About Government Accountability & Oversight

At the beginning of 2018, after several successful years pursuing transparency among activist public servants, including office holders, academics and even law enforcement, experienced attorneys from the litigation, prosecutorial and classical liberal think tank worlds joined together to create the non-profit public interest group Government Accountability & Oversight.

GAO pursues and supports litigation that seeks to ensure that governmental entities at state, local, and federal levels comply with their sunshine and transparency obligations under open records acts. Institutions suffer from capture – including, increasingly, the public’s academic institutions, enlisted by donors and ideologues as weapons in legal, political and policy battles, almost universally on one side of the ideological divide. As New York University professor Jonathan Haidt argues, academia cannot be devoted to the search for truth if it also has a political agenda.

More broadly, all public institutions (including those under the control of political actors) must exercise public authority and conduct the public’s business objectively and according to the institution’s mission.

GAO works to lessen the burdens of government and defend human, civil and property rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and secured by law, through ensuring the public is aware of how government institutions operate, with whom, toward what ends.

State and federal laws require transparency in public institutions, to allow for an educated public to understand how their institutions are being used – whether in cultural and ideological battles, or simply in ways that the institutions. or certain individuals in those institutions, would prefer be kept from the taxpayer on whose incomes they depend and whom they serve.

GAO has research, litigation, investigative journalism and publication functions, all combining to seek and educate about public information showing how policymakers and activists in the tort bar and educational institutions use public resources to advance a shared agenda, and private interests, with an emphasis on environmental and energy policy. By broadly disseminating the public information it obtains under open records and freedom of information laws, other organizations and individuals can benefit from the knowledge GAO uncovers.

Please support GAO as it continues to shine light on these activities, what the revelations mean and how these play in the policy and legal world, as well as how the activities they detail impact your lives.