Of course, he’d like it better if I called him transparent. All that aside, I’m going to ramble on here for a bit about Sam Adams and his blog.


Sam Adams is currently the only City Commissioner to run a blog – that I know of. With that caveat, it does make for pretty engaging reading at times. The times that Sam Himself doesn’t actually pen the entries can make for lackluster reading, but that’s only to be expected. The email exchanges he posts also make for interesting reading, but it gets interesting when Sam talks about how things malfunction.

Apparently the Big Pipe project had a small incident on site, and reported it as a major one. In order to get quick reaction (watch me cut away content with a literary cleaver! I only care about delivering my own message!) from the upper levels, the on-site crew reported it as a major incident. Sam rushed to the scene, only to discover that it was, in fact, a minor incident not involving city employees (except peripherally). Sam’s promised to crack down on this practice (accident report misfiling) but the really important bits of this project I think Sam glossed over.

First, there was a huge breakthrough on the Big Pipe project. I’m kind of curious to see how the project is doing, where it is on the schedule (ahead, behind, that sort of thing) and what it actually looks like at this point. Expect more on this subject from me.

Secondly, Sam’s actually following through on his promise to be transparent. I’ve been reading a lot about how he’s working at various places around the city (which quite honestly, mystifies me, but that’s fodder for a different entry) and how he’s working on legislature around the registration of lobbyists but have seen very little on actual transparency. IMHO, having a blog as a public official implies one of two things: Transparency or PR. Sam does a fine job of turning the first to serve the second.

In summary, this was an entry patting Sam Adams on the back for doing cool things.