By Birmingham News editorial board

May 13, 2010, 5:45AM

Here, courtesy of Thomas Jefferson, is further proof our Founding Fathers got this whole representative democracy experiment right:

"We might hope to see the finances of the Union as clear and intelligible as a merchant's books, so that every member of Congress and every man of any mind in the Union should be able to comprehend them, to investigate abuses, and consequently to control them."

That's the kind of transparency in government every government official -- and every taxpayer funding those government officials -- ought to believe in. We know in Alabama that is not the case, particularly when it comes to how we elect our government officials and the way we allow lobbyists to influence them. Taxpayers may want transparency in government, but it is clear many elected officials don't.

Otherwise, we wouldn't have bad state laws that allow:

+ Political action committees to mingle money among themselves in a transparent effort to be anything but transparent. PACs launder campaign money from giver to candidate to hide from the public the source of that contribution.

+ Candidates to report contributions five to 10 days before an election, with no accounting for the money they receive in the days before an election until much later, even though the technology exists for instant reporting.

+ Lobbyists to spend up to $250 a day entertaining an elected official without having to report that spending to anyone.

These laws purposefully keep voters in the dark about who is trying to buy influence with elected officials. One of the most egregious examples this, or any, election cycle comes courtesy of the gambling industry. Regardless of what you think about whether gambling should be legal, it is corrupt to the core to allow the gambling industry, or any special interest, to dump millions of dollars into PACs, which, in turn, funnel the money to candidates -- many of whom are lawmakers who considered gambling legislation during the session that ended last month. At the same time, the industry's lobbyists tried to influence lawmakers' votes (a grand jury is investigating whether some of those attempts were illegal) with no public accounting of any money spent doing so.

While some of the campaign money can be traced back to gambling interests, much of it can't because it was washed through a series of PACs and mixed with other money. That gives candidate and contributor plausible deniability.

Trying to make sense of all this is daunting. Give a big round of applause to the Alabama Policy Institute for its effort, the Alabama "Right to Know" project. API, a nonprofit research and education group, has built a website (www.alabamarighttoknow.org) on the idea that transparency begets accountability. It is not by accident Jefferson's quote is on the site's home page.

The website tries to hold lawmakers responsible for their promises. In 2006, Republicans, Democrats and Gov. Bob Riley listed those promises as priorities for the next Legislature that was about to be seated. The API site identifies whether those promises have been kept.

The site also compiles information from the Legislature, secretary of state's office and state Ethics Commission and makes it searchable. Citizens can look up their lawmakers (and get help finding them) and learn how to get in touch with them, as well as get information on the PACs that have given to lawmakers' campaigns and where those PACs got their money. They can also learn about lawmakers' discretionary spending and view travel expenses, as well as information from ethics filings about their and their spouses employers, real-estate holdings, debt and such.

API's website connects the dots into as complete a picture as you could hope to see, given the current laws. Congratulations to API for providing a great public service -- one that a government which truly believes in transparency would.

Click here to read the al.com article.