During Sunshine Week, March 16-22, 2014, citizen journalists across the country will be participating with Historic City News and Florida’s Watchdog Wire contributors to audit their local city and county government websites; evaluating them on their usefulness based on a set of objective standards.

Historic City News was informed, during the course of a two-week old public records investigation into the St Johns Cultural Council and its management, that instead of considering only the two vacant seats on the beleaguered Arts, Culture, and Heritage Funding Panel, the St Johns County Commission has moved to reconsider all nine funding panel members.

Last year, Historic City News reported that the Florida legislature passed new ethics legislation requiring that Commissioners and other Constitutional Officers take four hours of Ethics programming each calendar year.

Gala balls and black-tie fundraisers under the microscope

by MICHAEL GOLD, STATE EDITOR
Watchdog Wire – Florida

Historic City News noted that the mayor’s black-tie fundraiser, held in Palm Beach County last night, is being called a “test” for the community’s newly hardened anti-corruption ethics reform rules.

By: Hannah Bleau

Citizen journalist and Flagler College student, Hannah Bleau, is attending the Conservative Political Action Conference 2014 in Washington D.C., and, as a Historic City News intern covering political stories, she filed this report from the National Security Agency Privacy Panel discussion.