Who Does Paul Clark Think He’s Kidding?
NCCo County Council President writes a Letter to the Editor today, objecting to the characterizations of the NCCo Council government as being against Open Government:
Council’s vote was solely based upon concerns that the county lacks the equipment to secure audio postings.
Because of those who manipulate the facts for self-interest or humor, and then widely disseminate the same, the county has found it increasingly more difficult to inform the public of factual information.
Allowing unsecured audio to be used by those who wish to advance their own agenda, as they currently do with quotes taken out of context and doctored photos, is irresponsible to those who would like to stay informed.
There’s more, but what is clear is that Mr. Clark hasn’t a single clue as to what counts as Open Government. In short, if the government is producing data — audio, visual, electronic, paper — it gets shared with the people paying the freight for that government. You can be made to look foolish by, you know, acting foolishly. Claiming to hold on to this data because someone might manipulate it is just insulting — and Mr. Clark himself is guilty of this manipulation. Criticism of the votes to lock down participation in your government by claiming that misuse of council meeting data just makes it hard for us to know what is real or not real assumes that we have no idea how to react to this information without the mediation of being there in person or the Council’s own representation of events.
Get a grip, Mr. Clark. Your paternalistic stance towards the people that pay for the government that you are quick to put at the disposal of developers is better deployed on those developers, you know? You are in no position to ask the people you are asking for WAY MORE TAXES from to get their Open Government by showing up at the City/County Building when you meet. These people are paying for more than one excessive use of County Funds (have you found real duties for the transferred legislative assistant yet?), meaning that the incremental costs for making the audio or video available on the website is certainly possible.
Stop whining about what you might look like and get to work actually representing the interests of the people you are asking for WAY MORE TAXES from. Open Government is the new standard Mr. Clark. Get with the program or get out of the way.
Tags: NCCo, Open Government, Paul Clark
From the Community News:
Paul Clark is so full of shit, his eyes are brown.
Finally, they are afraid of us. What Mr. Scott fails to realize is that having the audio on their site is the ultimate weapon against those that would seek to discredit a creditable politician.
This is not to be misconstrued in anyway as support for NCCCmembers:
A group working on re-entry was recently told the following by City Council Chair Norman Griffiths……
via email: (sic) “I responded to your request in a prior e-mail. I found out that staffing Channel 22 for a Saturday shoot would run between $2000 and $3000 in overtime.”
“But the Chamber would not be available in any event due to an agreement between City and County as part of the renovations that occurred last year to reserve it for City and County Council and related meetings.”
This shit runs a lot deeper than Wilmington’s combine sewer overflows…..So, what’s the strategy to claim that which is the taxpayers for the taxpayers????
Clearly George Smiley has forgotten who he works for too. Just because a few people may misuse the information doesn’t mean that the information is not valuable to the many. And as Geek says, the complete record is the best antidote to those who would put up video of George Smiley having on Live from Sandals.
But here is a thing that I do know now — they read the Delaware blogs. And I would think that a smart politician would actually find a strategy here that takes stupidly anemic measures to lock out those who would try to watch what Council does.
WTF is “secure audio?”
If they don’t do it themselves, someone will do it for them.
Next time elections come around, we have to interview the candidates for council and get them on the record on this issue. Get Jack Markell and Coons on the record on this too.
anon
WTF is “secure audio?”
He thinks someone will clip words out of the audio and rearrange them to say something esle.
Now which Delaware blogger could possibly pull something off like that? 🙂
Does it matter — really?
You could just as easily hire a bunch of impersonators to read the transcripts.
I don’t know what secure audio is other than a lame excuse to not put their tapes up on line.
“I don’t know what secure audio is other than a lame excuse to not put their tapes up on line.”
Because he must feel if you’re too lazy to show up to meetings then you don’t deserve to hear the recording .
Real sad day for the taxpayers!
I hear that secure audio is a file format which is not easily edited (think of saving a file in PDF rather than Word format). Apparently this requires hardware/software which costs five to six digits, and further the files are not readable/playable without special software.
My question is, if anyone can request (and pay a nominal fee for) a recording of a meeting, and they do not currently offer ‘secure audio’, then they already put out this very material in an editable fashion, and putting this on the web does not introduce anything new which is editable. it merely takes what is currently available and makes it more available.
I agree that Clark (and the WNJ noted that another councilman co-wrote Monday’s letter), and the council members who voted against this, are offering specious arguments.
The ‘hey, the meetings are open, come on down’ defense disregards the fact that unlike them, we are not annually paid tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to attend those meetings.
Once we OOGA tomorrow, we’re gonna need to OOCC (open our county council).
The White House puts up video of the President and press events and other meetings via You Tube. I have no idea, really, how hard it is to capture and to manipulate data from that video. Probably not too tough a challenge, though.
If the White House can do it, so can New Castle County Council.
I heard Clark talk to Allan Loudell about this and Clark went through the usual specious arguments but also went through alot of contortions to make the point that he wanted to preserve the integrity of the audio as it appears on the County’s site. In other words, he thought it would be incredibly easy for someone to capture the audio, doctor it and put it back up on the County’s site. Seriously. How many times has the NCCo site been defaced? And if the site is that insecure they really ought to spend some money to get it secured. There is ALOT of data at NCCo that people rely on.
In the end, Clark wants people to show up to meetings. Which is great except for those who can’t get (or pay for) babysitters, or who work that shift or who can’t be there otherwise. He says that showing up is more democratic. A claim he won’t make when he looks for absentee ballots when he runs for NCCo Exec. This democracy has expanded the ability to participate based on available technology. Maybe not in NCCo, but that is the point. You don’t own this business, Mr. Clark. We do and you need to make it available as we ask you.