Legum’s New Line

My friend Delegate Heather Mizeur has just introduced a great piece of legislation designed to increase transparency at the State House. The Washington Post has the details:

In addition to posting committee votes online, Mizeur wants the state’s real-time system for tracking floor votes in the House and Senate opened to the public via the Internet.

Mizeur also says that given the state’s condensed, 90-day legislative calendar, the public should be able to know about upcoming committee actions at least one day in advance and should be able to sign up online to testify in favor or against a bill, and then watch the proceedings online.

Thirdly, Mizeur says the public needs more useful and timely information about the Board of Public Works, an obscure three-member panel with vast powers.

“The public should have access to what lawmakers and government are doing,” Mizeur said. “It’s the State House, the people’s house.”

Mizeur is also proposing that the state open up its existing online legislative tracking system that provides up-to-the-minute info on votes. It is currently only available for a yearly fee of $800, which effectively excludes everyone except lobbyists and news organizations.

Mizeur’s bill would be an important step forward to creating a more open and accountable state government.

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If you are interested in Maryland’s budget I’d recommend checking out the 2009 Spending Affordability Committee Report. The report is produced by a bipartisan group of legislators to make recommendations about spending levels in the upcoming fiscal year.

You can see from the chart on page 29 that the bulk of the spending goes to education and health care.

Since the economic crisis has brought declining revenues, this year the committee, for the first time in its history has recommended 0% spending growth.

Freezing spending and a variety of other measures recommended by the committee are expected to eliminate about half of the $2 billion shortfall projected for next year.

You can check out coverage of the committees report from the AP and the Baltimore Sun.

The full report is available here.

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There was a fascinating piece in the Washington Post this weekend about how we are substituting “green gestures” for the political action necessary to clean up our environment. This is particularly true when it comes to the deteriorating Chesapeake Bay.

But perhaps things are changing.

Today, Maryland’s Waterkeepers, including my friend Chris Trumbauer, filed a petition with the EPA demanding they enforce the Clean Water Act on the Chesapeake Bay. Details from the Capital:

The waterkeepers who patrol Maryland’s rivers and bays said the state is failing to enforce clean-water laws, and the federal government should take over the task.

The waterkeepers – including the four riverkeepers who monitor Anne Arundel County’s waterways – filed a petition seeking the move with the federal government this morning.

“The Clean Water Act is not being enforced,” said Chris Trumbauer, the West/Rhode Riverkeeper. “We need to do something bold to set this on the right course.”

The 58-page petition filed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asks the agency to take back authority to issue and enforce water-pollution permits. That authority is generally delegated to the states.

The waterkeepers claim in their petition that the Maryland Department of the Environment has done a sub-par job in handling water-pollution permits and carrying out the intent of the Clean Water Act.

You can read the full article here.

You can also check out the Riverkeepers full petition to the EPA here.

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I have been actively using a range of social media, including this blog, Twitter and Facebook, since I began my campaign. Recently, a columnist for our local paper, The Capital, interviewed me on the subject.

Naturally, we conducted the interview entirely over Twitter. Here’s an excerpt:

In that vein, I decided to conduct an interview entirely on Twitter with Legum, an Annapolis attorney who is a prolific Twitterer and blogger in addition to being a candidate. It was a challenge, given Twitter’s 140-character limit, which discourages even punctuation.

Legum, a 30-year-old Democrat, wrote: “Twitter has some advantages over other online tools like email because its transparent. I can see my neighbors q and your a.”

Indeed, the entire Twitter conversation between @ethartley and @juddlegum is in the open. So in case you really want to see the sausage made, I put the links on my blog.

We shouldn’t get carried away with the importance of any one method of communication. There’s a certain gee-whiz tone to some media coverage: “Ooh, Sarah Palin’s on Twitter!” Over time, though, that novelty will fade as it has for the Web in general.

Twitter itself or any one site isn’t that important. But the trend of openness is. In effect, much of the information held by governments has historically been closed to the public, since you had to drive to a state capital or Washington, D.C., to get it. It was legally public, but few actually saw it, leading to the term “practical obscurity.”

Now people expect everything to be online, and that’s truer the younger they are. Legum agreed this should keep politicians more honest.

“I think so + more info should be online,” he wrote. “To start, stream and archive all public committee meetings (legislative and exec.).”

Legum said he’ll continue “tweeting” if elected and will put his official schedule online so people know what he’s doing all the time.

You can read the full column here.

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