Yesterday we held our conference on government transparency in Annapolis.  You might have seen my tweets or the emails I’ve been sending out about it.  If you were one of the 30-odd people in the room, I hope you agree with me that each of the speakers did quite well explaining their various ideas and plans for one of the few subjects that nearly everyone in politics can agree upon: that more information and accountability is a good thing.[1]

We had two delegate speakers, Warren Miller and Heather Mizeur, who spoke about various pieces of legislation that they have spearheaded to help increase the transparency of the Maryland government.  It was nice to see two people from “opposing” political parties present such a united front on an issue as important as this one.

We also got to hear from experts representing three independent organizations and walk away with our pockets stuffed with handouts from two more groups that you don’t normally see cooperating on very many political issues, which I will do my best to make available on our own website as soon as possible.  Truly, government transparency is an ideal that transcends political boundaries.

To me, the most crucial moment of the conference came during the Q & A portion, after all the speakers had said their piece and aligned their chairs into a row facing the audience.  A local blogger stood up and asked, in essence, “How am I going to be able to understand the documents that the government makes available to the public?  Will there be an agency to help people like me make sense of it all?  What are you going to do for me?”

Before anyone else had a chance to respond, former Governor Mandel responded from his chair at the front of the audience, “What, you want the government to help you write your articles too?”  This caused a bit of an uproar.

Delegate Warren Miller had the best response to the man’s real question, pointing out that government transparency is still a fairly new initiative; that we are “building the thing with a shovel right now.”  This isn’t something we’ve perfected yet.  This isn’t about putting on the finishing touches.  This is about laying the groundwork.

I totally agree.  And from the sound of it, so did James Browning and Sheila Weinberg, who both spoke on behalf of their organizations to say basically, “that’s our job.”  This is an important point, because if we are not careful we might end up creating a slew of new government posts just to help people understand our transparency efforts, which is sort of contrary to the whole thing.

The goal is to make the public aware of what our government does so that we can hold them accountable and, hopefully, cut out some of the fat.  We don’t need the government adding extra fat to the budget by holding citizens’ hands as they go through complex budget documents for the first time.  We need organizations like the ones who spoke at the conference yesterday helping the common man (and woman) make sense of important government information.  That’s our job.