Sam Adams Alliance

The Sammies Awards are designed to recognize outstanding citizen leadership and creativity nationwide, and are being given this year to individuals and groups from across the country.

More information with regards to the 2008 Sammies wil be made available on this page shortly, so be sure to check back often.

The following is a list of the 2007 Sammies Awards Winners.

• Melyssa Donaghy of Indianapolis won the $5,000 "Tea Party" award for staging numerous creative protests around the state in response to Indiana's increasing property tax burden.

• Sal Costello of Austin, Texas won the $5,000 Best Short Satire Film award for his animation highlighting the "double taxation" associated with Austin's highway toll rates.

• Leon Drolet of Macomb, Mich. won the $5,000 Best Short Documentary award for his video footage of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance spreading the word about State Representative Marc Couriveau's 3,000 percent tax increase on local garbage disposal.

• Stefan Sharkansky of Seattle won the $5,000 Sunshine award for his work investigating the government with Washington's Public Records Act and exposing cases of government waste, incompetence, and malfeasance on his blog, Sound Politics.

• Ben Cunningham of Nashville won the $5,000 Local Blogger award for his blog, Taxing Tennessee, which gets on average over 2 million views weekly and covers topics on taxes, freedom, and individual rights.

• Finally, the "We Demand A Vote Coalition" from Hamilton County, Ohio won the $10,000 "Modern-Day Sam Adams" award for its work to defeat an $800 million sales tax increase through grassroots mobilization.

The headline says it all.

Ironic, huh? Of course, it comes as no surprise to anyone that politicians will say whatever they want—or whatever they think will get them elected. But actually doing what they say they will? Well, that’s a whole different story.

“As a state senator, Attorney General Marc Dann twice sued the Taft administration for public records. He likes to be known as ‘Mr. Public Records,’ and wrote a model policy on how local and state government should handle records requests.”

Well, it turns out “Mr. Public Records” still hasn’t fulfilled an open records request made in May.

Read more here.