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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell informed his Democratic colleagues that he's holding a vote to "immediately open the government" on Thursday. The government has been shuttered for 32 days now as President Trump and Democrats continue to butt heads over border security. As Trump suggested, McConnell's legislation will include $5.7 billion for border security, including funds to build a wall. Democratic leadership insists they're not paying for Trump's border barrier, but McConnell urged his colleagues to "put the country ahead of politics and take 'yes' for an answer." Over the weekend Trump offered a compromise deal. If Democrats agreed to...

The President promised the country transparency and open government, so rather than just let FOIA requesters assume they are being lied to, the DOJ recently proposed coming clean and making such lies official policy. Freedom of information advocates could rejoice knowing that their government is transparent about not being transparent. Here's how it's supposed to work: The Freedom of Information Act allows access to records of all departments, agencies, and offices of the Executive Branch of the federal government, including the Executive Office of the President, unless those records fall under one of several exemptions. When asked to produce certain...

The California Assembly says the public has no right to see lawmakers' current office budgets and spending projections, documents that could show whether punishment is doled out for key votes.

Washington— The Obama administration is refusing to provide information that congressional auditors say they need to root out waste and fraud in federal programs that pay out billions of dollars in disability benefits, stirring complaints about White House open-government practices.The position taken by the Health and Human Services Department has resulted in a standoff with congressional investigators, who want to flush out cases of people who obtain jobs while collecting federal disability payments. That could be a violation of law under certain circumstances.

Remember President Obama's vow, in his inaugural speech, to usher in an era of "open and transparent" government? It's taken a couple of hits of late. A White House award ceremony last week honoring his "commitment to transparency" was closed to the press, to the surprise and chagrin of the open government organizations that had joined together to present the award. One of the attendees called the press ban "baffling." A more concrete setback came with reports that much of Obama's "open government initiative" is facing the ax. According to Washington's Federal News Radio, seven public websites launched as part...

Many of the Obama administration's top open government initiatives are set to be turned off by May 31. Government sources confirm that the Office of Management and Budget is planning to take seven websites dark in two months because of a lack of funding. One government official, who requested anonymity because they didn't get permission to discuss the topic, said funding will begin to run out on April 20 for public sites IT Dashboard, Data.gov and paymentaccuracy.gov. The source said OMB also is planning on shutting down internal government sites, including Performance.gov, FedSpace and many of the efforts related the...

Good government groups have released a report card grading the White House's "lobbying, ethics and transparency" reforms in the past year. Their findings? Positively glowing:The new rules and policies have begun the difficult process of changing the way business is done in Washington. President Obama deserves recognition and high praise for the ethics, lobbying and transparency rules put in place for the Executive Branch during his first year in office. Our organizations give the Obama Administration very high grades for the Executive Branch reforms it implemented during 2009. (Emphasis mine) It seems the authors graded the White House based on...

The forum "OPEN GOVERNMENT" is no longer accepting comments or suggestions. It seems that they didn't much like the ones they got!

Let’s cut to the chase: The Open Government Dialogue — the Obama administration’s much-ballyhooed initiative to engage with the public in an online forum — got slimed. The brainstorming forum, managed by the National Academy of Public Administration, was designed to allow the public to provide input on how to make government operations and information more transparent. Participants were invited to submit ideas and rate other people’s ideas with a thumbs up or thumbs down. The system would tally the votes and assign a score to each suggestion. This mechanism would make it possible for the public at large to...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 3:21 pm Open Government Initiative: Phase II Beth Noveck, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government, brings us an update on the Open Government Initiative: Last week, the White House launched an unprecedented online process for public engagement in policymaking. That process began with a week of Brainstorming, hosted by the National Academy of Public Administration. You have shared almost 900 submissions and 33,000 votes on ideas ranging from strategies for making government data more accessible to legal and policy impediments to...

President Barack Obama began dismantling the Bush legacy Wednesday, using his first full day to overturn an order that let ex-presidents seal their papers forever. [...] Researchers generally can't get access to White House records for at least five years after a president leaves office. Documents involving national security remain out of reach far longer. [...] Bush issued the controversial order two months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, citing concerns about the premature release of Clinton-era records, and he defended the policy this month in an interview. [...] Obama vowed during the campaign to overturn the order, as part...

CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush on Monday signed a bill aimed at giving the public and the media greater access to information about what the government is doing. The new law toughens the Freedom of Information Act, the first such makeover to the signature public-access law in a decade. It amounts to a congressional pushback against the Bush administration's movement to greater secrecy since the terrorist attacks of 2001. Bush signed the bill without comment in one of his final decisions of the year. The legislation creates a system for the media and public to track the status of their...

Today I signed into law S. 1, the "Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007." This bill represents some progress towards ethics, lobbying, and earmark reform, all of which I strongly support. Strengthening the ethical standards that govern lobbying activities and beginning to address meaningful earmark reform are necessary steps to provide the public with a more transparent lawmaking process. The essence of successful ethics reform is not laws and restrictions, but full disclosure. The legislation includes minimal improvements in the area of disclosure, both for lobbying and earmarks. But there is still more to be done -- and...

WASHINGTON - Advocates of a bill promoting openness in government are fuming that a Republican senator is blocking a vote on the measure. Dozens of journalism and advocacy groups supporting the Open Government Act say it would speed up the government's response to public requests for information under the federal Freedom of Information law. But Sen. Jon Kyl (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., says the Justice Department has "uncharacteristically strong" objections to the bill. In a statement Thursday, he said he will block a vote until both sides can work out the differences. Supporters of the bill are irate. "This...

Caltrans Cloaks Millions in Deals Calif. Transportation Agency Labels Hundreds of Contracts `confidential' By MICHAEL R. BLOOD Associated Press Writer The Associated Press LOS ANGELES Mar 21, 2007 (AP) - The California Transportation Department shielded from public view details of at least 290 contracts worth more than $13 million, though there is no record the agency was given authority to strike the information from state records, an Associated Press investigation has found. The contracts labeled "confidential" and in many cases awarded without competitive bidding went out between 2002 and 2006 and ranged from $10,000 to more than $1 million....

LOS ANGELES -- The California Department of Justice issued a new confidentiality policy Monday spelling out when information on its contracts may be withheld from state records. An Associated Press investigation had found tens of millions of dollars of contracts were improperly shielded from public view. "This policy change will absolutely ensure those things don't happen again," said agency spokesman Nathan Barankin. The AP investigation found that information on scores of Justice Department contracts, many of them let without bids, was erroneously labeled "confidential" and omitted from computerized state records, cloaking it from public sight. The hidden contracts included spending...

On April 17, 2002, Senators Grassley and Wyden submitted a Senate Resolution to eliminate the practice of placing secret holds. Note that the resolution did not eliminate holds but rather exposed them to the light of day. Without surprise, the resolution died in committee. 107TH CONGRESS 2D SESSION S. RES. 244 Eliminating secret Senate holds. IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES APRIL 17, 2002 Mr. GRASSLEY (for himself and Mr. WYDEN) submitted the followingresolution; which was referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration RESOLUTIONEliminating secret Senate holds.Resolved, SECTION 1. ELIMINATING SECRET SENATE HOLDS. Rule VII of the Standing...

Tucson, Arizona [Pima] County officials plan to hold a closed meeting Tuesday to talk about the state open-meetings law. The ironic closed session is scheduled for the Board of Supervisors' Jan. 3 meeting in order to brief members on the legal fine points of open meetings. "We're an elected body and we need to set the example for open government," said Supervisor Ann Day, justifying the need for the closed session. "It's a refresher, a preventive thing, so we set the example and don't make any mistakes," she said. The open-meetings law says all meetings of any public body must...

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - Confronted with growing government secrecy, the news media must forge a stronger alliance with the public on the need for open government policies, Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley said Saturday. "We all need to do a better job of persuading the public that freedom of information is not a media privilege but a key part of what keeps other freedoms alive for all," Curley said at a conference of open government organizations from across the country. The news industry and advocates for open government, he said, must be united in opposing governmental secrecy...

Today, the liberal media elite in Ohio (Columbus Disgrace, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Dayton Daily News) all had their holy art thou attitude on again about open records in government. These media are up on a pedestal trying to portray themselves as some watchdog of government. While I agree on the open records stuff in principle, I QUESTION THE MOTIVES OF THESE NEWSPAPERS. These are the same newspapers that want to publish the names on concealed-carry permit holders in Ohio. I believe the Cleveland Plain Dealer has done so, along with a TV station in Toledo. An individual has a...