Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. This week I have highlights from Illinois, Louisiana, and Alabama.

In Illinois, City Barbs has a transparency rally planned for Monday to ask their local government to clean up their act. The DeKalb Citizens for Transparency sent out a press release saying they will have a rally and march to city hall where they will demand a more transparency government.  There have been corruption issues recently so the band of civic cleaners will march with brooms and vacuum cleaners to get their message heard.  Hopefully they will post pictures!

In Louisiana, Between the Lines has a post about earmark reform in the state. The state’s Commission on Streamlining Government recommended that earmarks be eliminated but Jeff Sadan doesn't agree.  He goes into detail to find what the correct policy should be.  I like this post even though I don't understand all of it but it is always great to see what is behind some common problems like earmarks and think through better ways to solve them.

In Alabama, Doc’s Political Parlor has a post about non profits that were  started by politicians given state money but are not being audited. Apparently three lawmakers got funds diverted for a tax and then created non profits to receive the money. The audit of the public funds has not happened around these non profits, it has been three years.

Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and congressional political news.  This week I have highlights from Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, and New Hampshire.

In Alabama, Flashpoint has a post about the a new ethics bill in Alabama and points to and editorial in the local paper saying lawmakers are dragging their feet around it.  This bill would put a cap on how much a lobbyist can spend on a lawmaker each day.  Currently lobbyists in Alabama only have to report if they spend more than $250 a day on a lawmaker.  The new bill would put a cap on lobbying spending to $50 a day and $250 a year. In Kentucky, Page One posted a list of companies and how much they spend on lobbying for influencing Frankfort.  The Kentucky Legislative Ethics Commission posts the info on their Web site.  The list is pretty interesting and you can continue looking on their site to see what other organizations are spending money to influence the state government. Louisiana's Between the Lines has a post about a bill coming up, "that would make officials in jurisdictions of over 5,000 people report on any contributions or loans above $1,000 they received from their political appointees."  The author goes into why this bill might not be the best idea.  He goes into how it could be a waste of taxpayer money to process this information.   He goes on to support a different bill that would put the burden on appointees not elected officials.  He says this will not use so many state resources to support disclosure requirements which he deems as a waste of taxpayer money. Nevada's Desert Beacon is preparing for the upcoming vote on healthcare reform by listing all the healthcare industry donations to  Sen. Ensign.  It would also to see the Maplight.org page for Sen. Ensign when the vote comes up. Democracy for New Hampshire has a post about upcoming legislation that would create exemptions to the state's right to know laws.  "HB 349 is trying to exempt legislator's e-mails from both right to know and court subpeonas; an earlier bill, HB 53, seeks to remove the secretary of state's office (and other executive agencies) from rightto know by redefining what a "public body" is."  How do you redefine a "public body"?  These bills seem pretty outrageous.  States should be making more available not less, let alone going to such extents as to redefine a state agency as not a public body.

Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and congressional political news.  This week I have highlights from Alabama, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Texas.

In Alabama, Left in Alabama highlights a scandal about Attorney General Troy King’s apparent conflict of interest.  Apparently King went to a party thrown by a developer and then three months later his office issued a legal opinion that said the developer could get a bingo permit for their upcoming project.  According to the author this isn't the first time King has been entertained by a special interest.  Alabama Power apparently treated King to a few luxury box baseball tickets back in 2006.

Florida Politics is copying a great idea started by Aldon Hynes in Connecticut.  He created a newswire “where the various state agencies, municipalities, state legislators, advocacy organizations, etc., could send their press releases and the like.”  This is a great idea a one stop shop for public relations people to send there info and for bloggers to get it.

In Hawaii, ILind.net has a post about the two special advisories that the State Ethics Commission had.  Apparently there had been complaints filed about legislators receiving free tickets to events from non profits.  The commission advised that taking these gifts would violate state ethics laws.

Kentucky’s The Bridge, uses Party Time to keep track of  what fundraisers Congresspeople are attending.  It is a pretty decent list of where their members of Congress will be.

Pennsylvania’s Keystone Politics has two interesting stories. The first one is a post about how four elected judges in Northampton County have presided over cases that involved a donor to their election campaign. Apparently the decision for what a conflict of interest is, is left to the judges to decided, so they don't have to recuse themselves if a donor appears before them.  This brings up whether the rules should be changed to require judges to recuse themselves if a donor is involved or if you want a favorable outcome you should make some quick campaign donations.

The second story is about former state democratic house leader Bill DeWeese who gave bonuses to his staff, who then donated that amount or close to that amount back to his campaign.

Capitol Annex, in Texas, talks about a bill that would give bloggers the same protection main stream media gets.  This allows bloggers to cover "matters of 'public concern,' such as legislative proceedings, school board meetings, and the actions of state officials" and not be sued for libel.  The author and a few other bloggers successfully testified, in favor of the bill, to the committee and seemed confident he received a fair hearing.

This week I have highlights from Alabama, Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Oregon.

In Alabama, Red State Diaries has a great post summarizing what the Alabama legislature did in the last few months.

In Kentucky, KYKurmudgeon has highlighted Gov. Beshear’s new executive orders that would enact stricter ethics laws on his administration.

MediaMouse.org in Michigan has a great post listing the western Michigan companies that received military contracts with information on how much the contracts are and from what army branch.

In Pennsylvania, Keystone Politics has a post on how state legislators are not reporting all the gifts they receive from lobbyists. The state’s new disclosure laws require lobbyists to report what gifts they have given lawmakers however some elected officials have not reported those gifts in their filings.

In Oregon, Open Government News and Issues highlights how the State House Small Business Committee is using YouTube to post its hearing testimony and question and answer sessions.