Last week, Connecticut Gubernatorial candidate Ned Lamont had a meeting with a group of political bloggers in New Haven. It was a valuable conversation, but it only included a small subset of bloggers covering political events in Connecticut. Some of this may be a result of ambiguity of the role of bloggers in Connecticut politics. Some bloggers are activists. Some are journalists of one sort or another. Some are both, and some are neither. I try carefully to balance roles of an activist, a journalist, as well as a plain old blogger writing about daily life. It is a difficult balance to achieve and I suspect my critic might suggest I fail at some of this.

To a certain extent, I see journalism and activism much more closely related than some might suspect. The Society of Professional Journalism’s Code of Ethics calls on journalists to ‘Seek Truth and Report It’. This seems closely aligned with open government activists and I would love to see more bloggers approach their writing using some of the tools of professional journalism to achieve this simple but profound goal.

One organization I strongly encourage serious bloggers to find out more about is Investigative Reporters and Editors. They accept bloggers as members and offer great trainings. I went to an IRE training in New Haven some time ago, and I’ve just been told that they have a Watchdog Workshop scheduled for April 16th in Providence, RI.

One of the things I learned about was getting on the Census Bureau’s press list. Now, I regularly get emails from the Census Bureau about various data that they are releasing. Most people think of the census bureau in terms of the population census they do every ten years. However, they are a source of many other great bits of information.

As an example, on March 23rd, the Census reported State Government Tax Collections Decrease $67 Billion in 2009. The report noted that Income Tax collections were down 12 Percent and Corporate tax collections were down 21 Percent. Today, they issued an additional report noting about State and Local Government Tax Revenue noting that:

Tax revenues grew in the fourth quarter, marking the first quarter of positive growth in five quarters. Individual Income Tax and General Sales Tax revenues continued to decline, while Corporate Income Tax and Property Tax revenue increased.

There is a lot of valuable information in these tables if you dig a little bit. For example, according to the Census Report, state revenues in Connecticut went from $1.7 billion in the third quarter of 2009 to $3.0 billion in the fourth quarter, reflecting the national trend of a rebound in revenues for the fourth quarter.

Nationwide, the top revenue sources are general sales and gross receipts, individual income taxes, motor fuel sales tax, and corporate net income taxes. Connecticut mostly reflected this during the fourth quarter of 2009, with some notable differences. Nationally, sales tax and income tax both account for about 34% of States’ receipts each. In Connecticut, income tax accounts for 47% of the States’ receipts and sales tax only accounts for 27%. Connecticut receives 4.2% of its revenue from motor fuel taxes, while nationally, the average is 5.2%. Connecticut receives higher revenues from than the national average on tobacco, but half of the national average on alcohol. For amusements, Connecticut receives nearly 4 times as much in revenues as the national average, but corporate income taxes, Connecticut only receives about 70% of the national average. All of this is information bloggers covering the state elections, especially during these difficult budget times, should have access to.

Another interesting Census Bureau report is State and Local Public Employee Retirement Systems Assets Drop Nearly $180 Billion in 2008.

“Shortfalls in state and local government pension plans may have long-term consequences for some state and local governments,” said Lisa Blumerman, chief of the Census Bureau’s Governments Division. “These data allow the user to annually monitor the characteristics of these retirement systems.”

Woodbridge has done a good job of funding retiree benefits, but other municipalities may not be doing so well. For 2008, State and Local governments in Connecticut collected $2.8 billion for public employee retirement systems. About a billion dollars of this was from losses on investments during 2008. At the same time, the expenditures were $3.1 billion. The retirement system holdings for 2008 were $32.5 billion. Again, this sort of information would be very useful to bloggers seriously covering the current elections.

As a final note, about a year ago, I set up CTNewsWire, a Google Group that elected officials, candidates, state and local agencies, and nonprofit organizations can use to send press releases and media advisories to anyone that is interested, especially bloggers and citizen journalists. There are now over fifty subscribers to the Google group, and over 1800 releases have been sent to the group. Bloggers and citizen journalists that are not members of the Google Group are encouraged to check it out as another valuable source of information about what is going on in Connecticut.

Some bloggers wish to focus strictly on being activists or advocates. Others don’t want to get at all involved in news or politics. Yet if you are a blogger in Connecticut that wants to get more involved in seeking the truth about what is happening in Connecticut and reporting it, check out the IRE, the Census Bureau, and CTNewsWire. If there are other good sources, share them.