"Keeping It Transparent"

Submitted by Amanda Fritz on December 27, 2006 - 2:08pm.

Nick Budnick writes an excellent article in Tuesday's Tribune about transparency in the current Portland City Council. But he says, "By some measures, Portland’s City Hall is the most transparent it’s ever been. The mayor, city commissioners and bureau heads all post their schedules regularly." That's a bit misleading. Tom Potter and Sam Adams post their calendars weekly, and past calendars cumulatively - that's commendable. Dan Saltzman posts his calendar for the current and past week, but only posts the record to the Auditor's site quarterly. And Erik Sten and Randy Leonard only post their calendars for the previous quarter, on the Auditor's Lobbyist registration page.

So if a citizen wants to know who met with lobbyists last month, only Mayor Potter and Commissioner Adams make that information readily available.

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I think a good step in the

Submitted by jim karlock on December 28, 2006 - 12:26pm.
I think a good step in the right direction would be to over-enforce the public records rules. Any city employee that engages in heel dragging for public records shoud be fired on the spot. Further, they should make every effort to keep the cost low. For instance I asked for the emails exchanged between a planner and a neighborhod and got told it would be arouond $200. I modified the request to be all emials (I can sort oout theones for the neighborhood)) and got told they would have to go over them for privledged documents. The only reasons for privledge are employee problems, some lawyer and real estate negotions. I doubt that any of these applied. Another problem is that the county asks for big bucks to get a copy of the property tax data file(s) making looking into sweet deals more difficult. I just previewed this and noticed that the blank line between paragraphs was removed. Any chance of finding the setting to fix this? Thanks JK
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You have to put the letters

Submitted by Amanda Fritz on December 28, 2006 - 1:01pm.
You have to put the letters br in between pointy arrow brackets at the beginning of the next paragraph. Also the instructions say you can add a couple of blank lines to make the break, rather than just one. Sorry, evidently we're working out the kinks on the site. I will add that to the instructions. Thanks for your comments, Jim. The county auditor did a report on public record requests recently, right? Finding many of the problems you report. I wonder if any changes will be made at the County following those findings.
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The problem with the

Submitted by LynnS on December 28, 2006 - 1:52pm.
The problem with the comments not automatically putting spaces in has been fixed; it was a miswritten line in the CSS file, as usual. :) --da mgt.
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