Say Anything Blog

The State Policy Network, an organizing group for free-market think tanks, took notice of the North Dakota’s Democrats’ trashing of the ND Policy Council’s “Sunshine on Schools” idea.

Kurt Weber from that organization had this to say:

A North Dakota Policy Council policy paper recently suggested that school budgets be posted online. For this fundamental, progressive idea of transparent government, a North Dakota Democratic Party–NPL Blog contributor made an ad hominem attack on the policy paper’s author and used straw men arguments to divert attention from the point: open government. . . .

This radical idea – giving citizens more information about their government – helped get the author called “Right wing blogger extraordinaire”. . . .

Interestingly, a June 27, 2007 Say Anything blog asks, “And why the bitter attitude toward this sort of transparency from the Democrats? With school spending up 23%, or about $672,687,034 in 2006 dollars, while student enrollment is down some 16,000 or so students I think the taxpayers deserve to know where their money is going. And why it’s costing over half a billion additional tax dollars to educate thousands of fewer students.”

The simple question remains: Why do some people want to make it more difficult for citizens to learn how their tax dollars are spent? What is there to hide?

That’s an interesting question.  Why do North Dakota’s Democrats oppose this sort of transparency?  Especially with those same Democrats now self-righteously demanding transparency from the White House?  And if they don’t oppose it, what’s with the personal attacks on the people proposing it being posted by the party’s communications director, Rick Gion, on the official party blog?

If they do support this, great.  It’ll have no problem becoming law.  If they don’t oppose it, you know it’s because they want to spend more of North Dakota’s tax dollars without North Dakotans getting to know where it’s going.  Like the tax-and-spend liberals they are.

Update: The Sam Adams Alliance and the State Sunshine and Open Records blog piles on to Gion’s comments.

Something tells me that Mr. Gion’s bosses aren’t going to be too happy with him and his sophomoric jab at the ND Policy Council by the end of this.