Monday, April 13, 2009

Blog Censorship Battle: State of Maine vs. maineopengov.org

Maine's state senators are waging a battle against maineopengov.org, a government transparency site maintained by Maine Heritage Policy Center. I discovered this interesting story thanks to a tweet from twitter.com/taxreformer, the Twitter page for ATR, (Americans for Tax Reform) a nonprofit lobbying, research and educational organization that advocates low taxes and limited government.

ATR's article on the controversy: Censorship Effort Underway in Maine? is posted on their Center for Fiscal Accountability page. I read the article and decided to take a look at maineopengov.org to see what all the outrage was about, but I didn't find anything different than you would see in any public records collection. Here's what the mainopengov.org includes:

• A listing of more than $1 billion in vendor payments from the State of Maine in fiscal years 2006 and 2007 to a company, contractor, vendor or individual.
• All retirees receiving a pension from Maine Public Employees Retirement System
• Payroll for executive, judicial and legislative office, as well as local school districts, Maine Maritime Academy, Maine Community College System, State Retirees and the University of Maine system.

Maine's Assistant Majority Leader Lisa Marraché, a Democrat from Waterville,sponsored bill LD 1353: An act regarding salary information for public employees. Marrache objects to the listing names on the site, claiming it's a violation of the person's privacy.

Maineopengov.org responded:

Censoring the names of public employees opens the door for massive taxpayer-paid bonuses, salary hikes and secret deals to occur in the shadows, because this vital information would become inaccessible to citizens and the media.
 

The fate of this bill could set an interesting precedent for similar cases involving public information. Stay tuned.

By Matt O'Hern at 05:52 PM | Comments (0)

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