We’ve cleared another Roanoke City Council election cycle, but this time around, the residue of it includes more than bad feelings, losers and some new faces on the council dais.

It includes a special prosecutor and allegations of candidates and an unregistered political action committee running afoul of state election laws.

It also includes what is now an incomplete record of the financing of this election, despite laws that demand a complete, accurate and transparent record.

As a data-geek, a journalist who believes fervently that open government is good for everybody, and the purveyor of a database of city council campaign contributions , that troubles me.

The record of this election apparently has a signifiant hole in it. How big a hole?

Continue reading "Citizens for Sensible Decisions: Re-create the books on this off-the-books PAC" »

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Today, the city of Roanoke is once again auctioning off properties on which there are unpaid local real estate taxes, assessments for weed and trash abatement, and demolition or board up costs. They do this once or twice a year. More than 30 properties are on the auction block this time, a number of which are vacant lots.

You can see the list on the city's department of billings and collections website, and there are photos on the Woltz and Associates site.

But I wondered where they were, so I tossed the list onto a map:

No surprises here, really. It's the more depressed parts of town where the pinpoints fall. But part of the story might be in where there aren't any pinpoints.

As Roanoke blogger and neighborhood activist Chris Muse points out, the presence of delinquent properties "a fairly good sign of the progression or regression of a neighborhood."

Chris is rightly proud that there's a single delinquent property on the list this time in his part of Old Southwest. I know that property, and while I haven't asked Chris, I wonder if some aren't glad to see that vacant property seeing some action and the potential for a new owner to make it a credit to the neighborhood, and not a blight on it.

That, after all, is what the city says it's up to with these tax sales. It might be a bad sign when your neighborhood is host to landowners who can't or won't pay their taxes or maintain their properties. But everytime one of those properties is turned over to a new owners, it's a new chance for the land, the house, and the neighborhood.

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Campaign funding for Roanoke City Council races went through the roof in 2006. Comparitively, anyway. With the fate of Victory Stadium in the balance, money rolled into the campaigns, and as it turned out, the cash-infused independent "For the City" ticket swept the election. That prompted cries of the seats being bought by Roanoke's well-heeled, especially the Business Leadership Fund, the political action committee of the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce, which pumped tens of thousands of dollars into the coffers of all three "For the City" candidates -- David Trinkle, Gwen Mason and Alfred Dowe.

That election seemed to have changed the game, and brought to local elections, at least in a more significant way, the idea of special interest groups buying influence. It also shined a light on the importance of making more available information on where money to finance political campaigns comes from, even at the local level.

You can find that very information for both the 2006 and the current Roanoke City Council elections right now in the DataSphere.

Take a look, and see how much the candidates are raising, and from whom. And, just as important, see where in the city is that money coming from, because the addresses of the donors are mapped for you.

You can see, for example, that mayoral candidate David Bowers, while he has a hefty warchest with over $15,000 raised, has funded his campaign almost entirely from his own wallet with a personal loan.

Thanks to the mapping, you can plainly see that newcomer council candidate Court Rosen, who is the leader in dollars raised, is funded almost entirely by contributions from his neighbors in Roanoke's well-to-do South Roanoke neighborhood, as well as that same Business Leadership Fund. (That's a map of his contributors on the left.) The same goes for Mayor Nelson Harris in his re-election bid.

You can also search by donor, and see what kinds of candidates a particular donor tends to support.

It's all there, and it's all a matter of public record. Candidates for local office are required to file disclosure forms detailing each contribution with their local voter registrar. The Roanoke Times collects these paper records and, working with the Virginia Public Access Project, converts them to electronic records. Thanks to VPAP for that. VPAP, which maintains a terrific database of statewide campaign finance data, also has information in individual donors, such as their professions, which they add to the data in the public records.

So, you tell me, is anyone buying influence in this election? What does it say about our political process, when campaign finance comes from such limited quarters? All those things you hear about special interests funding for in federal and state election campaigns, can they really be problems at the local level, too?

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State Sen. Ralph Smith, R-Botetourt, is a miserly fellow, he’s never been ashamed to say. The businessman's tight with his money. That's one reason why he's got so much of it. So, it was no big surprise for me to learn that his stock portfolio includes stock in discount shopping mecca WalMart valued between $10,001 and $50,000.

We regular citizens get to know this stuff because our elected officials have to disclose it, though not in great detail. From local councils up to the state capitol, our elected leaders must file statements of economic disclosure. And while you could request these records yourself from the government, a dandy organization called the Virginia Public Access Project saves you the work and makes it all readily available on its website.

This stuff isn't just for our amusement – though it can be amusing, I’ll confess. The reason is so that we work-a-day folks know where our legislators’ financial interests lie. Then we can tell if their legislating is really in the interest of those who elected them, or in the interest of boosting the value of their own portfolios.

Continue reading "What our legislators put stock in -- literally" »

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Well, not exactly priceless.

As covered in today's Roanoke Times by Laurence Hammack, Roanoke City Council members tallied nearly $35,000 on expenses in 2007 on meals, travel, conferences, gala events and the like.

The lead is that Councilman Alfred Dowe racked up nearly half of council's total all by himself.

And if you want to see how Dowe, and every other council member, spent that money, you can track every penny in our database of council's individual expenses. That's right, see where they traveled, who they went to lunch with, and how much they -- or rather the taxpayer -- paid.

The $35k is not such a huge amount in the context of the $250 million city budget. The spending no doubt brought value to the city. Council members, while they do receive a salary, are called upon to meet with all kinds of people and attend functions on city business. And attending conferences to learn what's going on in other cities that our fair city might be improved, it's hard to argue that's a bad thing.

But how much is too much? In all, council members turned in 209 expense items on their city-issued credit cards. (One item might include everything related to an out of town trip.) Dowe accounted for about 90 of those items. Council members turned in conference expenses 34 times (with some conferences attended by up to three council members). Dowe attended 10 conferences on his own, eight of them out of town.

Dowe told Hammack the records don't show all the times he's paid his own way on city business. The records do show he used his city credit card for purchases as small as a buck or two.

Fellow council members defended Dowe. Still, Mayor Nelson Harris acknowledged telling Dowe recently to curb his spending. No doubt that admonishment will slow down Dowe

But what will keep every member of not only Roanoke City Council vigilant with your money -- not to mention every elected or appointed government official with access to taxpayer funded expense account -- is the publication of stories like Hammack's, and open access to information like what you'll find right now in the DataSphere.

If you want someone to think twice about ordering the lobster with your money, when they could do just as well with a hoagie, just make sure they know you're watching.

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• Posted by Matt Chittum in Government ::
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I hope you're finding the database of gifts to Virginia lawmakers informative, or at least fun. One problem, though, is it doesn't do the math for you. You can't instantly see, for example, who received the most in gifts, or the least.

So I've added a summary graphic to the site called a bubble graph.

The graph is a collection of circles of varying sizes, each representing a lawmaker. The bigger the circle, the higher the total value of gifts the lawmaker received. Click on a circle to get the full name and amount for that lawmaker. Now, hold down the control key and click on several bubbles. In the lower right corner, you'll see it add the totals together for you and give you a percentage of the whole.

So, for example, you can quickly determine that the top seven of 117 lawmakers who accepted gifts account for nearly 25 percent of the value of all the gifts received by everyone combined.

Look for me to begin offering more of these kinds of graphs to compliment the databases we put up. They give you a different way to interact with the data, get it to speak to you in a different way, and also allow me a way to mine the data and show you the results in a friendly format.

You can also generate these kinds of things yourself with your own data using the same web-based utilities I use, like Swivel and Many Eyes.

These are free, though you have to register. They were a curious discovery to me. They give you tools, but they are essentially social networking sites (not too different from facebook or myspace). What you network over is the data you share.

You know, I've always denied being a geek, but the longer I do this job, the less plausible my deniability seems to be. Maybe I should graph that.

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Last year 117 members of the Virginia House of Delegates and Senate accepted $263,227.10 in gifts from 195 different givers, from ExxonMobil and the Virginia state AFl-CIO to the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund and a host of so-called "payday lenders."

See the gifts your legislator accepted now in the DataSphere.

Everyone has their opinion, but from a news reporter like me, there's not a lot here that's really gross, but there's stuff that'll raise your eyebrows. And if nothing else, this list of 725 gifts provides an intriguing look into part of the way government works.

Continue reading "Did your delegate get NASCAR tickets, or just lunch?" »

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Roanoke's population, like that every other urban center in Virginia, has been in decline for a couple of decades now. But, as reported by Jay Conley in today's paper, estimates from the respected Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service indicate that for the last two years, the city's population has actually increased by a total of 833 people.

The bleeding appears to have been stemmed, but what remains unclear (and forgive me for belaboring the metaphor) is what or who is supplying the clot.

Continue reading "Roanoke's growing, but how, and where?" »

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Roanoke City Council will get a scheduled five-minute briefing on "2007 Crime Statistics Police Initiatives" during its 2 p.m. meeting today, according to the agenda posted online. I have no idea what this means, but any talk of crime stats stirs interest on this blog and in the DataSphere, so I thought I'd pass it on.

If you lack the time or interest to actually go to the council meeting (and, really, I or anyone would forgive you for either of those excuses), you can check out a live video feed of the meeting, or view it later by going here.

You can also watch this space for a run-down of what was discussed later today.

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Yeah, I know. Pretty geeky. I didn't know there was such a thing as National GIS Day until a news release from Roanoke City landed in my in box. It's part of the National Geographic Society's Geography Awareness Week to promote geographic literacy. The city and the Western Virginia Water Authority are offering a GIS seminar with demonstrations today from 10 a.m. until noon today in the Noel C. Taylor Municipal Building. (Sorry for the late notice.)

What's GIS? It stands for geographic information system. Basically, it's a way to access information using a map as the basis for it. What it means for you is, lots of good stuff you need to know about your locality (or one you might move to) is available now on almost every local government website. At least around here.

You can see real estate sales info, tax assessments, where schools are, where fire hydrants are, where the flood plain is, and on and on and on.

So, in honor of National GIS Day, I'm posting links to area government GIS sites in the real estate section of the DataSphere. You'll see some are better than others. Roanoke's has the most to offer. Roanoke County's offers surprisingly little by comparison, but it's still there for you. Others fall in between.

So, dive in, click around the map and see what GIS can do for you.

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