Open Government

LAAG is pretty much fed up with Lakewood City Hall refusing to provide timely agendas at least 72 hours before the city council meetings. The law only requires that they post the agendas at city hall not on the website. How convenient for busy voters who work for a living. Just go down to city hall after work and look at the agenda. Same with city council meetings. Make sure they are not archived on the city's website so you cant just go see them when you want or skip ahead to the parts you are interested in. The best way to "slip" things past sleeping voters is to just not alert them to issues and do only the bare minimum as required by law (ie don't post stuff on the website or send out an email or you could end up with some angry voters at your meeting and they don't want that!)

As for the agendas this was brought to the city's attention as noted below but still the problem has not been fixed. For example as of 1/15/07 the current agenda posted on the website was 12/12/06. As of 3/17/07 the "most current" agenda posted on the site is dated 2/27/07. This is a big deal as the agenda is the only way busy residents can see what is going on and if they need to go to a meeting. That is the purpose of agendas.

LAAG has asked the Sheriff's department on 4 separate occasions for the last two months for crime statistics. No response at all. Neither the City nor the Sheriff's department want to back up their vague and grandiose statements about crime "reduction"

LAAG is working to resolve these and many other lack of transparency issues.