Obama, Democrats, Ron Sims, and Transparency

President Obama's pick for Deputy HUD Secretary is Ron Sims, the now-former executive of King County in Washington. Sims is famous, or infamous, for many things around here, but most notable perhaps is his stonewalling -- for years -- of a public records request by Armen Yousoufian, which after more than a decade will in hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of dollars in fines (the Supreme Court has ruled the original $124,000 fine was way too small, but we don't know yet how large it will be).

Today it was announced that his former administration is settling for almost a quarter million dollars in a separate public records lawsuit, with Stefan Sharkansky, the guy who runs Sound Politics.

Yesterday, Ron Sims had his nomination hearing. He was not asked a single question. The man who has shown complete disgregard for transparency -- costing the people not only adequate information to base their decisions on, but also lots of money -- was not actually questioned in his nomination hearing.

Obama said as the first words of his first executive order, "My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government."

Change you can believe in.