Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand is a Democrat from Albany (NY-20) in her first term. In her first few months in office, she's started two common-sense efforts that both serve her constituents and increase transparency.
First, she's published her daily schedule on her website. This might seem like a small thing, but she's one of a
half-dozen members (and two senators) who do so.
Second, she's tried to increase the number of grant applications in her district. According to a
Albany Times-Union story, she's had her staff launch a "grants central" section of her website to help connect constituents with available federal grants. As I've
explained here earlier, the grant process is far more transparent than earmarks, since it requires that grant applicants meet a set of requirements mandated by law and supervised by non-political federal appointees.
These are two simple, non-partisan, good government reforms. The 29th deserves the same level of transparency from its representative.
(Thanks to
the Albany Project for posting about the Times-Union story.)
Comments
I do agree that this shouldn't be a partisan issue, but I don't think you should single out Congressman Kuhl on this when there are 429 congressmen and 98 senators who also don't post their daily schedules on their websites. If a majority of them posted their daily schedules online, then fine, but it appears not to be the custom to do. My post was showing the other features Congressman Kuhl's website has, particularly his Town Hall Meetings schedule (which none of the area congressmen have), and I'm sure you must agree, it has a lot more content and information for constituents than other area congressional websites do.
I agree that Rep Kuhl has a pretty good site, and though I've disagreed with the content of some of his blog posts, I think it's a good idea in general.
I hope that Rep Kuhl will be a leader in transparency, and saying that we deserve the same level of transparency is meant as encouragement, not critique.