From the Department of Things No One Disagrees With, perennial political question mark, Bruce Lisman, has once again emerged from his burrow to announce importantly that government in Vermont should strive for more transparency.

What made this nonplussing pronouncement that much more underwhelming was the fact that it appeared in the Free Press directly above the announcement of Secretary of State Jim Condos’ second “Transparency Tour” since his election in 2010.  Transparency has, in fact, been a central theme in his tenure as Sec. of State.

I had the opportunity to attend one of his public events on the first “Transparency Tour.”  St. Albans had been experiencing some controversies, and Sec. Condos came here to answer questions and teach a “refresher course” in basic rules of open meetings.  It was a great presentation and I learned much in that one evening.

Since he took office, Sec. Condos has been working tirelessly, and as quickly as budget constraints will allow, to update the interfaces for public access to things like campaign and election data.  I have found that he and his staff make themselves extremely available for questions and do a pretty impressive job of providing information despite the challenges inherent in trying to upgrade systems during a belt-tightening phase.

In his Free Press cameo appearance, Mr. Lisman states in the broadest terms what everyone agrees should be the goals for open government.

There are no specific new suggestions as to how this goal of greater transparency (which is undisputed) should be achieved, just restatement of the obvious and the suggestion that yet another layer of government be added, “a transparency authority,” which according to Mr. Lisman, should include representatives of the Ethan Allen Institute and the Public Assets Institute.

(I erroneously identified PAI as being right-leaning, and apologize for the mistake.)

These organizations already function in a watchdog role, independent of the process.   In my opinion, that’s a much better arrangement.

So long as Mr. Lisman has big bucks and coyly refuses to drop the last veil on his political bias, the media will no doubt give him ink and flatter his notions of self-importance, even when he really has nothing of substance to say.