#independent-commission

#independent-commission

Rep. Chip Roy stated, 'We aren't getting the job done. Part of that is because we are bound by this big, broken, fake filibuster of 60 votes. But part of it is you gotta have the willpower to do it.'

John Kaehny has written and successfully lobbied for the passage of state and New York City laws related to government transparency and accountability, including the first open data law in the world in 2012.

Sheryl Davis is accused of steering millions of dollars to Collective Impact, a San Francisco-based nonprofit she previously ran as executive director, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday by the San Francisco District Attorney's Office.

The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office must comply with subpoenas issued by the county's civilian oversight board as part of a whistleblower investigation into alleged misconduct, a state appeals court ruled Thursday.

"The administration is putting more of a thumb on the scale of CIGIE," said Faith Williams, the director of the Effective and Accountable Government Program at the Project on Government Oversight nonprofit.

Losing staff could be detrimental to the projects we worked on, and there was a growing dissatisfaction with how meetings were run. These mostly one-sided discussions left the quieter half of us feeling pushed aside, like our thoughts didn't matter much. If things stayed this way, I worried the good people on our team would start quitting one by one.

In the early 20th century, sociologist Max Weber noted that sweeping industrialization would transform how societies worked. As small, informal operations gave way to large, complex organizations with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, leaders would need to rely less on tradition and charisma, and more on organization and rationality. He also foresaw that jobs would need to be broken down into specialized tasks and governed by a system of hierarchy,

Dear Transparency-Committed Reader, You're not alone. So many of us want decision-making to reflect our collective values (like transparency, care, and shared power), but it's hard to actually put those values into practice. That gap between what we believe and how we decide can be frustrating. And getting stuck in the process is a common concern I hear from groups. I am happy to share, though, that decision-making doesn't have to be a nightmare.

Since Richard Nixon was forced to resign, powerful people in both political parties have worked assiduously to ensure that their leaders would escape the consequences of their actions. Trump has evaded punishment for crimes both low (campaign-finance violations, for which he was convicted, though he will serve no time thanks to his 2024 victory) and high (his attempted overthrow of the federal government in the aftermath of his 2020 election loss, for which he was spared by the Supreme Court's decision to grant him a kingly immunity).

It was nearly a decade ago that Oakland voters overwhelmingly agreed in the ballot boxes that the city needed citizen oversight of the police department. Many hoped at the time that the newly established watchdog body would eventually take the reins from federal officials who have maintained control of the Oakland Police Department for now over two decades. But the commission comprised of seven volunteer members still seems to be struggling to gain footing within Oakland's complex bureaucratic tangles.

In this new season, I'm asking how the Trump White House is rewriting the rules of U.S. politics, and talking to Americans whose lives have been changed as a result. Today's episode examines the destruction of the civil service: the removal of professionals, and their replacement with loyalists. I've seen this kind of transformation before, in other failing democracies. Everyone suffers from the degradation of public services.

"Are you okay?" These were Alex Pretti's last words, said to a woman after ICE agents had tackled and pepper-sprayed her. Videos from bystanders show Pretti holding up a phone, attempting to document what was happening before he himself was pepper-sprayed, wrestled to the ground, and killed by those officers. He lost his life not for committing violence, but for documenting it, and stepping in to protect someone facing it.