EDITORIAL Keep making information freer, meetings more open
Newspaper reporters make frequent use of New York’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) to get access to public records that government officials often would prefer not see the light of day. Since passage in 1975 this law and its cousin, the Open Meetings Law, have done much to keep public officials and government agencies accountable, and to prevent or, in some cases, expose wrongdoing. While news organizations are the prime users, these laws are there for everyone — working journalists as well as ordinary citizens. We all have a right to know what government is doing with our money and in our name. Good as the laws are, they could be better. And the independent state Committee on Open Government is constantly pushing the Legislature to make them so, this year with considerable success. Among the amendments adopted were those requiring agencies to provide records in the medium requested, such as compact disc, and mandatory awards of attorney’s fees for violations of the Open Meetings Law. Another important amendment passed in 2008 aims to increase access and reduce costs by permitting agencies to charge fees based on the storage medium (a CD is just a few cents vs., say, photocopies of original hard-copy documents, which are typically 25 cents a page). At the same time, it recognizes the manpower cost to the agency by allowing it to charge a fee based on the hourly salary of the lowest-paid employee who has the skill needed to fulfill the request when more than two hours are needed. The committee doesn’t want to stop there. For 2009 it is seeking a change that would require agencies, when they can do so without undue burden, to post on their Web sites such things as audits, meeting minutes and other information that is clearly public and frequently requested. This would reduce the number of FOIL requests and the time and expense of complying with them. The committee also wants to require that government entities, to the extent practicable, make records available before or at a public meeting where they are discussed, so the public will be able to know what is going on. And it wants an end to the open-meetings exemption for political caucuses, which is where, in legislative bodies where one party in firmly in the majority, the decisions are really made. One of the biggest problems with the Open Meetings Law is....................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00702
Pelosi Erases Gingrich's Long-Standing Fairness Rules by Connie Hair
01/05/2009 Print This Forward Feedback Digg This! Subscribe Sponsored By:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to re-write House rules today to ensure that the Republican minority is unable to have any influence on legislation. Pelosi’s proposals are so draconian, and will so polarize the Capitol, that any thought President-elect Obama has of bipartisan cooperation will be rendered impossible before he even takes office.
Pelosi’s rule changes -- which may be voted on today -- will reverse the fairness rules that were written around Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.”
In reaction, the House Republican leadership is sending a letter today to Pelosi to object to changes to House Rules this week that would bar Republicans from offering alternative bills, amendments to Democrat bills or even the guarantee of open debate accessible by motions to recommit for any piece of legislation during the entire 111th Congress. These procedural abuses, as outlined in the below letter obtained by HUMAN EVENTS, would also include the repeal of six-year limit for committee chairmen and other House Rules reform measures enacted in 1995 as part of the Contract with America. After decades of Democrat control of the House of Representatives, gross abuses to the legislative process and several high-profile scandals contributed to an overwhelming Republican House Congressional landslide victory in 1994. Reforms to the House Rules as part of the Contract with America were designed to open up to public scrutiny what had become under this decades-long Democrat majority a dangerously secretive House legislative process. The Republican reform of the way the House did business included opening committee meetings to the public and media, making Congress actually subject to federal law, term limits for committee chairmen ending decades-long committee fiefdoms, truth in budgeting, elimination of the committee proxy vote, authorization of a House audit, specific requirements for blanket rules waivers, and guarantees to the then-Democrat minority party to offer amendments to pieces of legislation.
Pelosi’s proposed repeal of decades-long House accountability reforms exposes a tyrannical Democrat leadership poised to assemble legislation in secret, then goose-step it through Congress by the elimination of debate and amendment procedures as part of America’s governing legislative process.
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