Sen. Ulysses Currie sat in silence Friday as the Senate chair of the Joint Ethics Committee, his seatmate Norman Stone, read the findings of an ethics investigation that called for a resolution to censure Currie and remove him from leadership positions on committees and subcommittees. All 47 senators, including Currie, voted for the censure after he made a tearful apology. [...more]
Republican lawmakers presented a bill to block public access to petitions in order to prevent intimidation and personal attacks on Thursday. [...more]
Maryland lags behind other states in making government information easy for citizens to access online, open government advocates said, despite Gov. Martin O'Malley's push to make Maryland more digitally transparent. [...more]
A change to the House of Delegates to curtail “dilatory or frivolous” conduct was approved Thursday morning, but not without rounds of objections from the chamber’s Republican minority. [...more]
Bills to add transparency and checks and balances to signatures on referendum petitions were scrutinized by the House Ways and Means Committee, but seemed to receive lukewarm support on Wednesday. [...more]
A mockup of a redesigned Maryland General Assembly website left most members of the Joint Committee on Transparency and Open Government entirely unimpressed. [...more]
Enthusiasm for making the General Assembly the most transparent branch of government echoed at the first meeting of the Joint Committee on Transparency and Open Government on Wednesday morning. [...more]
Campaign finance reports in Maryland are getting more transparent and easier to search with the new campaign finance website launched this week by the Maryland State Board of Elections. The new website, located at www.campaignfinance.maryland.gov, upgrades and further automates reporting and disclosure of the money behind campaigns. [...more]
Instead of a service that was once free, Maryland citizens and businesses will now have to pay a $190 annual subscription fee to the Secretary of State’s office if they wish to access the most timely government information published by the Maryland Register. [...more]
Senate President Mike Miller and Speaker of the House Michael Busch named the 12 members of the new legislative joint committee responsible for improving government transparency on Thursday. Sen. Bill Ferguson, D-Baltimore City, and House Majority Leader Kumar Barve, D-Montgomery, will co-chair the committee. I [...more]
