Sample: Letter About State Issues

To the Editor:

Every single day, our state government makes decisions on where our tax money is being spent. They are deciding how much aid our local community receives, and they are administering the gigantic amount of federal tax dollars from the recovery act. Thousands of pages of data on how those decisions are made, and the results of those decisions are released all the time, and we rarely get to see them because we rarely know when they are released, and where they are kept once they are public. That is just unacceptable. Our governor and our state legislature can be held accountable if we had readily available access to these documents.

We now live in a world where, with the Internet, I can read reviews on a nice restaurant, make reservations there, check real-time traffic along the route that I’d use to get to there and the weather at the final destination. Why can’t I get that same experience with government data? It’s time that our local government catches up with the rest of the world and start releasing its data online so that it can be truly public.

I have made a pledge to hold government accountable by demanding transparency thought my sustained engagement with government and political action. This November when I go to the ballot box, I will be thinking about government transparency and voting only for elected officials who share my vision for a more transparent, accountable city government.

Sincerely,