Tag: Open Government

Why Would FOIA Not Apply to the Wilmington Mayor’s Office?

Filed in Delaware by on April 17, 2012 15 Comments
Why Would FOIA Not Apply to the Wilmington Mayor’s Office?

DelCOG (and John Flaherty) informs us of something pretty alarming — that AG Biden’s office officially thinks that the Office of the Wilmington Mayor is *not* covered by FOIA. How can that be, you ask? According to the DelCOG letter, the AGs office has issued an opinion at the Wilmington Mayor’s office is not subject to FOIA because the Mayor’s office is a 1 person agency.

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Delaware Gets a C- on the Corruption Risk Report Card

Filed in National by on March 20, 2012 7 Comments

The State Integrity Investigation has conducted a year-long study of the effectiveness (or even existence) of each state’s laws and operating procedures in place to deter corruption and promote government accountability and openness. This report is done and published as of yesterday (19 March 2012) and Delaware gets an overall grade of C-, ranked #22 in terms of least corruption risk out of all 50 states. The state that came in the best? That would be New Jersey, with a grade of B+. Take a look at Delaware’s report card:

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We Don’t Need No Stinking Ethics Commission!

Filed in National by on May 14, 2011 7 Comments

NCCo County Executive Paul Clark wants us to believe that cutting back on the County’s Ethics Commission budget is somehow good fiscal responsibility. When in fact — and certainly given his own “ethics” history — it is utterly irresponsible to cut back the ability of this Commission to watch over the doings and interactions of individuals in County government.

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Karen Weldin Stewart Doesn’t Like Open Government

Filed in National by on September 2, 2010 34 Comments

A tipster sent me this link to the newly proposed regulations for FOIA requests to the Insurance Commissioners office.  There are a few things that look somewhat odd to me. First, there will be no public hearing on these regulations.  Not a big surprise, given the IC’s record of backroom dealings.  The public has until […]

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Christina Just Got More Transparent

Filed in Delaware by on July 7, 2010 5 Comments

Last night the Christina School District elected their new school board president, John Young.  John is a friend of DelawareLiberal and has been a tireless advocate for transparency in the Christina School District over at his aptly named, Transparent Christina. Congratulations, John.

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Wilmington City Council Meetings (and Other Programming) Is Now Online

Filed in Delaware by on June 22, 2010 0 Comments

The effort to bring the viewing and documentation of City Council proceedings into the 21st century is finally live and running here:

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City of Wilmington to Live Stream City Council Meetings

Filed in Delaware by on April 18, 2010 7 Comments

I was at City Council last Thursday where Bud Freel brought up an ordnance (pdf) that would allow the City to sign a contract with a firm that would take he video recorded by WITN of Council Meetings and live stream them over the internet.

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Ginger Gibson Finds the JFC Still Not Open

Filed in National by on January 13, 2010 4 Comments
Ginger Gibson Finds the JFC Still Not Open

Last year’s hard won HB 1 victory was supposed to mean that legislature business was to be done in the light of day — with ample and good notice to the public of meetings and hearings as well as making sure that minutes or recordings of meetings were made and made public.

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More House Prefiles

Filed in Delaware by on January 10, 2010 10 Comments

HB 300 proposed by Representative Brad Bennett has been prefiled and it establishes a 10-day response window to respond to FOIA requests.

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NCCO Takes a Step Towards Openness

Filed in National by on October 5, 2009 3 Comments

From the article that DD linked to highlighting the Delaware Way this week, there was a small piece at the end noting a piece of good news:

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NCCo Tries to Make Ethics Reports Harder to Get

Filed in National by on August 27, 2009 27 Comments
NCCo Tries to Make Ethics Reports Harder to Get

According to the NJ, the NCCo Council is looking to provide itself some cover from having to release some of its ethics reports.

You read that right.

Paul Clark and Georgie Smiley are working at a bank shot with this bill — trying to pretend that the work of the Commission doesn’t count with the public unless they find a problem:

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NCCo Government Thinking of Advertising on Their Website

Filed in Delaware by on August 20, 2009 6 Comments
NCCo Government Thinking of Advertising on Their Website

The Community News reports that NCCo is thinking seriously of allowing advertisers for the government’s website to help raise money:

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Kauai: Things Ain’t That Different in the Middle of the Pacific

Filed in Delaware by on August 6, 2009 9 Comments

I was fortunate enough to have a vacation to the island of Kauai, Hawaii for 11 days. I highly recommend it to anyone that may be looking for a little R&R in one of the most beautiful places in the world. Being a political junkie and a geek, I actually spent some time (mostly while changing of something) watching the goings on of their Kauai County Council.

There appears to still be a battle for transparency and access for many documents from Kauai’s government.

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