Locally, Gilroy city officials struggle with transparency
Gilroy – Local congressional representatives passed four bills Wednesday aimed at increasing transparency in the federal government.
Representatives Mike Honda (D-Campbell) and Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton) voted in favor of all four bills, breathing new life into open-government legislation, marking Sunshine Week with votes to protect whistle-blowers, smooth freedom of information requests, and compel presidential libraries to disclose more about their donors.
“These measures are important because they’ll help make sure the government is ethical, open and accountable to the American people,” Congressman McNerney said in a written statement. “I promised during the campaign that I’d work to change the culture of corruption in Washington. With this week’s action plus the ethics reform we passed in January, I’m happy to be making good on that pledge.”
The House still has to vote on H.R. 1362, which addresses no-bid contracting. The five bills coincide with this week’s annual campaign by open-government advocates to draw attention to a need for accessibility and accountability in the fight against abuse and waste.
“Open government is a nonpartisan issue,” said Rick Blum, spokesman for the Sunshine in Government Initiative, a coalition of media groups. But very little is nonpartisan in Washington. Majority Democrats want to use the five bills to highlight what they say is the Bush administration’s use of executive power and secrecy, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press and being circulated among lawmakers.
They argue that Republicans running Congress during Bush’s first six years conducted almost no oversight as the administration went to war. Shabby conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, secret national security letters for gaining access to people’s financial records and a warrantless wiretapping program all point to White House misuse of executive power and secrecy in the war against terrorism, Democrats contend.
The bills all are sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. They will:
* Reverse a Bush administration directive by restoring the presumption that agencies should release records to the public when allowed by law and when they cannot reasonably foresee that the disclosure would cause harm.
* Require government agencies to disclose the reasons for awarding no-bid contracts.
* Provide whistle-blower protection to workers who regularly handle classified information, including private contractors and scientists.
n Require organizations established for the purpose of raising funds for presidential libraries to disclose the sources of contributions of $200 or more.
* Make it harder for current and former presidents to withhold presidential records.
Locally, Gilroy City Hall was recently accused of violating state sunshine laws in the aftermath of a retirement deal scandal involving the city’s top two police officials. Police Chief Gregg Giusiana and Assistant Chief Lanny Brown secretly brokered deals to retire earlier this winter and “return” to work without a break in service, putting them in a position to double their salaries. Though such deals are legal and even commonplace among public employees in California, the arrangements sparked a firestorm because of the city manager and chiefs’ failure to notify city councilmen or rank-and-file police.
Suspicions grew about the deals when city attorneys insisted that the chiefs’ new contracts are not open to public scrutiny – a position that state open government experts have called a violation of the law. Attorneys have since released copies of the contracts, though only after the chiefs volunteered their own copies. The city is now preparing a response to a subsequent request for e-mails of top officials involved in the handling of the chiefs’ retirements. City attorneys said they would release the documents March 19.
Associated Press contributed to this story.
