State of Transparency in California in 2013

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What are the core issues shaping public access and engagement in state and local decision making in California? This update is offered as a high level overview of recent developments and longstanding questions. Intended as a conversation starter on this critical issue in California, we also offer our perspective on vital next steps to fostering a renewed system of governance that enables elected officials and public agencies to forge the best possible solutions and provide the highest quality of services.

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The State of Transparency in California: 2013

IN THIS UPDATE
What are the core issues shaping public access and engagement in state and local decision making in California? This update is offered as a high level overview of recent developments and longstanding questions. Intended as a conversation starter on this critical issue in California, we also offer our perspective on vital next steps to fostering a renewed system of governance that enables elected officials and public agencies to forge the best possible solutions and provide the highest quality of services.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Despite the massacre of facts that typically occur in presidential election years, somehow the theme of “public transparency” survived and thrived in 2012. Voters experienced the first dividends of citizen-drawn legislative districts, and robust new tools were launched to track compensation of public employees. At the other end of the spectrum, the scandal at the California Department of Parks and Recreation brought the entire state financial reporting structure under scrutiny. A fresh round of scandals hit local governments in Los Angeles County, and state reimbursements to local governments’ public notice were requirements were a victim of budget cuts. Last year also saw some emerging champions for transparency. State Controller John Chiang affirmed that one of his top priorities is to publish data that is otherwise reported to his office and filed away. His effort to reveal the fiscal workings of governments included Public Pay—a website that informs Californians about how much their state and local representatives are being paid. Senator Leland Yee was successful in bolstering the state’s transparency laws in key ways and assessing lobbyists to fund new reporting infrastructure. But his proposals to broaden online offerings and public access to additional agencies both failed in the Capitol. Yee’s proposals speak to the crux of California’s problem: an outmoded system.

The cornerstone of the State’s open government structure, The Ralph M. Brown Act, was passed before the invention of the Xerox machine. California’s Public Records Act and many of the laws governing public meetings and communication with and among elected officials predate the internet by more than 20 years.
California leads the world in innovation of information and communication technology. It is an incubator of development hardwired to venture capital funding, maturing best of breed hardware and software development. On the other end of the spectrum, the State’s infrastructure for communicating with citizens and among governments is based on outmoded legacy systems. Critical to improving California’s system of governance — that is, how decisions get made — is a contemporary information infrastructure and matching requirements for that information to be easily available to everyone. To modernize one, California must modernize the other. This all raises a critical question: what is transparency, and why is it important today? Transparency means many things to many people. At its most basic level, California Forward asserts that Transparent Government is one that makes critical information easily available so that it can inform decisions — by voters as well as their elected representatives. At its most basic level, and for the purposes of this update, a Transparent Government is one that advertises pending decisions (making key factors broadly available before meetings) provides ways for the public to ask questions and express preferences before and during the decision, encourages elected officials to publicly discuss options and explain the reasons for their individual and collective decisions, broadly communicates those decisions, and publically tracks and reports results. This transparency framework requires a layered approach to communication and cooperation with the public at all levels of government. Enhanced online resources, public engagement strategies and improved reporting are all aspects of badly needed modernization of the State’s governmental culture. What is truly important is what Californians believe transparency ought to mean in their state. This document should serve as a starting point for that conversation. One place the discussion can continue is transparency.cafwd.org.

CORE ISSUES IN STATE AND LOCAL TRANSPARENCY Well-documented problems with the legislative and budget processes linger.
The harried nature with which state budgets – and indeed many laws – are passed in the Legislature is more or less a punch line in Sacramento. But it is a pox on our democracy. Last minute and often major revisions to legislative proposals, known as “Gut and Amends” are a longstanding, common and controversial practice in the Capitol. One prominent example from 2012 was SB 901, which for most of the legislative session was a bill on air pollution, and in the final week of session was amended to be the California Opportunity and Prosperity Act, an immigration proposal. Whatever the merits of either proposal, the practice obscures the public’s view into government. A provision of last year’s failed Proposition 31 (advocated by California Forward) would have required all legislative proposals be publicly available for 72 hours before an official vote, “three days in print” in Capitol vernacular. The current requirement is that a measure must only be “in print,” and even that rule is routinely suspended. “Gut and Amends” are not the only process issue that erodes public confidence, but they are emblematic of the culture that erodes public trust.

CORE ISSUES IN STATE AND LOCAL TRANSPARENCY A lack of valid data is preventing policymakers and the public alike from making informed choices.
While there is much to praise in state and local transparency efforts, there is still an enormous deficit in the quality of available fiscal data: data on revenue, expenditures and outcomes by agencies so the public knows if they are getting their money’s worth; and, data on campaign contributions that can influence decision-making. Little if any actionable data is available on pension and debt obligations. Californians are only now coming to understand what public workers earn on an annual basis. At a high level, complex funding mechanisms for K-12 education, property tax distribution and other state functions limit true comprehension of the State’s finances to a handful of Capitol insiders and watchdogs. Perhaps the worst example of lack of information is related to property tax. Depending on the number of local governments that provide services, a homeowner’s tax payment may be split among a dozen or more entities, including the county, the city, school districts and a basket of special purpose districts. From the property taxpayer’s perspective, it is difficult if not impossible to find out which of the many local governments that provide services get the money. Californians should care about this since property tax is still the single largest tax financing local services. More foundational, the only centralized source for information on local government spending and revenues, the State Controller’s Annual Reports, are based on self-reported and unaudited data from the very entities being monitored. State-level information on pensions and even basic expenditures is scarce and often outdated once available. The rash of local government scandals, along with the state parks controversy, is strong evidence that enhanced reporting and oversight is needed — and that oversight in part can be done by the public if the right information is available to everyone. Facing these shortcomings is but the first step in bringing Californians closer to their government and our elected leaders closer to meaningful debate on core issues.

Whether limited by outmoded reporting systems or intentionally withheld or obscured, as in the State Parks Department or the City of Bell, financial data on state and local government can be difficult to obtain, interpret and evaluate.

CORE ISSUES IN STATE AND LOCAL TRANSPARENCY Innovations abound, but adoption rates are slow.
Home to Silicon Valley and several of the world’s most forward-looking corporations, California has a commendable history of incorporating technology and other best practices into its public engagement strategies. Some notable efforts aside, this trend is in decline and many cost-effective, smart solutions are being overlooked or ignored. The State of California’s online resources have been positively reviewed in reports issued by the Sunshine Review and Center for Public Integrity, and cities such as San Francisco have implemented tools at the vanguard of open data resources. The state has nonetheless let certain tools languish, and eliminated others. The State shut down its central transparency website in 2011 (asserting the information was available elsewhere). The State’s lobbying and campaign finance disclosure website (Cal-Access) relies on 13 different programming languages, some of which dates to original launch in 1999. It has been plagued by outages and is in dire need of modernization. This system is fortunately set to receive new funding. However, online resources and critical data on major initiatives, such as criminal justice realignment, are severely lacking. Looking beyond the State’s reporting, the campaign finance tools that are the norm at the state and federal level are almost entirely absent from the municipal and school district venues. Only a fraction of California cities make local campaign finance information available online. And while cities of varying size have implemented a range of transparency tools online, local government on the whole does not adequately or uniformly communicate key budget information. Technology is not a cure for the accountability issues in California, but it is the most expedient vehicle for engaging the public and encouraging honest evaluation of its performance. From top to bottom, California’s public sector is lagging in the adoption of tools that were invented by the private sector right in its backyard.

With the internationally renowned ecosystem of web developers and technology entrepreneurs in California, the lag on implementing modern tools and providing good quality data is perhaps the state’s biggest missed opportunity.

Key Consideration: Performance Data is Useless without Proper Context.

What data is most important to share?

In the 2007 book “Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency,” Harvard Kennedy School faculty Archon Fung, Mary Graham and David Weil explore the burgeoning transparency movement in the public and private sectors and how increased availability of data and rising public demand for accountability are reshaping public discourse. Among the core issues are the pitfalls of disclosure without definition. The authors caution that “Whether and how new information is used to further public objectives depends upon its incorporation into complex chains of comprehension, action, and response.” To this point, it is insufficient for a government agency to merely post byzantine budgetary documents or inscrutable data files that fail to inform even the most engaged of constituents. Analogous to this would be the annual reports of major corporations. Under federal securities laws, publicly traded companies must disclose information on an ongoing basis to the Securities and Exchange Commission, including annual filing of the Form 10-K, providing a comprehensive overview of the company's business and financial condition. Just one example, the 2011 10-K report for the Coca-Cola Company is 238 pages long, single-spaced. The company also, however, issues a shareholder-focused Annual Review that is just 38 pages long and is rich with photos, easy-to-comprehend graphs, and profiles of company leadership and the corporation’s strength in the marketplace. The distinction of the two documents is one of context and audience. Private sector entities understand they must be accountable not only to their bond holders, regulators and lawmakers, but also to shareholders and customers who are predominantly laymen. As such, both of these documents are easily found on the corporation website at thecoca-colacompany.com and listed, side by side, on the firm’s Investor Reports page. 1
1

Owing to layered legal and financial regulations, and because of the unique nature of public services, public budgets tend to be more complex than those of small or large businesses. As such, many community members may not possess the tools to understand finished budget documents, or discern the critical steps in the decision making process. Certainly, as each city and school district is unique, so too are its budget practices. The key questions to ask, then, when considering a city, county or school district budget: Availability: Is the jurisdiction’s Budget document online? Is it easy to find and organized in a straightforward, logical way? Accessibility: Is there an explanation of the local agency’s decision-making process and how to participate in it? Is there a clear timeline laid out to city residents regarding the budget process? Is there a clear “Budget Policy Statement,” a central document that lays out the jurisdiction’s policies on balanced budgeting, operating reserves, debt and other key issues? What opportunities are there for public input on budget priorities? How are these opportunities promoted, and to whom? Accountability: Does the budget document meet the criteria established by the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA), which provides a set of best practices on budgeting to guide solid financial management? While there are jurisdictions that excel in one or more of these categories in nearly every corner of the state, on balance local government has significant ground to cover in these regards.

http://ir.thecoca-colacompany.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=94566&p=irol-financials

THE CALIFORNIA FORWARD TRANSPARENCY PORTAL
California Forward believes that “Transparency” in California must mean more than access to public documents. State and local government agencies, and the highly trained professionals that manage them, must strive to provide context to these documents and figures they contain. With a focus on California cities, counties, municipalities, school and special districts, California Forward launched a Transparency Portal in 2012 to identify and promote best practices in the communication of government activity in California to support transparency and accountability and encourage continuous improvement in governance models.

transparency.cafwd.org
The Transparency Portal integrates public data on budgeting and key governmental outcomes, offers engaging and contextual portrayals of these data points, as well as identifies and highlights best practices in these efforts across California. Ultimately, the project is designed to promote best practices and raise the bar for transparency in government budgeting and decision making. While supporting a movement to redefine transparency toward a more active enterprise, beyond the passive acts of merely publishing meeting and budgetary documents, California Forward is striving to fill the contextual void left by an abundance of raw data and a dearth of perspective on core issues including local finance, educational achievement, public safety and other core issues.

Given the high stakes decisions before officials, from runaway pension obligations to billion-dollar infrastructure investments, the need – and demand – for expanded transparency has never been higher. While California may still lead by example, in 2012 the commitment to inform the public did not match the imperative. Here are a few areas where California Forward is engaging:

WHAT ARE THE NEXT STEPS?

EXPANDING ACCESS TO RELIABLE DATA ON PUBLIC SPENDING, PLANNING AND OUTCOMES.
One of the root causes of California’s underperformance is a highly complex system that makes it hard for public officials to deliver and even harder for voters to know whether they did or not. The public – and the officials in charge – must know where the money is going and what is being accomplished, in classrooms and courtrooms, in public works and prisons. Whether it is city budgets or the arrest rates of re-offenders, this information should be available in formats that allow the public and policymakers to understand the real deal. State transparency laws should be updated to reflect the contemporary world and enable greater citizen engagement, and improve efficiency at the state and local level. Multiple legislative proposals are already making their way through Sacramento this year as a result of the outcry over the $11 million in “dark money” funneled from Arizona into two California ballot measure elections in November 2012. At the local level, less than 10 percent of California cities make campaign finance and candidate filings available online. Now the standard for state and federal government, at minimum making the scanned pdfs accessible should be the norm in cities with adequate resources. Putting an end to the “Gut and Amend” process would be a substantial step forward for the California Legislature. Allowing a bill to travel through committee approval in one form, only to see radical changes made in the 11th hour is unacceptable and common sense reforms are needed. Ending the practice is a good first step in the long road to a process that often excludes even insiders and public interest advocates – let alone the general public.

EXPANDING DISCLOSURE OF CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTORS

ENDING CLOSED DECISION-MAKING PROCEDURES

City Hall Success Stories
Local Campaign Finance

Let’s Keep Talking
The following pages outline individual success stories in transparency from local government, in both the public and private sector. Public engagement strategies across the state are as diverse as its communities. While certainly not a comprehensive list, these are just a few stories California Forward has been following the past year.

Less than 10 percent of California cities make campaign finance and candidate filings available online. Now the standard for state and federal government, at minimum making the scanned pdfs accessible should be the norm in cities with adequate resources. The City of West Hollywood has a robust system displaying Campaign Finance Statements for all candidates, incumbents and political committees regarding expenditures and contributions. Many of the state’s large cities as well as medium size cities such as Berkeley and Huntington Beach utilize third party tools to allow for both candidate filing as well as a public access portal for information on candidates, contributions and expenditures. Cost is regularly cities as a barrier to this kind of transparency, but examples exist of low impact means for communicating basic information. The City of Irvine for example has created a campaign finance page that includes a PDF list of open campaign committees, a listing of the city’s campaign contribution limits over the course of the last several years as well as a list of resources for candidates, including a filing calendar, campaign finance forms and the FPPC’s campaign disclosure manual. The City of Santa Maria is another strong example of a straightforward portal for this information.

Have more great examples? Want to Share yout thoughts on Transparency in California?

transparency.cafwd.org

Get engaged at:

City Hall Success Stories
Public Engagement
Long Beach Launches “Open Up Long Beach”
In January of 2012 Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske of the City of Long Beach took public education and transparency efforts one step further. Her initiative “Open Up Long Beach” provides residents with increased access to the city’s every day affairs and includes opportunities to learn about what individual council members are working on, what committees they sit on and what projects they spearhead. The project combines an online resource with “Open Up Long Beach” community meetings.

Vallejo Trailblazes on Participatory Budgeting Vallejo implemented one of the most aggressive participatory budgeting programs in the country in the
wake of its bankruptcy. Vallejo is the first city in America to have its council adopt participatory budgeting city-wide with funds from a general sales tax measure rather than in just one district using discretionary funds. Setting a new first gave Vallejo the opportunity to move on from a period of financial turmoil, and it appears the community was eager for such an opening to get involved and restore faith.

Anaheim Incorporates Spanish Translation at Council Meetings
Anaheim announced in January 2013 that it would provide Spanish translators at its council meetings. At least 10 cities in Orange County provide some level of translation, and the demand for bilingual meetings and materials is growing across the state.

City Hall Success Stories
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Online Tools and Data Sharing
San Francisco Launches App for Police Department
Last summer, the City of San Francisco announced the launch of a new mobile application to a list of already implemented technologies that have changed the way many of the city’s departments conduct business. The application allows police officers to report remotely from the field, saving time and speeding communication.

Rancho Cucamonga Launches RC2GO

In 2012 Rancho Cucamonga joined the ranks of cities that have launched smartphone apps, from Beverly Hills to Livermore. Launched in February, RC2GO allows residents to report graffiti, potholes or other issues to the city. The City also provides information on recycling, electric vehicle charging and other items via the App.

Oakland Advances Open Data

In April, the Oakland City Council passed an open data policy initiative put forth by city councilmember Libby Schaff. This has led to the creation of data.openoakland.org, launched in February 2013 and allowing users to access, visualize and download City data. In addition, programmers will appreciate the site’s Application Programming Interface (API), which enables direct access to tap into City data to build software applications.

Walnut Creek Launches Open Town Hall

Walnut Creek launched “Open Town Hall,” an online forum for civic engagement. Run by Peak Democracy, the tool offers new ways to engage with the city on key decisions.

Spotlight on Innovation
The following firms are just some of those operating in California and leading in public engagement and government transparency. They are listed alphabetically and are not offered as a comprehensive list or endorsement of any product or service. CitySourced Los Angeles based CitySourced is a real time mobile civic engagement platform. CitySourced provides a simple and intuitive platform empowering residents to identify civic issues (public safety, quality of life, environmental issues, etc.) and report them to city hall for quick resolution; an opportunity for government to use technology to save time and money plus improve accountability to those they govern. See: citysourced.com Delphi Founded by Stanford technologists and backed by prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors, Delphi is developing “user-friendly, intelligent software to improve government transparency, efficiency, and performance.” Delphi’s platform streamlines the management of municipal financial data, promotes transparency, and improves policy decisions by offering unprecedented municipal benchmarking of performance outcomes, visualizations to communicate complex data, robust analytics, and intuitive user experiences. See: delphi.us

NetFile Mariposa, Califonira-based NetFile, established in 1998, was the first company to e-file a campaign finance disclosure statement in California. Today, NetFile accounts for more than half of all electronic filings of political disclosure documents and lobbyist statements in the State of California. In 2003, NetFile launched a new product built using its expertise in electronic filing that enables local city and county governments to cost effectively set up their own Campaign E-filing and Administration systems. NetFile’s Campaign system clients include several cities (including 3 of the largest in the state) and counties (including 5 of the 7 largest in the state). See it in action: netfile.com Peak Democracy Berkeley-based Peak Democracy, Inc. develops internet software that augments and diversifies online civic engagement in ways that can increase public trust in government. The company has two flagship products. Open Town Hall / Comments is an online forum for dialogue on specific issues. It emulates the order and decorum of public hearings — making the forums insightful and civil yet compliant with free speech and other legal requirements. Open Town Hall / Ideas 3.0 is an online forum for ideation on general topics. It's modeled after the best practices of brainstorming workshops professionally facilitated to optimize for collaboration (not arguments), consensus (not polarization), and broad public interest (not narrow special interest). See: peakdemocracy.com Southtech SouthTech Systems is an eGoverment and eBusiness software development company with offices in Riverside, California. The company’s stated focus is to “equip government offices with costeffective and scalable solutions that utilize robust databases, digitized document technology and electronic workflows.” See: southtechsystems.com

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