLY HAVE, OUR COUNTER SYSTEM IS REALTIME. WHEN WE DO CERTAIN TASKS IN THAT, IT IS AVAILABLE FOR OTHER FOLKS TO SEE. BUT AGAIN, IT ALL DEPENDS ON OUR NETWORK, THE BANDWIDTH, HOW WELL OUR FIRE WALLS ARE WORKING IN SOME CASES, THE ROUTERS.

IT'S A COMPLETE PACKAGE TO PROVIDE REALTIME. THE QUOTE HERE OR THE ESTIMATE -- AND IT IS AN ESTIMATE. WITHIN THAT ESTIMATE, WHAT DRIVES COST TREMENDOUSLY IS REALTIME. YOU PAY A PRICE FOR REALTIME. IT'S A PREMIUM. BUT ALSO IN THIS THAT THERE IS -- WE UNDERSTAND THAT THERE IS NO WAY TODAY THAT I COULD PROVIDE AN APPLICATION THAT CAN READ AN E-MAIL AND MAKE THAT JUDGMENT CALL THAT I'M NOT GOING TO VIOLATE ANYBODY'S PRIVACY. SO THAT'S THERE'S WHY THERE'S ALSO A STAFF FIGURE IN THE ESTIMATE TO FIGURE OUT WHO IS GOING TO DO THAT WORK TO START FILTERING CONTENT BEFORE OR SOMEHOW IS IN REALTIME GET TO THE WEB TO WHERE SOMEBODY CAN ACCESS IT. SO IT'S A VERY CHALLENGING PART TO DO. AND THE BIGGEST MISSING FACTOR FOR US IS THERE'S NO PROGRAM -- NO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS GOING TO COMPREHEND THAT.

So if you assume that sort of elaborate system is required, then yeah that can get really expensive. But if you assume all that's not necessary, if you assume all that's required is that email is archived (there's a whole section specifically spelling out requirements for electronic communications), how much would that reduce the $36 million estimate? My guess is quite a lot, but you can't tell how much from the city's cost figures (pdf).

So that's how spurious arguments by lawyers become spurious budget estimates by IT experts - the lawyers interpret the language in an inaccurate, politicized way, then the IT guy costs the estimates based on the assumptions he's given. At the end of the day, though, the number developed is more of a political figure than a business-like estimate. It's not that implenting the amendment wouldn't require any front end investment, but the city's cost estimate overstates the amount by a lot.

The city also misreads the amendment to require immediate transition to online disclosure of all public information. This leads to millions in short-term consulting costs for immediate implementation. A less sweeping, aggressive interpretation, though, might note that only a few areas of city business must be posted online within one year of passage; the remainder must be done as “expeditiously as possible” and "to the greatest extent practical." This “practical” basis means implementing public disclosure of city information on the internet on a timeline that makes sense, in a practical, cost-effient manner, not based on impractical, over-the-top extremist interpretations.

Don't forget that this proposal is a charter amendment. After it's approved by voters, the city council gets to pass ordinances that interpret how narrowly or broadly these passages will apply. At that time we can assume the most vocal critics on city council then will have their proper chance to decide which records should or sometimes shouldn't go online - e.g., when they think it wouldn't be possible or practical. Some on the Austin city council feel this amendment means proponents don't trust them, but in this and many cases, decisions about what records to put online will, at the end of the day, be entirely in council's hands.

Real Time

2006-03-11T06:38:00.000-08:00

The phrase "real time" in the Open Open Government Online charter amendment is only used in two specific contexts - publishing calendars and phone logs for top officials and for filings by certain developers that are already electronic when submitted. All that means is that the city must post that particular information online as soon as they have it. They couldn't keep two official calendars, for example, and put the information online later.

Otherwise, "real time" in the amendment represents a goal of immediacy, but never a requirement. City legal's expansive interpretation comes from a line in the opening section of the charter amendment that lays out its intent. The complete sentence reads: "The City must, as expeditiously as possible and to the greatest extent practical, make all public information available online in real time and accessible to the public." The qualifiers as to what's "possible" and "practical" give council an enormous amount of wiggle room to not have to implement real time components when it's not possible or not practical.

Remember, this is a charter amendment - the city implements the actual policies later through ordinance and can use all the leeway and discretion implied there. It's becoming a hobby for our opponents to make up some outlandish scenario where publishing information would cause a problem them claim the amendment "requires" it to go online. But if a suggestion for something to go online doesn't seem "practical" or "possible," the city has all the authority it needs to make that judgement.

City's bogus cost estimate stems from bogus assumptions

2006-03-10T05:40:00.000-08:00

Lies are like threads in a cheap sweater. You pull one string and the whole thing can unravel.

The City of Austin's ridiculous claim that the Open Government Online Amendment would cause citizen email to publish online makes better sense of their assertion that it will cost some ridiculously high amount to implement - $36 million, they estimated. But estimates are based on assumptions. So when you cost out staff and systems for vetting every single email to council and city department heads to put online in "real time" - something the amendment in NO way requires them to do - I'm sure you do get a high number.

But it's based on a lie.

City's claim that emails go on line ridiculous, fiction

2006-03-09T20:44:00.000-08:00

OH. MY. GOD.

The Austin City Council must literally think nobody's watching them. After hearing the language they placed on the ballot to describe the Open Government Online charter amendment - hell, I might vote against it if any of it were true.

Most angering was the absurd and patently false claim that under the amendment all the public's email--including individual communications to health clinics or police--must be put online in real time. As though anybody wants to look at that many more ads for Valium and Rolex on somebody else's email in real time!!

That's absurd. The amendment only requires that email be archived. That's it. Records retention. The amendment explicitly requires the city to abide by laws related to personal privacy while it generally increases the availability of information online. It does not require posting of emails on line. Here's the entire section of the charter amendment regarding email correspondence:

(C)OPEN ACCESS TO CITY ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS

(1)In order to better preserve written electronic communication for public disclosure, the City must establish a system that automatically archives all incoming and outgoing electronic communication that deals with City business to and from the following people in their official capacity: (a) City Councilmembers and their staff; (b) City Manager and his or her staff; (c) Assistant City Managers and their staff; and (d) all department heads.

(2)The above people are prohibited from discussing City business via any form of written electronic communication, such as a private email account, that is outside of the City’s automatic archiving system.

That's the whole section. Would somebody tell me where that says email goes online?

The City is making ridiculous interpretations of language elsewhere that describes the larger intent of the amendment--to make Austin a leader in open, transparent and online government--but ignoring the specific language on the topic, not to mention state law that makes correspondence about allegations of crime to the police, for example, or personal health information confidential by law.

I'm too angry now to write more, but future blog items, I'm sure, will further dissect the piece of fiction that voters will see representing this amendment on the ballot.

UPDATE: The Statesman has placed the City's misleading ballot language online (pdf), along with their initial coverage. Even though their editorial page opposed the measure, I hope the newspaper will show more integrity than the city council did and explain to the public how biased and misleading this ballot language really is.

City Council misleading voters with open government ballot language

2006-03-09T15:46:00.000-08:00

If Austin City Councilmembers want to campaign against the Open Government Online Charter Amendment as individuals on their own time, that is their right. But campaigning against the amendment using their official positions is a huge disservice to the voters. Disgracefully, that's what's happening, though. The proposed ballot language for the open government online amendment has little to do with the actual language in the amendment.

Every line of the proposed ballot language is designed to mislead voters into opposing the initiative. For example, it says public officials' "personal correspondence" would be put online. That's wrong on at least two levels: First, the amendment doesn't affect any records except those related to city business. The idea that personal correspondence would become public is simply a flat out lie. Second, the charter amendment simply DOES NOT mandate that email correspondence of councilmembers go online - it only requires that it be archived, which the city does already, just for a shorter time. That's just not a significant change, but opponents of the amendment are intentionally overstating their objections.

Another sleazy tactic: The langage says that "companies seeking to do business" with the City must "waive their right to protect proprietary business information submitted to the City." Again, that's a flat-out falsehood: Only businesses seeking tax waivers and special subsidies must disclose certain new business information, but the vast majority of companies doing business with the City of Austin aren't looking for government handouts and wouldn't be affected.

Similarly, the proposed language includes speculative, conclusory statements that amount to smears against the initiative, hardly accurate assessments of what it does. The amendment "could expose the city to financial liability," it declares, without stating which part of the amendment supposedly does so. Of course, any city action "could" expose the city to liability, but they only include the caveat on the proposals they all oppose.

The City Council's disingenuous manipulation of the open government online ballot language shows exactly why this initiative is needed -- they just can't be trusted to act in the public's interest or to engage important issues honestly.

Open Government Austin blog born!

2006-03-09T11:52:00.000-08:00

So, in light of all the misinformation that is floating out there about the Open Government Online amendment this blog about the amendment and the campaign to make Austin a leader in open access is born.

Special thanks to the City for the free wireless connection at City Hall, which has allowed us to create this blog despite being forced to wait for the City's latest attempt to send a depth charge towards clean government during open session. Today (Thursday), the City is trying to set the ballot language for the amendment with half-truths and mis-statements about what the OGO does.

Today's Austin Chronicle said to look for Brewster McCracken to lead the charge against the amendment "and to harm his case by overstating it." McCracken's "doomsday version of the proposal conjures child pornographers slithering one step ahead of the law – for, in his estimation, police investigating cybercrime fall under the officials required to disclose all their contacts. That probably ain't the case, but it shows how much fun the amendment will engender."

This language is extremely important for Austin voters, as this is what shows up on the voting machines on the day of the election. We can only hope (and wait for council to reconvene) that the City won't inject spurious and misleading text into the ballot language.