Hey, Governor Kasich, why aren't you bragging about this?
From John Curry, August 5, 2013
This just in: Ohio scores low on government
integrity
A new study ranks Ohio 40th on openness of state and local
governments
BY DAVID KUSHMA
BLADE EDITOR
I doubt you’ll be shocked to learn that Ohio isn’t a national model of
openness, accountability, and ethics in its state and local
governments.
But really — Number 40?
A new year-long study by the Better Government Association, a nonpartisan
watchdog group, ranks Ohio 40th among the states on its “integrity index.” The
BGA bases its ratings on the effectiveness of each state’s sunshine laws in four
areas: Open meetings, open records, whistle-blower protection, and official
conflicts of interest.
Ohioans can take some comfort in the fact that Michigan scored even worse —
a dreadful 48th. But this is serious, and disturbing, business.
The BGA formed in 1923 to fight public corruption in Al Capone’s Chicago.
Ever since, the group has worked to help citizens across the country hold their
elected officials accountable and gain access to the workings of
government.
Many politicians, in Ohio and elsewhere, are as allergic to such concepts
as Capone was to paying taxes. But Emily Miller, the BGA’s policy and government
affairs coordinator, observes that transparency is essential to combating
political corruption.
“Government exists only because taxpayers pay for it to exist,” Ms. Miller
told me. “You deserve to know how your money is being spent — that’s a basic
democratic right. And a normal person shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to
exercise that right.”
In Ohio, the hoops are formidable. Our state does especially badly, the BGA
study says, at protecting whistle-blowers — government employees who seek to
expose mismanagement, fraud, and waste where they work. Ms. Miller notes that in
Ohio, a would-be whistle-blower generally must report misbehavior first to a
supervisor. What if the boss is committing the abuse?
Ohio law doesn’t require governments to advise employees of their rights
when they blow the whistle. A whistle-blower must go to court to challenge an
employer’s retaliation; there is no administrative remedy. And while state law
imposes penalties on workers who falsely accuse public employers of retaliation,
it doesn’t provide explicit penalties for an employer who retaliates.
‘Pretty bad’
“It’s really pretty bad,” Ms. Miller says. “Whistle-blowers face
circumstances that can ruin their lives. If there aren’t adequate protections,
bad things won’t get reported.”
Ohio’s open-meetings law fares almost as dismally on the BGA index. The law
says governments must provide “reasonable” notice of a public meeting, but
doesn’t define that. They don’t have to let you record a meeting. Rules are
especially loose for “special” meetings where business can get rushed
through.
Ms. Miller adds that meeting notices don’t even have to include an agenda.
“If people don’t know what’s going to be talked about,” she says, “all the
notice in the world isn’t worth much.”
The state’s open-records law is somewhat better, but still mediocre.
Governments must act on requests for public records within a “reasonable” time —
but again, it isn’t defined. They can provide records electronically, but only
if that’s “feasible.”
There is no explicit appeals process, much less an expedited one, when
requests are denied. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has a system to mediate
records disputes, but it’s voluntary and limited. Otherwise, a citizen has to
take the government to court.
Finally, the study gives Ohio low marks on its law governing official
conflicts of interest. The law requires state-level elected officials and
political candidates to file financial disclosure forms (Michigan requires no
disclosure).
But the Ohio law does not require all forms to be posted online, where
access is easier. Ms. Miller notes that the content of the forms is “not that
detailed” — it does not include data about spouses’ financial holdings, for
example.
Secret agents
Obstacles to government accountability and responsiveness abound in Ohio.
Toledo Mayor Mike Bell continues to resist a court order to give The Blade the
Police Department’s map of gang territories in the city. The mayor has been
equally opaque about such matters as sources of foreign investment in the city
and his own official travels.
A new state law makes it easier for local governments in Ohio to meet
secretly to cut “economic development” deals with private interests. JobsOhio,
the private corporation that effectively replaced the state Department of
Development, spends lots of public money with little accountability.
Politicians routinely portray challenges to their secret conduct of public
business as special pleading by news media, rather than a fundamental right of
taxpayers. Ohio governments that are struggling financially to provide essential
services can’t be expected to spend time or money copying records for citizens,
they argue.
Wrong, the BGA says. “It’s times like these when people need to know more
than ever how their money is being spent,” Ms. Miller says. “Those expenses
should be baked into the cake.”
Official efforts at concealment are often abetted by self-appointed media
scolds who can have undisclosed agendas of their own. They assert that outlets
such as The Blade have no right to complain about government secrecy until we
disclose our own processes.
Publish a list of your executives’ salaries and other internal documents,
and let us join your newsroom discussions and editorial board meetings, they
say; only then can you credibly shine your spotlight on government.
That argument is bogus. But I’ve got a dog in the fight, so don’t take it
from me. Let Ms. Miller explain:
“Newspapers are private entities,” she says. “Somebody doesn’t have to buy
a newspaper; you choose to consume media. You don’t choose to consume government
— you pay for it.
“The press and the public are one and the same,” she adds. “The press isn’t
making some huge profit off of this. It’s fulfilling its duty to inform the
public about what government is doing. Newspapers have to pick up where
government leaves off, because no state is doing particularly well on
[transparency], and I don’t think that things are getting better.”
When Gov. John Kasich describes our state’s recovery from the Great
Recession, he likes to use the phrase “Ohio miracle.” But on the issue of
government accountability, another term comes to mind: Ohio’s
disgrace.
David Kushma is editor of The Blade. Contact him at: dkushma@theblade.com or on Twitter
@dkushma1
posted by Kathie Bracy at 12:39 PM
