{"id":5627,"date":"2009-02-12T09:28:08","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T09:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5627"},"modified":"2009-02-12T09:28:08","modified_gmt":"2009-02-12T09:28:08","slug":"public-engagement-in-the-stimulus-virginias-example","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5627","title":{"rendered":"public engagement in the stimulus: Virginia&#8217;s example"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a comment yesterday, Michael Weiksner argued for more public voice in the allocation of stimulus funds. Experiments from around the world have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.peterlevine.ws\/mt\/archives\/2007\/10\/social-accounta.html\">found <\/a>that public involvement in public-sector spending decisions improves the quality of those decisions and reduces corruption during the implementation phase. If, for instance, citizens help to decide that a school should be built at a particular location, they are likely to make sure that it is built well, on budget and on schedule.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve <a href=\"http:\/\/www.peterlevine.ws\/mt\/archives\/2009\/01\/empowering-citi.html\">argued <\/a>that the federal government should take the lead in encouraging public voice; that should be a top priority of the new White House office on civic engagement. But it&#8217;s also possible to introduce public participation further downstream. Virginia has launched an official <a href=\"http:\/\/stimulus.virginia.gov\/Default.aspx\">website<\/a> to collect public ideas on how to spend that state&#8217;s federal money. Ideally, the site will turn into more than a list of suggestions, with perhaps an opportunity for voting. There should also be ways for people to add value to suggestions, wiki-style.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a comment yesterday, Michael Weiksner argued for more public voice in the allocation of stimulus funds. Experiments from around the world have found that public involvement in public-sector spending decisions improves the quality of those decisions and reduces corruption during the implementation phase. If, for instance, citizens help to decide that a school should [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}