Transparency disconnects

Anyone who looks at any Virginia newspaper or website has seen the articles by now recapping the in-person meeting of gubernatorial candidates Ken Cuccinelli (R) and Terry McAuliffe (D) at the annual fundraiser for the Virginia Public Access Project.

Most of the headlines highlighted the candidates' clash over transparency. Cuccinelli said McAuliffe isn't transparent because he has not released his tax returns, only summaries, and he made a veiled reference to McAuliffe's failure to announce his departure from GreenTech Automotive, a company he started.

McAuliffe said Cuccinelli isn't transparent because he did not fully disclose his financial ties to Star Scientific, a company that was in a dispute with the state over unpaid taxes and whose owner gave Cuccinelli lots of campaign cash. (But how could he forget to add that Cuccinelli's office earlier this month said the AG wasn't subject to FOIA?)

Let's face it: neither candidate will be trying out for the role of Mr. Cellophane any time soon.

But I think both candidates have a disconnect about what it really means to be transparent. Transparency isn't about revealing things about yourself that the other guy thinks you should. Transparency is about releasing information regardless of the political consequences, and regardless of the government's assessment of the information's value.

Transparency is about setting a standard that says: the public's business is the public's business. Work done in the public's name should be open and available to the public to see. They should be able to see what they want to see (subject to exemptions) without the government telling them what it thinks they should see. Meetings should be open and accessible. Data should be routinely published online and developers should be encouraged to access that data to develop products and services of use to the commonwealth.

That's the beauty of the Virginia Public Access Project: they take the raw data of campaign finance and they package it in a neutral and easily useable format that let's people see the connections between money and politics. They can draw whatever conclusions they like. That's the best thing about raw data: it doesn't have a spin. VPAP is a worthy organization that is well deserving of its many followers and supporters. In fact, I'm so jealous of the organization's impact and relevance that I could have my own color in the Crayola Crayon box: VPAP Envy Green.

But here's another disconnect: the supporters of VPAP must realize that the information the organization relies on is PUBLIC information. Without public records, there would be no VPAP. Yet many folks tend to forget about the role public records plays in the formation of what they then call "transparency." And by the time the legislature gins up each year, it's more about information lock down than it is about finding ways to make access to records and meetings better.

So while candidates topple over one another claiming to be the next champion of transparency, I wish they would take a moment to stop and think about what it means to the everyday citizen, the workaday reporter, the long-serving lawyer to have regular and consistent access to government records and meetings.

Transparency isn't about YOU, guys. It's about US.