Friday, September 19, 2008
News / Clout City Digging for dirt
Posted by Ben Joravsky on 09.19.08 at 05:53 PM
Good news for information junkies and City Hall watchdogs.
City clerk Miguel del Valle has made good on his campaign promise to open things up a little bit. At the very least, he recently finished posting on his Web site all the City Council journals of proceedings going back to 1980.
The journal keeps track of all legislation approved by the City Council -- everything from TIFs to zoning changes. Del Valle's site also has roll call votes, so you can see how your alderman voted on the issues of the day.
I could say, well, it's about time. But that would be ungrateful. So thank you, city clerk del Valle. I was wrong and you were right -- there are some good things a city clerk can do, even with the big boss on the fifth floor. I also take back all the snide things I wrote -- actually quoting your old friend Congressman Luis Gutierrez -- when you joined Mayor Daley's ticket.
Now about those TIFs . . .
Comments (5)
Showing 1-5 of 5
like
dislike
Technology is wonderful eh? Even a little kid could figure out how to scan the years of documents and put them on a computer.
The kudos aren't for technological wizardry, they're for doing the right thing. The technology was there for years, but only del Valle was willing to use it. And he deserves our thanks.
Yes, this is a nice improvement. However, the clerk's office continues to refuse to release the original, machine-readable word-processing documents (where they exist) (claiming, somewhat ludicrously, that the draft document/deliberative process exemption to the state FOIA applies), insisting on clumsy PDFs based on scanned page images and error-filled OCR. This makes it more difficult than necessary to do anything interesting with the data. I've written about this at http://flyoverblues.com at greater length -- I'm particularly curious to see what, if anything, comes of the plan to build a proper legislation tracking system as mentioned in the Chicago Talks article.
some people in west town may recall del valle attending a public meeting. the organizers would only allow you in if you consented to sign a document supporting their cause...no good memories of del valle for me. he was standing in line ahead of me while i was being refused admittance. it was all about race and politics.
