The Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association and its leader, Robert Ambrogi, deserve our thanks for their fight to open more of our state and local government to public inspection ("Guest View: A ray of hope for the Public Records Law," March 18). Government works best when it's most transparent. I have been proud to have joined Bob and the MNPA, Common Cause, MASSPIRG and others in that fight. While we have won several important victories, there remains much to accomplish.
In 2009, the Legislature reformed the Open Meeting Law, adopting a proposal contained in legislation I had filed to centralize enforcement of that law with the attorney general. In that same year, I instituted the Capital Spending Transparency Project, as chairman of the Legislature's House Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditure and State Assets, with the goal of making all state capital spending available online. In 2011, the Legislature created the state "Open Checkbook," a website that allows everyone with Internet access to see state expenditures. Each legislative session, my committee holds nearly a dozen public hearings where the heads of state executive offices and agencies and several of the largest state authorities, such as MassPort, detail their capital projects and plans for future capital spending.
While we've made progress, much work remains. I have filed several bills that would promote government transparency. As Bob noted, the Massachusetts Public Records Law needs updating in very basic ways: requiring that records that are already in electronic form be made available electronically when requested; making sure that fees charged reflect the actual cost of producing documents, not an inflated cost designed to discourage requests; and designating a person in each agency to be responsible for all public records requests. Continue>>>
======