Hi, I'm Wade. I run the Move Weight Foundation, a federally recognized 501(c)(3), and this campaign funds public records access in Austin.

This work started in Miami, Oklahoma, when I tried to find out how my own city was operating and learned what it costs an ordinary person just to ask. So I built a way for people to ask without putting their name on anything.

Austin is now one of fourteen chapters. Here is what already exists at austin.exposetexas.org, before a dollar is raised: 227 public meetings indexed, 141 of them with the agenda text extracted and searchable, refreshed automatically every week.

Austin is an unusual case, and I want to be fair about it: this city publishes more than most. Open data portals, streamed meetings, a real transparency operation. The question this chapter exists to answer is therefore a narrower and more interesting one - what still is not in it. A city that publishes a great deal can still decline to publish the one document that matters, and volume is not the same thing as access.

Requests cost money, and that is the honest obstacle. Bodies bill per page, per hour of staff time, per certified stamp, and you do not learn the price until after you ask.

This fund pays those invoices so residents never have to.

Every dollar goes to records fees. The bill arrives, we pay it, and what comes back is published whole and unredacted - linked to the city's own copy so you can check us. I file in the Foundation's name so nobody in Austin has to attach their own name to a request.

Your donation is tax-deductible. The Move Weight Foundation is a 501(c)(3).