Voice For Liberty

Tag: Government transparency

  • Wichita check register

    Wichita check register

    A records request to the City of Wichita results in data as well as insight into the city’s attitude towards empowering citizens with data.

    As part of an ongoing transparency project, I asked the City of Wichita for check register data. I’ve made the data available in a visualization using Tableau Public. Click here to access the visualization.

    Analyzing this data requires a bit of local knowledge. For example, there is a vendor named “Visit Wichita” that started to receive monthly payments in March 2015. What about payments for January and February? Those were made to a vendor named “Go Wichita,” which changed its name to “Visit Wichita.”

    Similarly, there are payments made to both “Westar Energy” and “Westar Energy — EDI.” These are the same entities, just as “Visit Wichita” and “Go Wichita” are the same entity. To the city’s credit, the matching pairs have the same vendor number, which is good. But resolving this requires a different level of analysis.

    There are interesting entries. For example, the city had been spending a few hundred dollars per month to the Kansas Turnpike Authority. Then in July 2015, the city paid $3.7 million to KTA. A quick search of city council agenda packets didn’t reveal any reason for this.

    Of note, it looks like there were 1,475 checks issued in amounts $20 or less over a period of nearly two years. Bank of America has estimated that the total cost of sending a business check ranges from $4 to $20.

    The records request

    Wichita spending data from 2013.
    Wichita spending data from 2013.
    The city supplied this data in an Excel spreadsheet, in an arrangement that can easily be analyzed in Excel or loaded into other programs. This is a step forward. Three years ago, Wichita could supply data of limited utility. What was supplied to me was data in pdf form, and as images, not text. It would be difficult to translate the image data into machine-readable text, and even more difficult to reorganize it to a useful arrangement or format for analysis.

    Denver open checkbook.
    Denver open checkbook.
    In 2015 had to pay $24.00 to the city for this data. That’s a problem. It is by now routine for governmental agencies to post spending data like this, but not at the City of Wichita. Upon inquiry, city officials told me that the present financial management system “does not include many modern system features such as an ‘open checkbook.’” An “open checkbook” refers to a modern web interface where citizens can query for specific data and perhaps perform other analysis. An example is Denver’s open checkbook.

    While the next-generation Wichita financial system will probably have such a feature, there’s no reason why citizens can’t experience some of the benefits now. The spreadsheet of spending data like that I paid for could easily be posted on the city’s website on a monthly basis. People like myself will take that data and make it more useful, as I did. There is no reason why this should not be happening.

    Fees

    When I learned of the fee for these records in 2015, I asked for a waiver, sending this to the city’s records official:

    I’d like to ask for a waiver of the requested fee. I ask this because check register data is an example of records that many governmental agencies make freely available on their websites. The Wichita Public School District and Sedgwick County are two local examples.

    I’d like to also call attention to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, which allows for fee waivers in some circumstances: “…fee waivers are limited to situations in which a requester can show that the disclosure of the requested information is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations and activities of the government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester.”

    I suggest that the records I am requesting will indeed “contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations and activities of the government,” and that it is in the public interest of the people of Wichita that these records be freely available.

    I received an answer:

    Mr. Weeks,

    Your request for waiver of fees is denied. KORA allows fees to be collected prior to finding and producing the document you seek. KSA 45-218(f). The extensive statute setting out how fees are to be determined, KSA 45-219, does not contain any provision for waiver in the manner you suggest.

    The City will provide the document to you upon payment as invoiced.

    Sincerely,
    Jay C. Hinkel,
    Deputy City Attorney

    Mr. Hinkel is absolutely correct. Governmental agencies in Kansas have the right to charge for records, and the Kansas statutes do not mention the waiving of fees as do the federal statutes. But the Kansas Open Records Act does not require cities to charge for providing records, especially for records that the city should already be providing. Especially when citizens are willing to take that data and make it better, at no charge to the city.

    (For the most recent records request, the city waived its intended fee of $24.00, noting this waiver is for the current request only. The city acknowledges that it temporarily misplaced my request, and as a result, was late in responding. I believe that is the reason for the fee waiver.)

    Wichita’s attitutude, from top down

    Hinkel provided a lawyer’s answer. Here, however, is the public policy the city promotes, from a Wichita city news release from 2013:

    “The City Council has stressed the importance of transparency for this organization,” City Manager Robert Layton said. “We’re honored to receive a Sunny Award and we will continue to empower and engage citizens by providing information necessary to keep them informed on the actions their government is taking on their behalf.”

    The importance of transparency. The city wants to empower and engage citizens by providing information. Well. I offered to “contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations and activities of the government,” but had to pay to do so.

    When I asked city officials for clarification of why I had to pay to receive these records, communications staff told me: “I should note that the City has won multiple awards for openness and citizen participation, but City leaders recognize this work is never done. They strive each and every day to become more open and transparent and will continue to do so.”

    I must disagree. This is not “open and transparent.” This is not how to “empower and engage” the people of Wichita. Not even close.

    The city lags far behind comparable agencies in providing access to data. It’s been almost two years since the city expanded its staff by adding a Strategic Communications Director. It doesn’t seem that this has helped to provide information to citizens.

  • In Wichita, we’ll not know how this tax money is spent

    In Wichita, we’ll not know how this tax money is spent

    Despite claims to the contrary, the attitude of the City of Wichita towards citizens’ right to know is poor, and its attitude will likely be reaffirmed this week.

    This week the Wichita City Council will consider approval of a contract with Visit Wichita, the city’s convention and visitor bureau. Once again, citizens will be left out of knowing how the city’s tax money is spent.

    In the past, I’ve asked that Visit Wichita (formerly Go Wichita Convention and Visitors Bureau) make its spending records available. It’s the same type of information that the city will send you about its own spending. But for Go Wichita, spending must — apparently — be kept secret.

    It’s not a small amount of money that will be spent in secret. This year the city will send Go Wichita almost $2.5 million.1

    But that’s not all. Since the implementation of the “City Tourism Fee” Visit Wichita collects 2.75 percent of hotel bills. (Welcome to Wichita! Here’s the bill for your tourism fee!) That’s estimated to generate $3 million in 2017.2

    That is a lot of tax money, and also a high proportion of the agency’s total funding. We don’t have IRS filings from Visit Wichita since the city tourism fee started, so it’s difficult to say what portion of its funding is tax money. But it’s a lot, at least 90 percent.

    Despite being nearly totally funded by taxes, Visit Wichita refuses to supply spending records. Many believe that the Kansas Open Records Act requires that it comply with such requests. If the same money was being spent directly by the city, the records undoubtedly would be supplied.

    I’ve appeared before the council several times to ask that Visit Wichita and similar organizations comply with the Kansas Open Records Act. See Go Wichita gets budget approved amid controversy over public accountability, City of Wichita Spends $2 million, Rebuffs Citizen’s Transparency Request, and articles at Open Records in Kansas.

    The lack of transparency at Visit Wichita is more problematic than this. Visit Wichita refused to provide to me its contract with a California firm retained to help with the re-branding of Wichita. When the Wichita Eagle later asked for the contract, it too was refused. If the city had entered into such a contract, it would be a public record. Contracts like this are published each week in the agenda packet for city council meetings. But Visit Wichita feels it does not have to comply with simple transparency principles.

    The City of Wichita could easily place conditions on the money it gives to these groups, requiring them to show taxpayers how their tax dollars are being spent. But the City does not do this. This is not transparency.

    In the past I’ve argued that Visit Wichita is a public agency as defined in the Kansas Open Records Act. But the city disagreed. And astonishingly, the Sedgwick County District Attorney agreed with the city’s interpretation of the law.

    So let’s talk about good public policy. Let’s recognize that even it is the case that the Kansas Open Records Act does not require Visit Wichita, WDDC, and GWEDC to disclose records, the law does not prohibit or prevent them from fulfilling requests for the types of records I’ve asked for. Even if the Sedgwick County District Attorney says that Visit Wichita is not required to release documents, the law does not prevent the release of these records.

    Once we understand this, we’re left with these questions:

    Why does Visit Wichita want to keep secret how it spends taxpayer money, as much as $5.5 million next year?

    Why is this city council satisfied with this lack of disclosure of how taxpayer funds are spent? Many council members have spoken of how transparency is important. One said: “We must continue to be responsive to you. Building on our belief that government at all levels belongs to the people. We must continue our efforts that expand citizen engagement. … And we must provide transparency in all that we do.” That was Mayor Brewer speaking in his 2011 State of the City address.

    The city’s official page for the current mayor holds this: “Mayor Longwell has championed many issues related to improving the community including government accountability, accessibility and transparency …”

    During the recent mayoral campaign, Longwell told the Wichita Eagle that he wants taxpayers to know where their money goes: “The city needs to continue to improve providing information online and use other sources that will enable the taxpayers to understand where their money is going.”

    In a column in the Wichita Business Journal, Wichita Mayor Jeff Longwell wrote: “First off, we want City Hall to be open and transparent to everyone in the community.”

    Now is the chance to fulfill these promises. All the city needs to do is add to its contract with Visit Wichita that the agency agree that it is a public agency spending public dollars, and that it will comply with the Kansas Open Records Act.

    It would be a simple matter for the council to declare that the city and its taxpayer-funded partner agencies believe in open government. All the city has to have is the will to do this. It takes nothing more. It costs the city and its agencies nothing, because the open records law lets government charge for filling records requests. I would ask, however, that in the spirit of open transparent government, in respect for citizens’ right to know how tax funds are spent, and as a way to atone for past misdeeds, that Visit Wichita fulfill records requests at no charge.

    —
    Notes

    1. “The 2017 Adopted Budget includes funding for Visit Wichita’s annual allocation in the amount of $2,476,166, which is to be paid from the Convention & Tourism Fund.” City of Wichita. Agenda for December 20, 2016. ↩
    2. “For 2017 the tax is budgeted to generate $3 million.” City of Wichita. Agenda for April 19, 2016. ↩
  • Video in the Kansas Senate

    Video in the Kansas Senate

    A plan to increase visibility of the Kansas Senate is a good start, and needs to go just one or two steps farther.

    The Kansas Republican Senatorial Committee has released a plan to make Kansas better. One plank concerns transparency, specifically this: “Under our plan, legislative meetings and Senate proceedings will be public and streamed live online for public viewing.”1

    This is a good idea, and one that should have, and could have, been implemented long ago. But it doesn’t go quite far enough. The problem is that many people who might want to watch the proceedings can’t do so at the time the Kansas Senate meets. We need to have archived video.

    This would require the Senate to capture the video rather than simply streaming it. Then, the video must be made available somewhere. YouTube is an obvious choice, and it is free.

    Then, to make the experience complete, the Senate needs to make documents available to the public as they are made available to legislators. An example is an amendment to a bill that the chamber is debating.

    A related matter is the availability of testimony in the Kansas Legislature. Specifically, the written testimony and informational presentations provided to committees would be of interest and value to citizens. Most committees — perhaps all — require conferees to supply a pdf or Microsoft Word version of their testimony in advance of the hearing. These electronic documents could be placed online before the committee hearing. Then, anyone with a computer, tablet, or smartphone could have these documents available to them.

    On the Kansas Legislature website, each committee has its own page. On these committee pages there are links for “Committee Agenda,” “Committee Minutes,” and “Testimony.” But in most cases there is no data behind these links. In February 2015 I investigated and found that only about one-third of standing committees in the Kansas Legislature were providing written testimony online.2

    Since then, several committees have used the commercial file-sharing service Dropbox to make testimony and documents available to everyone. This is a reasonable way to accomplish an important goal.

    —
    Notes

    1. betterkansasplan.com. Transparency in Government. Available at betterkansasplan.com/better/#1475545628382-66e77cef-bde5. ↩
    2. Weeks, Bob. Availability of testimony in the Kansas Legislature. Available at wichitaliberty.org/kansas-government/availability-testimony-kansas-legislature/. ↩
  • Towards government transparency in Wichita: Legal notices

    Towards government transparency in Wichita: Legal notices

    Kansas law requires publication of certain notices in newspapers, but cities like Wichita could also make them available in other ways that are easier to use.

    Legal publications in the Wichita Eagle, occupying nearly the entire page.
    Legal publications in the Wichita Eagle, occupying nearly the entire page.
    Do you read the legal publications in your local newspaper? Often they are lengthy. Many pertain to just one person or company. All are supplied using ink expressed as fine print on the chemically processed flesh of dead trees.

    But some legal publications are important and of interest to the general public.

    Kansas law requires that many legal notices must be printed in a newspaper. That law needs to be changed. As you might imagine, newspapers resist this reform, as it might mean a loss of revenue for them. (That’s right. Newspapers don’t print these notices as a public service.)

    Although the law requires publishing notices in a newspaper, it doesn’t prohibit publishing them in electronic form. If governmental agencies would make their legal publications available in ways other than the newspaper, citizens would be better served.

    The City of Wichita does some posting of legal notices on its website. Under the City Clerk section, there is a page titled “Legal Notices” that holds notices of bidding opportunities. (Curiously, that page isn’t found when you search for “legal notices” on the city’s site.) So this is good, but the notices that are important to most people are not on the city’s website.

    Posting all city legal notices on the city’s website would be easy to do. It would be quite inexpensive. The material is already in electronic form. The notices would become searchable through Google and other methods. Government transparency would increase. Interested parties could capture and store notices this material for their own use. Once people get used to this method of publication, it will make it easier to get state law changed.

    So why doesn’t the City of Wichita post its legal notices on its website?

  • Wichita doesn’t have this

    Wichita doesn’t have this

    A small Kansas city provides an example of what Wichita should do.

    For several years, the Kansas city of Lawrence has published an economic development report letting citizens know about the activities of the city in this area. The most recent edition may be viewed here.

    The Lawrence report contains enough detail and length that an executive summary is provided. This is the type of information that cities should be providing, but the City of Wichita does not do this.

    It’s not like the City of Wichita does not realize the desirability of providing citizens with information. In fact, Wichitans have been teased with the promise of more information in order to induce them to vote for higher taxes. During the campaign for the one cent per dollar Wichita city sales tax in 2014, a city document promised this information regarding economic development spending if the tax passed: “The process will be transparent, with reports posted online outlining expenditures and expected outcomes.” (This is what Lawrence has been doing for several years.)

    The “Yes Wichita” campaign promised, “Reports will be measured and reported publicly.” (But “Yes Wichita” was a campaign group and not an entity whose promises can be relied on, and can’t be held accountable for failure to perform.)

    These are good ideas. The city should implement them even though the sales tax did not pass. If it’s good for citizens to have this type of information if the sales tax had passed, it’s good for them to know in any circumstance, because the city (and other overlapping governmental jurisdictions) still spends a lot on economic development.

    Why is this information not available? Is the communications staff overwhelmed, with no time to provide this type of information?

    During the sales tax campaign Wichita city staff had time to prepare news releases with titles like “City to Compete in Chili Cook-off” and “Jerry Seinfeld Returns to Century II.”

    Since then the city has hired additional communications staff, adding a Strategic Communications Director last spring.

    Wichitans need to know that besides living in a city that doesn’t provide much information about its operations, the city believes it is doing a good job. Here is a Wichita city news release from 2013:

    “The City Council has stressed the importance of transparency for this organization,” City Manager Robert Layton said. “We’re honored to receive a Sunny Award and we will continue to empower and engage citizens by providing information necessary to keep them informed on the actions their government is taking on their behalf.”

    When I’ve expressed frustration with the process of asking for information from the city, communications staff told me this: “I should note that the City has won multiple awards for openness and citizen participation, but City leaders recognize this work is never done. They strive each and every day to become more open and transparent and will continue to do so.”

    Wichitans need to wonder:

    • Why can’t we have the same information about our city government that residents of Lawrence have?

    • Was transparency promised only to get people to vote for the sales tax?

    • Is transparency really a governing principle of our city?

  • Sedgwick County economic development incentives status report for 2015

    Sedgwick County economic development incentives status report for 2015

    Sedgwick County has released its annual report on the performance and status of economic development incentives for 2015.

    Section I, titled “Summary Totals for Loans & Grants Executed 2005 — 2015,” holds data that must be interpreted carefully. The report shows a total of $11,682,500 in loans and grants. Of that total, $5,000,000 was advanced to Cessna in 2008 to help with the Columbus jet program. But Cessna canceled that program and repaid the loan. It’s almost as though this activity never took place.

    Of particular interest is Section III, titled “Individual Loan & Grant Incentive Results.” These programs are specifically designed to induce the creation of jobs, and in some cases capital investment. This section holds a number of evaluations that read “Not Meeting Commitment.” One example is NetApp. The county reports that “Company Commitment at Compliance Review” is 268 jobs, but the county found that “Company Performance at Compliance Review” is 124 jobs, which is 46 percent of the goal. NetApp is significant as it is one of the larger incentives offered, and the jobs have high salaries.

    Another observation is the small amount of the incentives. The majority are for less than $50,000, with one being $10,000. Often these small amounts are promoted as responsible for — or at least enabling — investments of millions of dollars. These incentives come with large costs besides the cash value. Companies must apply for the incentive, county and other agency staff must evaluate the application, there is deliberation by commissioners and council members, and then effort spent producing the thoughtful and thorough report such as this produced by the Chief Financial Officer of Sedgwick County. (The City of Wichita produces no similar report, despite dangling its possibility if voters passed a sales tax. See Wichita can implement transparency, even though tax did not pass.)

    Click here to access this report.

  • Kansas school districts compliance with transparency law

    Kansas school districts compliance with transparency law

    Some Kansas school districts are not complying with basic transparency, even though there is a law, finds Kansas Policy Institute.

    School districts still not complying with transparency law

    By Dave Trabert, Kansas Policy Institute

    The Kansas Uniform Financial Accounting and Reporting Act — K.S.A. 72-8254 passed in 2013 requires every school district to publish specific budget information for the current school year and actual expenditures for the immediately preceding two school years, and stipulates that the report “shall be published with an easily identifiable link located on such district’s website homepage.” Unfortunately, some districts still fail to comply with this very simple transparency requirement.

    This table shows the results of a random sample of 40 districts’ web sites. The five districts in column 1 were found to be in compliance; the required report appears by title on the home page and the link goes directly to the report. Column 2 lists twenty-three districts that don’t link the report as required but do provide a generic link (e.g., “Budget Information”) that goes to a page where the report can be accessed with another link. The twelve districts in column 3 have nothing visible on their home

    This ongoing problem was brought to the attention of legislators and the Department of Education several times in 2014, and last year Senate Bill 188 was introduced to add a consequence for non-compliance; if not in compliance within 30 days of written notice, districts would be fined $1,000 per day until doing so. The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 27-13 and was carried over to the House this year where it should be scheduled for a vote.

    Democrats and Republicans alike are calling for increased transparency this year. It will be interesting to see how many are willing to hold school districts accountable to existing transparency law.

  • Empowering and engaging Wichitans, or not

    Empowering and engaging Wichitans, or not

    In this excerpt from WichitaLiberty.TV: The Wichita City Manager says “we will continue to empower and engage citizens by providing information necessary to keep them informed on the actions their government is taking on their behalf.” So what actually happens when you ask the city for data, including data that many governmental agencies make freely available? View below, or click here to view at YouTube. Originally broadcast December 13, 2015.

  • WichitaLiberty.TV: What the Kansas Legislature should do, and eminent domain

    WichitaLiberty.TV: What the Kansas Legislature should do, and eminent domain

    In this episode of WichitaLiberty.TV: There are things simple and noncontroversial that the Kansas Legislasture should do in its upcoming session, and some things that won’t be easy but are important. Also, a look at eminent domain. View below, or click here to view at YouTube. Episode 106, broadcast January 3, 2016.