If you live in Minneapolis or St. Paul, you can now zero in on the locations of aggressive dogs that have attacked or threatened people and other pets with our new interactive map on StarTribune.com’s InfoCenter. The map, compiled from city records, is another way we’re trying to present news and information in ways that our readers can best make use of it.

The government makes this information available as a matter of public safety. In fact, Minneapolis even posts a rogues’ gallery of the dozen or so dogs classified as “dangerous,” the more serious of the two categories. Yet I know that pet owners aren’t always thrilled about having their names and addresses made public.

Whistleblower wants to hear what you think about this map, or your experiences in general with dangerous dogs, whether you’re a victim, a neighbor or an owner. Sound off here, or send me an email.

The big ticket stimulus projects keep emerging - to wit, the U.S Army Corps of Engineers’ $70 million fortification of the Mississippi River in Red Wing, as reported by my colleague Dave Shaffer. I’ve pretty much given up on the state’s official stimulus home page for a running list of where the money is going in Minnesota. The most recent news release is more than two months old. So is the “citizen summary” with estimated allocations for Minnesota.

Fortunately, plenty of interested people are setting up their own guides to stimulus spending. I learned today about a site set up by a coalition of groups, including OMB Watch and Common Cause, called States for a Transparent and Accountable Recovery. The Minnesota recovery page has links to individual agencies’ lists of projects. Here’s what this group had to say about the state of Minnesota’s stimulus site:

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Bills working their way through the Minnesota legislature make amendments to the Data Practices law, the state’s chief public records statute, and at first glance, it appears they’re all about restricting more records from public view. Fishing license holders, farmers who answer state surveys, the names of people who complain to the state Office of Grants Management are among the records that would be made secret under the bills, according to a handy summary by the public records policy experts over at the Department of Administration.

Politicians from Washington to St. Paul have vowed a new era of openness and transparency. Yet the only people with expanded access to government information under these two bills appear to be other government officials.

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On March 31, at the behest of Jay Lunde of Bloomington, I submitted a question to the White House about the cost of the president’s European trip. I wanted to test the administration’s new commitment to openness and responsiveness, expressed on the White House contact page. A month later, Whistleblower hasn’t received any response. I did get a sense of how many other correspondents are competing for the president’s attention, thanks to this New York Times story earlier this month.

Tens of thousands of letters, e-mail messages and faxes arrive at the White House every day. A few hundred are culled and end up each weekday afternoon on a round wooden table in the office of Mr. [Mike] Kelleher, the director of the White House Office of Correspondence.

Since everyone else is judging this administration by its first 100 days, I’ll give the White House another 70 before contemplating my next move.