Transparency in Government - Opening Night at CHLC
June 4, 2009 11:19 PMBy Patrick Tuohey
On Wednesday night about 130 people from seven states gathered in the ballroom of St. Louis' Millennium Hotel to begin the Conservative Heartland Leadership Conference, the first of it's kind "CPAC for the Midwest." The topic for the opening dinner was "Transparency in Government," and panelists included former Missouri Governor Matt Blunt, Nebraska Treasurer Shane Osborn, and president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist.
Michael Quinn Sullivan, president of Empower Texans, began the discussion by quoting Thomas Jefferson:
I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and, if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.
Transparency in government, said Sullivan, educates the people about their government and helps restore accountability. Sullivan went on to say that thanks to a system in Texas that put every government expenditure on the Internet in real time, Susan Combs, the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, estimated that her department alone was able to save $4.8 million. These savings were realized as a result of citizens calling waste and inefficiencies to her attention.
Grover Norquist asserted that the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, in which elected officials commit to not raising taxes, was just the first part of a three-part approach to reigning in government. First was stopping tax increases, second was cutting spending and third is transparency. This was nearly impossible before the Internet and search engines.
Norquist went on to say that the Bush administration was ambivalent about transparency and that while the Obama administration pays lip service to the principle, it has not done much to advance an issue that Obama championed while in the Senate. Norquist said that the states have taken the lead and that 20 states have created transparency portals either through legislation or by executive order.
Missouri created the Missouri Accountability Portal (MAP) in July, 2007. Governor Blunt explained that MAP was launched because, "a government agency will never spend money more wisely than a Missouri family." He added that between its creation in July 2007 and January 2009, the site had 16 million unique visitors. Blunt later called transparency, "a pragmatic tool that can help change government."
To emphasize the impact of Missouri's effort, Norquist said one need look no further than an April 2009 speech in which the leader of the British Conservative Party, David Cameron, promoted the idea of government transparency and said:
If you want to see how it could work, look at the Missouri Accountability Portal. It will show you why transparency is such a powerful tool in controlling public spending. And it can have an especially powerful effect when it comes to salaries.
Nebraska Treasurer Osborn spoke of similar successes in Nebraska, which has half the population of Iowa but twice as many government employees. He described transparency as a silver bullet and said that the issue brought together conservative and liberal groups such as Common Cause. According to Osborn, the site www.nebraskaspending.com received 600,000 unique visitors in its first year and that the average amount of time spent on the site was 23 minutes.
Norquist ended the panel discussion by noting there are 513,000 elected officials in the United States and that transparency offers each would be challenger $300,000 in opposition research. "This is better than term limits," he said.
Panelists all noted that transparency sites did not necessarily result in discoveries of huge amounts of waste. In many cases, poor record keeping suggested government extravagances that, when closely examined, turned out to be legitimate expenses. All agreed that transparency has a value in keeping government accountable. Quoting the Texas Comptroller, Norquist said, "When you announce that all checks and contracts are online--you get better checks and better contracts."
The evening finished on a different note, however when Catherine Bleish of the Liberty Restoration Project (LRP), asked Governor Blunt about the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) report, and how Blunt might recommend she get answers from Governor Nixon on the report. Nixon has not only declined to meet with members of the LRP, but they were recently thrown out of his office in Jefferson City. Bleish added that many in the Nixon administration have tried to put blame for the report onto Blunt.
Blunt called the report "offensive and not the kind of report that government should put out...It is clearly an offensive abuse of government power to suggest that people with conservative views are a threat to society."
Norquist noted that transparency offers each would-be [candidate] challenger $300,000 in opposition research. "This is better than term limits," he said.
