While the Obama Administration waffles on openness and transparency (see here and here), private citizens are stepping in to fill the void.
The Heritage Foundation and other groups launched ReadtheStimulus.org to give citizens a chance to work their way through the massive spending proposal, flag suspicious language, and make suggestions. In other words, it’s a way for average citizens to do the work that too many of their elected officials are unwilling to do: actually reading and analyzing pending legislation.
If the media buzz has been any indication, ReadtheStimulus.org has been a tremendous success.
Today we welcome to the Web another site dedicated to opening up the stimulus to public scrutiny: StimulusWatch.org. This slick Web 2.0 site, put together by Jerry Brito and a band of volunteers, catalogues the thousands of “shovel-ready” projects that were proposed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors–projects that are expected to make up a large percentage of stimulus spending. It gives citizens the opportunity to comment on projects in their area. E.g., is it really ready to go? Is it critical? Or is it just pork?
StimulusWatch.org is the perfect complement to ReadtheStimulus.org, and both sites represent a real advance in citizen participation in government and an opportunity to bring some accountability to what would otherwise be a pork-fest.
So go check it out and contribute what you know about proposed projects in your city and state.
