Ballotpedia defines government transparency like this: “Openness, accountability, and honesty define government transparency. In a free society, transparency is the government’s obligation to share information with citizens. It is at the heart of how citizens hold their public officials accountable.”

There are a variety of ways to demonstrate that you are open and accountable. For example, the Ralph M. Brown Act requires public meetings to be open for public participation, and that agendas and staff reports be available to the public 72 hours prior to a meeting. That can be either on an old school bulletin board or internet page or both.

In Lompoc both methods are used, and the meetings are broadcast live on TAP TV, the local Public Education and Government channel, and live-streamed on the internet. There is also a robust archive of past City Council meetings going back at least a decade.

The city of Lompoc has a webpage that appears to offer more information than anyone would ever want to know about the operation of city government. But as we all know, webpages are only as good as the information contained on them. If all elements of an information source like this aren’t maintained with current data, it has little value.

As far as week-to-week government operations go, the city manager posts a weekly summary of events and activities https://www.cityoflompoc.com/home/showdocument?id=2116 ; the link leads to an example. It is informative but limited.

Several areas of the webpage are not very informative. For example, if you click on the Compliance Committee page, you see “no results found,” or the Public Safety Commission older archived agendas and minutes, again “no results found;” or on the Utility Commission page you’ll note there have only been two sets of meeting minutes posted since August 2018.

So, we don’t know what these committees discussed, who attended or what they recommended to the City Council. The government has an obligation to maintain minutes of public meetings, and I am certain the city of Lompoc does, but there are no legal requirements for the reporting of business after the fact unless the public specifically requests a document.

The government exists because of taxes/fees paid by the citizens it serves. Therefore, we taxpayers should be interested in how that money is spent.

For example, Community Development Block Grants and loans are used to help provide ownership opportunities for low-income home buyers, and development grants/loans to construct low-income rental housing.

In May 2014 the Lompoc City Council approved a monitoring policy following the failure of one nonprofit to pay back its loans and maintain its properties to federally established health and safety standards.

The council wanted periodic reports; however, a look at the CDBG/Housing Division webpage indicates the last compliance monitoring report was prepared in 2017.

I am only familiar with the way the city of Lompoc dispenses information to the public; I would hazard a guess that other government entities from the Community Service District level to the federal government have similar transparency challenges.

We really don’t know what’s going on with our government because either the information provided isn’t current or is buried so deep in a bureaucratic abyss that the average person could never find it or even know what to ask for in a Public Records Act request.

I see this issue as a financial challenge as much as I see it as limiting transparency. That’s because to maintain a website up to date on all matters of business for which a citizen might express interest and establish a thorough historical library consisting of thousands of documents annually, it would require the full-time efforts of a lot more than a single webmaster or public information officer.

This requires an intentional effort with a large commitment of budget dollars to keep all information regarding the local government entity current, accurate, and easy to research.  Maybe it would be easier just to eliminate portions of the website if current data isn’t going to be provided.

So, are our local, state and federal governments really that transparent, or are we left to guess what’s going on? It’s just a matter of what you want to spend your tax money for -— public safety, road repairs, parks and recreation, or data management.

References:
https://ballotpedia.org/Government_transparency

Lompoc compliance committee: https://www.cityoflompoc.com/government/committees-boards/compliance-committee/compliance-committee-archived-minutes-and-agendas

Lompoc Utility commission: https://www.cityoflompoc.com/government/committees-boards/utility-commission

Lompoc CDBG Multi-family monitoring report: https://www.cityoflompoc.com/home/showpublisheddocument/100/636652698042900000
 
 
Ron Fink
Lompoc

Ron Fink, a Lompoc resident since 1975, is retired from the aerospace industry. He has been following Lompoc politics since 1992, and after serving for 23 years appointed to various community commissions, retired from public service. The opinions expressed are his own.