Open Government

One of the greatest lessons from Watergate has apparently been lost on the latest generation of leaders, and that is that no matter how badly you believe you acted, the worst thing that you can do is try to cover up your crimes.

It is not, in fact, the crimes of Watergate – shocking as they probably should have been for operatives working under the President’s reelection committee to have broken into the offices of political rivals – but rather the elaborate and yet clumsy and hasty ways in which they attempted to hide these facts from the American people that led to the only resignation we have had of an American President.

We knew going into 2011 that it was going to be an interesting year.  The year began with a council vacancy to be filled, a city manager to hire, a budget to pass, and a water project looming.

This is always a somewhat surprising list, in part because the link between the number of comments is not always direct with readership.  The stories that are often most read have broader appeal, while the stories that are most commented on have narrower appeal to our community and our readership.

The other factor is also time, the longer the articles have been up on the site, the more read they may be.  The two most-read stories this year both focused on the water issue, but not the one that has dominated headlines late this summer and fall,  rather the Conaway Deal from last winter.

However, the Prop 218 process relies on ratepayers and not voter information.  And that information is actually exempted under the Public Records Act.

My concern in this column is not what happened, but rather the fact that we will never really know what happened.

However, the city has never taken steps to make this information available to everyone, at the click of a button.  Given the magnitude of the changes being proposed by the city and the depth of the economic crisis, it would behoove the city to be as transparent as possible about releasing critical information, such as payroll data that is fully available and protected under the California Public Records Act.

This is a weekly feature that will attempt to emphasize some of the more thoughtful and illuminating comments made during the previous week.  This is not an exclusive list – but will represent all sides of the issues.  But we want to encourage thoughtful and civil, but still insightful and, at times, critical comments.  Hopefully this effort will strike the right balance we seek.

hpierce – “Poll Suggests Majority of Voters Favor Commuting Death Sentences to Life Without Parole”

This is a new feature that we are going to try that will attempt to emphasize some of the more thoughtful and illuminating comments made during the previous week.  Obviously, given limitations, this is not an exclusive list.  But we want to encourage thoughtful and civil, but still insightful and, at times, critical comments.  Hopefully this effort will strike the right balance we seek.

hpierce May 1 “Sunday Commentary: Gas Prices a Curse or Blessing?”:

May is “Bike Month”… perhaps the Vanguard “community” should pledge and follow through on a commitment to ride a bicycle, when possible, in lieu of a motor vehicle trip.  I have committed, thru my employer, and hope to have every trip within Davis accomplished via bicycle this month.  A “Vanguardian” group could be established, and they could compete with the other groups that have signed up.

The relationship between the stories most commented upon and the stories most-read is often far less than linear.  Sometimes stories that are tremendously commented on end up being well-read, but often the most-read stories are stories linked elsewhere that build readership over time.

Since we moved to davisvanguard.org we have been able to track the number of people who have read a given story.

The City of Davis is structurally like an old dinosaur, built for another era of government and so encumbered by its current obligations and hamstrung by a continually sputtering economy that there is little hope that we can make the changes we need to its governmental structure to be able to fix it.

That is no small problem, but it is worth emphasizing that our policies on compensation and retirement benefits not only are costly, in terms of trying to fix them before they lead to fiscal collapse for the city, but they are costly in terms of limiting our ability for government to meet the changing needs of its citizenry.

For a brief time last week conservatives thought they had an additional reason to crow when liberal commentator Keith Olbermann from MSNBC was suspended for the audacity, apparently, of proving MSNBC policies absurd.

That celebration must have been brief for conservatives when they were presented with the reality that not only do the commentators on Fox News donate money, but as Rachel Maddow showed with her brief expose, actually cheerlead for conservative candidates and solicit money for them on the air.

I would have liked to have compiled the Vanguard’s second annual City Council Scorecard for 2009 but there is one big problem, to do so, I would have to reconstruct votes from Vanguard articles and memory.  Why is that?  Because if you go to the council Agendas and Minutes webpage, you see that the last minutes posted from Tuesday, December 9 of 2008!

That makes it a little difficult to go back and look at how people voted.  I know it has been brought up during the council meetings at least once.

While we have always encouraged lively debate, it is our belief that the tone has become too nasty.  People are able to right now post under multiple psuedonyms trying at times to make it appear that there are more people in agreement on their view.  A very small percentage of the readership of the Vanguard actually participates in the discussions.  Part of that may be the tone.  The hope here is that by establishing consistent names, even if they are assumed names, we will develop a community and there will become familiarity with each poster.

The Vanguard has proven partially if not mostly successful in its efforts to quash a subpoena seeking records by the plaintiffs in the suit Calvin Chang v. the Regents of the University of California.

The plaintiff’s subpoena sought identifying information, including names and addresses, of those individuals who under the names “Mack Chuchillo” and “anonymous” posted certain comments about Mr. Chang and his lawsuit. The comments were posted on the Vanguard just a few days after plaintiff filed suit in February 2009.

An unfortunate civics lesson was learned this week by a member of our community when a letter sent to all five of the Davis City Council Member’s city of Davis email addresses ended up in Bob Dunning’s column on Tuesday.  We can certainly debate the propriety of a Davis City Councilmember leaking an email from a constituent to a journalist in an effort to embarrass them, however from the standpoint of the law, they have every right to do it.

Written communications either sent via letter or electronically are considered public documents which are subject to the California Public Records Act.  In fact, city staff often reads them, prints them out, and disseminates them as well.

Residents of Davis may rightfully rejoice at the news that Davis will house the Bicycle Hall of Fame–an honor that announced this week.  However, in a lot of ways it obscures the more sinister and ominous developments of the week that will caste dark shadows over the governance of this city.

Mayor Asmundson’s second tenure as Mayor has been somewhat less eventful than her first tenure that saw open civil unrest befall the city.  However, more quietly she has effectively moved to stifle debate and dissent at least within official city hall.

Last week from March 15-21, 2009 marked "Sunshine Week" across the country.  This is the celebration and a reminder of the need to advance the cause of "open government."  Since the foundation of the People’s Vanguard of Davis, we have strived to uphold a very simple principle–notion that the public has the right to know what the government is doing and the duty to hold the government accountable.  Our focus has primarily been on the city of Davis with extensions into Yolo County, the region, and even the State of California from time to time.

In some ways, I found it interesting reading the Davis Enterprise Columnist Bob Dunning’s column yesterday and the repeated references to Mayor Ruth Asmundson and Councilmember Sue Greenwald fighting during council meetings.  There is definitely a rather toxic clash of personalities going on here.  On the other hand, it’s a bit of a cop out to view it as both sides fighting. But that is clearly what the public sees.

I see a larger problem and it extends beyond the issue of interpersonal relations.  I feel like the Mayor is systematically shutting down discourse and discussion in the name of expediency of getting home on time.  If she were somewhat equal-handed about it, it might be less of a problem.  But I have never seen her tell anyone else to stop talking other than Councilmember Greenwald.