Some Transparency

Josh Marshall congratulates the State of Louisiana, as a model of transparency compared with the federal government, for releasing publicly its copies of documents that provide an account of the disaster response to Hurricane Katrina. Of course, using the Bush administration as a benchmark of transparency for any organization is setting the bar pretty low.

I didn’t get as excited about this news, particularly when reading that distribution of the documents will be limited to the news media. According to the Governor’s office:

NOTE TO WORKING MEDIA FROM THE GOVERNOR'S PRESS OFFICE:
There are approximately 100,000 pages of documents that will be made available to the working media through a web based document management system at the Louisiana Department of Justice. In order to gain access to this system, please send a public records request on your news organization's letterhead including your name, address, telephone number and email address to the Governor's Press Office. . . .

“Non-working media” (meaning bloggers) and the public need not apply. Some transparency. This isn’t helping us much in getting prepared for future disasters.