Georgia "collected more than $30 million in fees from Georgians last year for programs designed to clean up landfills, tire dumps and hazardous sites and to improve 911 services. The governor and state lawmakers put less than $2 million of the fee revenue toward those programs."
Many publications and groups schedule special stories, reports, panels, or events during this week to promote freedom of information and to exercise their First Amendment rights. Find suggestions at the American Society of News Editors' official Sunshine Week website.
Now that you have long since published your story about the disappearance of BP's oil from the Gulf, you may want to check the math that story was based on using newly released technical information.
Is it a security risk for the American public to find out the risks presented by climate change? A recent story on the Central Intelligence Agency's Center on Climate Change and National Security by the Medill National Security Reporting Project was noteworthy in that all of its sources were unnamed.
Teresa Chambers, who was fired by the Bush administration in 2004 for talking to the news media, has been reinstated by the Merit Systems Protection Board as chief of police for the National Park Service.
Join open-government advocates (including journalists) in blowing the whistle on the anonymous senator who stopped the people's business in the final hours of the last Congress. Call senators, ask if they killed the bill, record your findings or track progress.
Kudos to the Sunlight Foundation for taking lobbyist data to the next level. It's searchable by issue, by client, or by registrant. It is also highly current — being updated weekly.
Anonymous White House lawyers have blacked out all information about how the administration's science openness policy was arrived at, and are fighting in court against efforts to shed light on it.
"Former House majority leader Tom DeLay, the brash Texan who helped build and tightly control a Republican majority in his chamber until resigning in 2005, was sentenced by a state judge on Monday to three years in prison for illegally plotting to funnel corporate contributions to Texas legislative candidates."
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