Broken Process 3: Who’s In Charge?
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Maybe we just are dense. Or is no one trying to add up the numbers?
GoLocalProv took its confusion over lobbying data managed and disseminated by the Secretary of State's office at its public information portal at www.sos.ri.gov, to the source. And we asked why it was so hard to figure out how much any one lobbyist, or lobbying firm, really made.
Chris Barnett, communications director for Secretary A. Ralph Mollis, admitted that there are occasions on the site where even he needed five times looking at reports to figure out the distinction between executive and legislative lobbying figures, "until I had internalized the logic," he said.GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST
But he said that no one had complained about the site. "I can't recall any feedback," he said. "If there's nothing wrong with it, why say anything?" he said. "If we got feedback, we'd act on it," he said.
Which raises the question who, if anyone, is actually checking the site, and how deeply.
Given that the entire site at www.sos.ri.gov got 243,568 page views in March (and similarly large numbers in the two months preceding it), traffic for the "Search Lobbying Info" landing page was 680 total page views: 0.2 percent. Percentages were similar in January and February of 2010. ("Open Meetings" traffic, the highest under Public Information on the SOS, yielded 1.4 percent).
John Marion, Executive Director of Common Cause Rhode Island, thinks that lack of complaint (and lack of use, given the numbers) is no excuse. "One of the things that seems to happen in Rhode Island is that reforms are passed, and systems put in place, but they're never reviewed to make improvements. That is true in this case. I would imagine money plays a part, but so does indifference."
Larry Valencia, president of Operation Clean Government, told GoLocalProv that the grassroots government reform organization is interested in taking a closer look at the system. "We're planning to discuss it at our next monthly meeting later this week," Valencia said.
