Force or Farce?

Let’s give Steve Beshear credit for being able to steal a good idea even if it comes from a Right Wing Nut state legislator.

Citing the need for state government to exercise openness in how it conducts business, Gov. Steve Beshear today signed an executive order creating an eTransparency Task Force. Under the executive order, the group will bring recommendations to the governor on the creation and implementation of a “one-stop” information access tool that will include, among other things, providing information about state expenditures and state programs.

Does the following sound familiar?

Create new sections of KRS Chapter 42 to require the Finance and Administration Cabinet to create a searchable Web site to provide certain information on the expenditure of state funds; provide that the new sections shall be known as the "Taxpayer Transparency Act of 2008."

Two questions:

If this is such a great idea, I think it is, then why did it die in the legislature and who killed it? I don’t know why this died, other than most of our legislators would know a good idea if it bit them in the ass, but the guy that killed this puppy was Mike Cherry.

Cherry is the Democratic Legislator from Princeton, Kentucky and the chairman of the House State Government Committee where this bill died.

So once again the General Assembly fumbles the ball.

But I’m not so sure the Task Force will do much more than steam around in the fog and accomplish nothing.

Remember, the idea here is to recommend how to make state records accessible on the Internet. Now, this sort of thing is an unnatural act for most politicians and bureaucrats.

Take a look at the membership of the Task Force.

Chair – Secretary of Finance and Administration Cabinet, Jonathan Miller;
Vice Chairs – The Honorable Todd Hollenbach, Jr., State Treasurer, and The Honorable Crit Luallen, Auditor of Public Accounts;
The Honorable Jack Conway, Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, or his designee;
The Honorable Richie Farmer, Commissioner of the Department of Agriculture, or his designee;
The Honorable Trey Grayson, Secretary of State, or his designee;
The State Controller or designee;
The State Budget Director or designee;
The State Librarian or designee;
The Executive Director of the Kentucky Broadcasters Association or designee;
The Executive Director of the Kentucky Press Association or designee;
The Commissioner of the Commonwealth Office of Technology;
The Executive Director of the Office of Legal Services for Finance and Technology, Finance and Administration Cabinet;
The President of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce;
The Executive Director of the Kentucky Association of State Employees;
The Executive Director of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth; and
The Executive Director of Common Cause of Kentucky.

So, we start with 6 politicians that, to put it kindly, are pretty computer challenged.

Five of the remaining eleven members are state bureaucrats, of which only one the Commissioner of the Commonwealth Office of Technology hopefully will know what the issues are surrounding the task force’s job. Of course his job reports directly to the Chairman of the Task Force, which always fosters an open public discussion of issues.

Two members are from the main stream media. Notice they left the bloggers out, it must be a typo. While the media types may be tech savvy they are usually averse to actually working to get a story so we can’t expect a lot of effort here.

That leaves us with a business representative, I’m sure they will want all the contracts and spending records opened to public inspection.

The union representative and a couple of liberal human rights groups finish out the make-up of the Task-Force.

Oh, one final thing, eight of the appointees don’t ever have to show up. They can just designate whoever is in the office and not doing anything to go to the meetings, that is what is usually meant by “designee”.

This is a great idea, but I don’t see much chance of it working.