Transparency in government is important to the John Locke Foundation, as evidenced by NCTransparency.com.

The Obama administration initially dedicated itself to open, transparent government, but Tevi Troy‘s latest column examines the record and finds it wanting:

As Jon Stewart recently joked, “When you don’t live in the White House, sunlight is the best disinfectant. When you live in the White House, disinfectant stings!”

He is talking about the administration’s apparent strategy of having aides hold off-site meetings with lobbyists — so that they don’t need to record their visits in the Secret Service logs.

POLITICO has reported that White House aides have been taking these meetings in its satellite offices in Jackson Place, and even one nearby coffee shop. Meetings that take place in the White House, according to a Center for Public Integrity investigative piece that ran Friday in POLITICO, are often logged without key details — including who was there and what was discussed.

This lack of openness — and consistency — is itself revealing. “When they need us,” one lobbyist said anonymously, of course, “they call us. When they don’t, we’re evil.”

The notion of administration officials taking meetings off White House grounds is not new. When I served in the Bush White House, I would often meet friends at the nearby Starbucks at 17th and Pennsylvania. I wanted to save friends the hassle of going through security — which requires multiple check points and magnetometers. But I certainly did not do this to circumvent transparency requirements or campaign promises.

In fact, the nearby Starbucks was so filled with reporters, lobbyists and other White House aides that one friend and I used to go to the Starbucks at 18th Street just off Pennsylvania Avenue. We dubbed it the “Stealthbucks.” There, we could get a semblance of privacy when we exchanged notes.

But using this tactic to get around a campaign promise, rather than to get outside the White House bubble, is disturbing.

Another tactic the Obama White House is using to avoid unwanted publicity is refusing to write anything down. As POLITICO has described, staffers respond to even routine e-mail requests for information with a terse, “Gimme a ring.”