Democracy & Open Government
Just one more thing, I know, but this hits close to home for me from my past Justice United work and the great cooperation we received from governments in OC.
PROHIBIT CERTAIN CONTRACT REQUIREMENTS BY LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
SECTION 5.(a) G.S. 153A‑449 reads as rewritten:
"§ 153A‑449. Contracts with private entities.
A county may contract with and appropriate money to any person, association, or corporation, in order to carry out any public purpose that the county is authorized by law to engage in. A county may not require a private contractor under this section to abide by any restriction that the county could not impose on all employers in the county, such as paying minimum wage or providing paid sick leave to its employees, as a condition of bidding on a contract."
SECTION 5.(b) G.S. 160A‑20.1 reads as rewritten:
"§ 160A‑20.1. Contracts with private entities.
We've had several discussions lately about what some of us would like to see from county government in terms of communications and information technology. Perhaps the county naming a new Chief Information Officer will be an opportunity for a new focus in the county on open data, open standards, and information access. What do you think? The first item on my wishlist (half jokingly) would be to have him work with Public Affairs to find a better solution than using Microsoft Office to format emailed press releases. Why? Because Microsoft's use of proprietary stylesheets makes the formatting of documents break when text is copied into other programs, unless I go through and manually edit the code.
I know the folks in county government are hard working people with a lot on their plate, so I hope any suggestion is given (and received, too) as well-meaning constructive feedback. From an Orange County press release:
As you might have noticed about a month ago on June 3, Orange County (finally!) joined Twitter and Facebook in an attempt to enhance their social media presence and public engagement/outreach.
I say in an attempt because if you've been following the County's Twitter or Facebook, you've probably realized just how awful the tweets and updates from the County have been.
With all the talk about restructuring Chapel Hill's advisory boards, I thought it might be good time to publicly share my idea for a new board to help foster better civic engagement and more open government, while also addressing the gap left by firing the technology advisory board 7 years ago. I shared this proposal with the Mayor's Committee on Communications
in late 2010, but there didn't seem to be much interest at the time.
Maybe now there is an opportunity to do something to make Chapel
Hill more participatory and democratic.
Not
enough Chapel Hill residents participate in public meetings and
advisory boards. This lack of engagement leaves the Town at a
disadvantage without the valuable input of a broad range of Chapel
Hillians, and also leaves many people feeling frustrated and cut off
from decisions that impact their lives and issues that concern them.
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