Promoting government transparency and accessibility

National Sunshine week, is a national nonpartisan collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, government and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government.

This week MASSPIRG joined the ACLU, Common Cause, Massachusetts Budget & Policy Center, and the New England First Amendment Coalition in calling on the city of Worcester to reinstate Open Checkbook, their city spending transparency website.

MASSPIRG has long fought for transparency in government spending. “As taxpayers, we should not only be able to see how government spends our money, but we should also be able to evaluate the impact of that spending,” said MASSPIRG’s Legislative Director, Deirdre Cummings, when  releasing Following the Money, 2019, MASSPIRG’s tenth evaluation of online government spending transparency.

And on Sunday, the Boston Globe editorialized in support of our campaign to update the Open Meeting Law, “Hybrid public meetings are a pandemic innovation worth keeping”.

MASSPIRG, working with a coalition of disability and open government advocates, is calling for the passage of An Act to Modernize Participation in Public Meetings to update the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law to guarantee hybrid meetings. As opposed to meetings conducted exclusively in person or exclusively online, hybrid meetings maximize civic engagement by allowing participants to choose the format that works best for them.