By Gina Macris
Journal Staff Writer
The Transparency Train, produced by the Ocean State Policy Research Institute, and the Money Trail, a project of the Rhode Island Statewide Coalition Foundation, are part of a growing number of specialty Web sites across the nation that shine the light on government in a way that was not possible before the advent of the Internet.
The Money Trail rates Rhode Island school districts, cities and towns on their willingness to respond to requests for public records.
The Coventry schools, for example, get a “thumbs down” for a $2,400 estimate they gave The Money Trail to retrieve and reproduce about 300 documents.
Meanwhile, on The Transparency Train, information-seekers may tailor their requests through a powerful search tool, so that asking for “Blue Cross” will pull up links to some 200 contracts in which public money goes to Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island.
Requests for public information through The Transparency Train have resulted in 72 open-records complaints filed with the state attorney general, 17 of which have been resolved with the release of the information, according to the Web site’s sponsor, William Felkner, president of OSPRI.
Among other things, the Transparency Train has requested monthly check registers from the cities and towns so that citizens can track spending as it occurs.
Web site development and document preparation does not come cheap. Felkner estimated that OSPRI will have spent about $130,000 on the five-part Transparency Train by the end of the year, all of the funds coming from the private sector.
Harriet Lloyd, project director for The Money Trail, declined to disclose the budget for that Web site, which among other things covers the cost of Web development and legal advice, saying only that it is “substantial.”
With its enormous storage capacity for digital images, the Web can put voluminous amounts of information just a click or two away.
But in Rhode Island, government has not necessarily kept up with the capacity of the Internet — or responded to requests for voluminous public records.
The town clerk’s office in at least one community, Tiverton, does not have a scanner to convert paper records to a digital format, although one is on order.
Lloyd said she doesn’t understand why government agencies don’t make electronic copies of all their records as a part of routine office procedure.
She says there is a “culture of concealment” in Rhode Island that contributes to Rhode Islanders’ cynicism about their government.
RISC plans to have legislation introduced in the General Assembly next year to require government agencies to maintain electronic records, she said.
Lloyd said she is most disturbed by some of the estimated costs cited by agencies for scanning or copying public records.
In Coventry, Schools Supt. Kenneth R. DiPietro initially estimated it would cost $4,500 in clerical time to provide the Money Trail with what he calls an unprecedented volume of information, including hundreds of contracts worth $10,000 or more that run to tens of thousands of pages in their entirety.
He said he lowered the estimate to $2,400 after the School Department’s lawyer told him he could not charge more than $15 an hour, after the first hour.
DiPietro took strong exception to any implication that his department is trying to conceal records. Collective-bargaining agreements, for example, are already posted online.
Meanwhile, the idea for the Transparency Train, launched in July, grew out of a blog maintained by OSPRI founder Felkner in his role as a member of the Chariho Regional School Committee for the last two years.
But Felkner’s zeal in giving the public access to all the information that came his way as a School Committee member ruffled feathers, particularly when he disclosed the substance of ongoing contract negotiations that had taken place behind closed doors.
The Transparency Train is at transparencytrain.org.
The Money Trail is at themoneytrail.org.
gmacris@projo.com
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