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How the New iPhone Will Expose Cities Lagging on Open Data

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How the New iPhone Will Expose Cities Lagging on Open Data

Long Beach needs to get up to speed about open data sharing.

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Popular Posts

Why Mayor Garcia Won't Veto the Bad Ordinance on Office Holder Accounts

By the time this is published, the deadline to veto the recently passed office holder account ordinance will have passed and it will have become law.
The ordinance allows council members, the Mayor, City Prosecutor, City Attorney and City Auditor, to raise funds for their "office holder accounts" and then to contribute those funds to other political campaigns.
Mayor Robert Garcia should have vetoed this very bad law, but he didn't.
Here's why.
The voters of the City of Long Beach enacted campaign finance reform back in 1994 to try and stem the flow of special interest money into local elections and to "allow candidates and officeholders to spend a lesser proportion of their time on fund raising and a greater proportion of their time dealing with issues of importance to their constituents."
The Long Beach Campaign Reform Act was the brain-child of the Long Beach Area Citizens Involved (LBACI that also moved the City to form council districts instead of elec…

How To Wake Up City Hall

Take a few moments to read this thought-provoking paper on how we can turn the concerns of voters, particularly on the eastside of Long Beach, into positive action to get our elected officials to "wake up" to our concerns.

Click on the link and read the paper, then email me at: schipske@gmail.com and let me know what you think.

Article Discusses the Tyrannies of Local Government

It is ironic that last night the City Council without any dissent, passed the City Budget in record time (even before all council districts were able to hold public meetings on the budget) ignoring the continued concerns of many residents about the lack of adequate police services particularly in and around City parks and today an article (http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119249/fergusons-lesson-local-government-poses-real-threat-liberty) appears in The Nation titled: The Greatest Threat to Our Liberty Is Local Governments Run Amok.
The article rightly points out with the lack of strong local media watchdogs and elections that are bought by special interests, local elected officials have developed political monopolies and enact proposals that do not reflect the concerns of their constituents:
Political scientist Jessica Trounstine calls “political monopoly”—officials and organizations who have so effectively defeated any potential predators that they can lazily begin to gorge. She …

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