For a nation created on freedom, we suck at it.
President Obama, when running for office, declared that his administration would be the most open one in American history. That not only didn’t happen, all Freedom of Information requests have to go through the White House. The problem is they go into the White House and either disappear or become so expensive that no one wants to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars for paperwork that every American should have easy access to.
I thought it would become easier to get information from the state or local levels of government but after doing so I changed my mind. I might as well get into the meat of things by starting with the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which is a total oxymoron if I ever heard of one.
Maine has had a record number of cases of chicken pox this year and yet the citizens of Maine aren’t being told where the outbreaks are happening in our state. Do these people get paid with our tax dollars? If they do, they need to be fired or transferred to the Maine Legislature where they would be among equals. My best guess is the chicken pox outbreaks are probably centered around the school districts with a high percentage of students that haven’t been vaccinated, which is another embarrassing statistic for Maine. I not only had chicken pox as a youngster, I had the wonderful other result of having that disease, shingles. I have had the shingles vaccine and hopefully that ends it for me.
What’s amazing is that in many other places across this country there would be a public announcement of an outbreak of a contagious disease. The Maine CDC uses the good old government excuse of privacy but I am sure people living in the municipalities where the outbreaks occurred already know who and when. The shame of it is our state government is slamming its doors shut just like other levels of government. The sad part is that there are children whose immune systems have been compromised and if parents of those children don’t know what diseases are present, the consequences could be horrible. I have already mentioned that Windham didn’t send out any figures on vaccinations so who knows what could happen here.
Near the end of May there was a “security issue” at the Maine State Police Barracks located in Gray. Evidently several police units responded to the incident, which has never been described. I have looked for further information on that incident and have yet to find any. It certainly makes me wonder what happened there and if a cover-up of some kind is going on. Guess we might never know.
It’s time to open up the doors of government at every level. In Windham we do not know what was negotiated with unions that rely on our tax dollars for salaries and benefits. Other states are beginning to open the doors to those negotiations and it’s time that happens here as well. Lawsuits settled against Windham are another item that needs to be opened to the public. If those in government don’t like having an open door policy, then they can go elsewhere for employment.
I had never heard of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board until recently. It is a private, non-governmental agency that establishes and improves standards of local and state governments in regard to financial reporting and government accounting. It will require that state and local governments report their unfunded retiree benefit obligations on their balance sheets. It might not cover some things depending on how a state or local government funds them so it will be interesting to see what happens with this. It will make benefit costs more visible for taxpayers although it might make their financial positions look bad.
Lane Hiltunen of Windham says call the Chinese and Russian governments if you want to know our government secrets.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
