FBI Raid, John Doe Probe Put Walker Transparency Pledge To The Test

Just a reminder, as a John Doe probe unfolds, that Walker said of transparency during his Gubernatorial campaign, and posted on his candidate website, "I've lived it...it would apply to anything..."

The text came from a newspaper interview the Walker campaign thought important enough to reprint, just below the Walker campaign's web page graphic.

You can decide whether Walker's year in office that began with a sneak-attack on collective bargaining, garnered the most PolitiFact "false" ratings of any Wisconsin public figure and has run through today's Journal Sentinel continually-updating story - -

FBI seizes items at home of former top aide to Gov. Walker 

- - meshes with his sweeping claim and endorsement of transparency.

Walker, Neumann talk about their designs for Wisconsin's future (Lakeland Times)

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

By: Richard Moore

...Transparency

When he says he believes in government transparency, it's not just a campaign slogan, Walker said.

"I don't just say that, I've lived it," he said. "(In Milwaukee County), we have put all government purchases online at no additional cost. Every purchase, everything we enter into our accounting software, automatically in real time goes on to a website that tells the public every purchase by department. Not only a journalist but a citizen journalist or anybody else can track it down."

Walker said he does not favor proposed constraints on access to police 911 tapes or to the state's online circuit court records, and he says he also believes the Legislature itself needs to be more transparent.

"In fact I've even proposed - in terms of the budget process, but it would apply to anything - other things that would help transparency," he said. "I don't think there should be any votes in closed caucus, on any issue. If a county board or school board can't discuss a budget in private, then the state Legislature certainly should not. There should not be any closed caucuses on the budget."

What's more, he said, the budget should only entail budgetary items; there shouldn't be any nonfiscal items in it.

"And I would make it, by statute, that the Legislature can't vote on anything after 10 at night or before 9 in the morning," Walker said. "They did things this last (budget) at 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning. As I tell my staff, nothing good happens after midnight. But they did it on purpose because not only do they not want average persons to know, they don't want reporters with deadlines to know - after 10 you miss the nightly TV news and you're not in print for the daily newspapers. They push it back on a Saturday, hoping people won't read about things like that"