{"id":106,"date":"2013-02-17T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-17T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/02\/speakupaustin-a-major-msa-and-local-government-transparency.html"},"modified":"2013-02-17T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-17T13:00:00","slug":"speakupaustin-a-major-msa-and-local-government-transparency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/02\/speakupaustin-a-major-msa-and-local-government-transparency.html","title":{"rendered":"Speakupaustin: a major MSA and local government transparency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nThe\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2013\/02\/energy-efficiency-rebates-austin-texas.html\">\nAustin reporting program<\/a> is <em>in addition to<\/em>\nthe posting a City Council agenda more than a week in advance\n<a href=\"http:\/\/speakupaustin.org\/ideas\/allow-citizens-wishing-to-speak-before-city-council-on-an-agenda-issue-to-sign-up-to-speak-on-line-currently-the-only-way-to-accomplish-this-is-to-come-to-city-hall-in-person-and-sign-up-on-one-of-the-kiosks-in-the-lobby-or-with-the-city-clerk-s-representative-when-city-council-is-in-session-this-method-is-very-inconvenient-and-can-be-greatly-improved\">\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\" class=\"at-xid-6a0120a58214e4970b017ee88f33d3970d\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/6a0120a58214e4970b017ee88f33d3970d-pi.jpg\"   width=\"313\" height=\"100\"  \/><\/a>\n(<a href=\"http:\/\/austin.siretechnologies.com\/sirepub\/mtgviewer.aspx?meetid=361&amp;doctype=agenda\">here&#8217;s the 28 Feb 2013 agenda already on 16 Feb 2013<\/a>)\nand\nincluding the entire board packets\n<a href=\"http:\/\/austintexas.gov\/department\/city-council\/2013\/20130214-reg.htm\">\nwith working papers and other backup documentation<\/a>\nwith the minutes.\nAustin\n<a href=\"http:\/\/austintexas.gov\/department\/channel-6\">\ntelevises and webcasts its meetings live,<\/a>\nwith close captioning and transcripts online.\nThey don&#8217;t limit the number of citizens who can speak,\nor the subjects they can speak on, and they televise and webcast\nall of them as well.\nPlus citizens can speak on specific agenda issues,\nand Austin\n<a href=\"http:\/\/speakupaustin.org\/ideas\/allow-citizens-wishing-to-speak-before-city-council-on-an-agenda-issue-to-sign-up-to-speak-on-line-currently-the-only-way-to-accomplish-this-is-to-come-to-city-hall-in-person-and-sign-up-on-one-of-the-kiosks-in-the-lobby-or-with-the-city-clerk-s-representative-when-city-council-is-in-session-this-method-is-very-inconvenient-and-can-be-greatly-improved\">\nhas an online forum for citizen suggestions on which citizens can vote\non the ones they like.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIs there still back-door politics in Austin? For sure.\nBut you can see a <em>lot<\/em> more of what is going on in Austin\nthan they can about the local governments here,\nand citizens have a lot more input.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIf Valdosta and Lowndes County\n(and Hahira and Lake Park and Dasher and Remerton)\nwant to be treated like a major MSA,\nthey might consider following Austin&#8217;s lead.\nInstead of decreasing citizen input by exiling\nall citizen speakers to the end of a meeting and limiting the number\nwho can speak, while not even putting board packets online,\nconsider continually <em>increasing<\/em> local government\ntransparency and citizen input.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n-jsq\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Austin reporting program is in addition to the posting a City Council agenda more than a week in advance (here&#8217;s the 28 Feb 2013 agenda already on 16 Feb 2013) and including the entire board packets with working papers and other backup documentation with the minutes. Austin televises and webcasts its meetings live, with [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,601,602,603,88,604,3,54,121],"tags":[8736,236,8794,8790,8704,8701,8791,8702,8792,12,7,8734,8793,607,237,8700,605,6,8726,234,608],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-dasher","category-hahira","category-lake-park","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-remerton","category-transparency","category-valdosta-city-council","category-webtech","tag-activism","tag-austin","tag-austinenergy","tag-dasher","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-hahira","tag-lake","tag-lake-park","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-remerton","tag-simulcast","tag-texas","tag-transparency","tag-tv","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-city-council","tag-video","tag-webcast"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}