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Thomas
Jefferson wrote a lot about almost everything, so
everyone has a favorite reference. Mine is
contained in his correspondence in 1820, near the
end of his life, to William Charles Jarvis.
"I
know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of
the society but the people themselves,”
Jefferson
wrote, “and if we think them not enlightened
enough to exercise their control with a wholesome
discretion, the remedy is not to take it from
them, but to inform their discretion by education.
This is the true corrective of abuses of
constitutional power."
Those
words contain views that
Jefferson
wrote about consistently throughout his life. They
contain the essence of American democracy:
ultimate power belongs to the people; inform and
educate; and correct abuses of power. And they
could be the words hung over the door of the Virginia
Public Access Project (VPAP), which celebrates
its 10th year of service this week with
a Richmond breakfast that will draw three
governors, other elected officials, lobbyists,
journalists and others to (where else) the
Jefferson Hotel.
The
VPAP service seems simple now -- use searchable
databases and the Internet to make it easy for
every Virginian to find and to analyze political
campaign reports. But data mining it wasn’t very
simple in 1997. Reporters had to sit down in the
State Board of Elections offices in Richmond, look through reams of hand-typed reports and
take notes by hand.
Deciding back in 1997 that there had to be a
better way, Virginia newspapers formed a
consortium to find it. Then Roanoke Times
political reporter David Poole took a leave of
absence from his job to spearhead the effort for
the 1997 election cycle. That was the year of the
Jim Gilmore vs. Don Beyer race for Governor when
even state and local elections began to attract
big money.
That
cycle proved to be only a start for VPAP, which
now draws on the support of companies and even
political candidates, themselves, to offer an ever
expanding amount of information about money in
politics. That the project could turn information
about candidate contributions and contributors
into searchable data, for example, prompted the
Commonwealth and candidates to jump at the chance
in 1999 to compile and file required reports
online.
By
2001 the VPAP database could help analyze campaign
spending. Then came records of gifts to officials,
money in referendum campaigns and political action
committee (PAC) donors, all in searchable database
form. By 2007 when VPAP added lobbyist lists and
coverage of campaign finance in nine local
jurisdictions, the only reason a
Virginian couldn’t inform her or his wholesome
discretion was pure lack of effort.
That’s
why the non-profit, non-partisan VPAP is using its
10th anniversary breakfast on May 31 to
honor current Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and former
Govs. Mark R. Warner and James S. Gilmore. These
leaders, in the words of the event invitation,
“have made
Virginia
a national leader in open, transparent
elections.” Hence, the reference to the
donations VPAP solicits as “investments in
transparency.”
And
that quote brings me to a second favorite
Jefferson reference, this one from an 1787 letter
to James Madison. “And say, finally, whether
peace is best preserved by giving energy to the
government or information to the people,”
Jefferson
wrote. “This last is the most certain and the
most legitimate engine of government.”
The
1997 short-lived VPAP project – information for
the press and for Virginia citizens – not only
turned into an enduring set of activities to
improve public access to a wealth of information,
it gave energy to government as well. VPAP worked
with the State Board of Elections to develop VAFiling
software that allows candidates and PACs to email
their disclosure reports. VPAP trains new
candidates in the use of the software, which
almost every member of the 140-seat General
Assembly members now uses. And we can be pretty
confident that, though Jefferson might be
e-mailing
Madison
today instead of scratching a quill pen, his
message on information for citizens and
accountability for officials would probably be the
same.
Thanks,
VPAP, and whether through the looking glass or
through a glass darkly, Happy Anniversary.
--
May 28, 2007
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