In a welcome turn toward transparency, House Appropriators are now set to webcast all public hearings starting this week. As late as last week, only 2 of the 10 meetings for this week were scheduled to be online. All committees except Appropriations have webcast the vast majority of their proceedings since the Republican leadership's passage of a House rule at the start of the 112th Congress requiring webcasting "to the maximum extent practicable."

Of special note is the webcasting of several proceedings that will take place inside in the Capitol building itself, in room HT-2. This tiny room is often too small to admit all interested members of the public, especially with the large staff entourage that often accompanies testimony by legislative branch agency leadership. (Here's what it looks like.) C-SPAN does not usually cover the committee's proceedings, so the only way to see what happens is to go and hope you get in. Whatever issues that had existed with webcasting from this room apparently have been resolved, and a new precedent has been set in favor of transparency.

We'll be watching.

The House Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee just scheduled four budget hearings for next week, none of which will be webcast (according to their public notices). Just like last year, the hearings will be held in a tiny room in the Capitol that is often crowded past capacity. The public has a right to attend these meetings, and House Rules require that they be webcast (whenever practicable).

So what does "practicable" mean? When we surveyed how frequently committees webcast their hearings last year, we found that House Appropriators stood out for the absence of transparency of their proceedings.

The Sunlight Foundation tracked 200 House hearings over 20 days to determine whether they were webcast live, plus 407 hearings from January 17 to April 2 to determine whether video from the proceedings were archived online. Twenty-five percent (48 of 200) of the hearings were not live-streamed, and 22 percent (91 of 407) were not archived on committee websites.

Of the 48 hearings that were not live-streamed, 47 were Appropriations Committee hearings (Armed Services was the other one). Similarly, of the 91 hearings that did not have video archived on the committee website, 74 were Appropriations Committee hearings.

This is an intensely frustrating and longstanding problem.

I'm singling out the Legislative Branch Appropriations Committee's budget hearings on GPO, LOC, GAO, and CBO because we at the Sunlight Foundation care a lot about the legislative support agencies, particularly as they empower a lot of federal transparency. (And they've been actively working on government transparency issues, and there's more that we'd like them to do.)

But it's unfair to single them out. A quick look at the upcoming hearings and meetings for the Appropriations Committee finds meeting after meeting that won't be webcast. The hearing on nuclear nonproliferation? Won't be webcast. Indian education? Nope. Army Corps of Engineers? Out of luck. Of the ten upcoming hearings that indicate webcasting status, 2 will be webcast and 8 (including a closed hearing) will not.

With the budget crisis, impending sequester, and questions about federal spending, how is it that the committee most responsible for spending money is the one that's least likely to put its meetings online? We've seen a commitment from the House leadership to do better, and I hope that the Appropriations Committee will find a way to make that happen.

The House Appropriations Committee just announced it will hold a full committee markup this Thursday (May 31) on the Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill for FY 2013. While the Sunlight Foundation is hopeful this legislation will address a number of our transparency priorities, we will be watching in particular to see whether the longstanding issue of improving public access to legislative information will finally be addressed.

At the subcommittee markup, there was a tantalizing hint that the committee report will contain language to require bulk access to THOMAS data, the importance of which the public interest community has addressed many times before. We are hoping this bill will require the Library of Congress to implement bulk access to THOMAS within 120 days of the legislation's passage, and require the Library to create an advisory committee on THOMAS.

While we were able to observe that the subcommittee adopted this draft legislation without amendment, the accompanying report (where language regarding bulk access was inserted) has not been released to the public. Congressional staff have told me the report will not be released to the public until the full committee markup.

Committee members will get a look at the bill and accompanying report no later than Tuesday, which is three calendar days before the hearing (if you count Thursday as a calendar day, otherwise it should be available today, Friday), in accordance with Committee rule 6(j). The public must wait get a look at the bill no later than Wednesday at 11am, which is when the committee chairman must electronically post a copy of the bill according to committee rule 4(d)(4). The committee's rules makes no mention of when committee reports must be released to the public, although such a report will presumably be ready when the draft bill is released to the public.

by Daniel Schuman and Cassandra LaRussa

Despite significant strides towards improving public access to legislative proceedings, nearly a quarter of House hearings cannot be watched online despite recently instituted House rules – with the Appropriations Committee as the biggest offender, with 70 percent of its hearings unavailable on the Internet.

The Sunlight Foundation tracked 200 House hearings over 20 days to determine whether they were webcast live, plus 407 hearings from January 17 to April 2 to determine whether video from the proceedings were archived online. Twenty-five percent (489 of 200) of the hearings were not live-streamed, and 22 percent (91 of 407) were not archived on committee websites.

While these numbers, at first glance, indicate broad non-compliance with House rules, in reality, nearly all committees did a good or excellent job of live-streaming and archiving their videos online. The major offender was the House Appropriations Committee, which is at the heart of today's debate about the budget and is responsible for writing the chamber's spending bills.

Of the 489 hearings that were not live-streamed, 47 were Appropriations Committee hearings (Armed Services was the other one*and Foreign Affairs were the other two). Similarly, of the 91 hearings that did not have video archived on the committee website, 74 were Appropriations Committee hearings.

In short, the House Appropriations Committee is keeping the public in the dark.

The House's Online Video Rule

In January 2011, the House of Representatives adopted new rules requiring that video coverage of hearings be available online. "To the maximum extent practicable, each committee shall --- (a) provide audio and video coverage of each hearing ... in a manner that allows the public to easily listen to and view the proceedings; and (b) maintain the recordings of such coverage in a manner that is easily accessible to the public."

This was part of Speaker Boehner's commitment to open up the legislative process to the public. He explained that "the internet offers new opportunities to open the halls of Congress to Americans in every corner of our nation."

Live webstreams and video archives are a way to bring Congress closer to the people. The privately-run cable network C-SPAN cannot cover every hearing, and it's unreasonable to expect people to travel to DC to be in attendance. Combined with cutbacks in newsroom staffs around the country, less prominent issues are unlikely to be covered by local media.

Appropriations in the Dark

Unfortunately, the Appropriations Committee has often declined to video-record its proceedings. Last year, I described a hearing on the House's budget that was not televised and was held in a room so small few people could attend. This February, I took photos at another hearing to show the public what they were missing (and that making a recording would be relatively painless).

When we spoke with the Appropriations Committee's press office last year about recording its proceedings, we received the following response:

Whenever logistically possible, the main committee room - which is equipped with webcast and video capabilities - is used for hearings and mark-ups.

The Committee schedules rooms for hearings and mark ups based upon many factors, including but not limited to: space availability, accessibility for members and the public, physical proximity to the house floor to accommodate voting schedules, and room size. Committee hearing rooms are also used for a variety of other purposes such as meetings and briefings. In addition, we allow any credentialed media organization to tape and/or record our open hearings and mark-ups, no matter which room is being used.

With 70 percent of its hearings offline, the Committee's practice appears to diverge from the House's requirement of publishing video online to "the maximum extent practicable." Nearly all other committees manage to put their proceedings online. Appropriators have a large hearing room that has cameras pre-installed. Were the committee to choose to meet in the Capitol building, it could request coverage from the House Recording Studio or meet in one of the new hearing rooms in the Capitol Visitor's Center.

Survey of House Video Sources

We looked at both individual committee websites and the Library of Congress THOMAS website to determine video availability.

We found that committee websites were generally easy to navigate. Specific pages devoted to hearings included a chronological list with links to the archived webcasts, as well as testimony from witnesses and a live-streaming function. This demonstrates a significant improvement based on our past evaluation of committee websites and a serious attempt to address Sunlight’s past suggestions.

The Library of Congress recently began publishing hearing videos on THOMAS at the urging of the House. Unfortunately, the website is very difficult to use and navigate. While recordings are sensibly organized by committee, they are given impenetrable names like "USHR07 Armed Services Committee." Is that a full committee or subcommittee hearing? What is the name of the hearing? Occasionally recordings are titled by the date and time of the hearing, but this is not done consistently. Generally, they are only labeled by "date created," which may or may not be the date the hearing took place. And if multiple hearings took place on the same day, it's difficult to tell them apart.

In reviewing the committee websites against what's available on THOMAS, we found 9 of the 91 videos that were missing from the committees’ websites. The Ways and Means Committee has failed to post 5 videos on its website that are available on THOMAS; the Small Business Committee has missed 2; and the Appropriations Committee and the Budget Committee have each missed one. That still leaves 83 hearing that are not archived online from the time we monitored.

There have been important efforts to fill in the gaps. Carl Malamud and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have together published online over 1,100 committee hearing videos from 1993 to the present.

The American people have a right to see what their government is doing. In the upcoming months, appropriators in particular will make important decisions about how trillions of dollars are spent. It's time to allow everyone to watch this online in real-time, as promised in the House rules.

Methodology: We undertook a best effort to monitor live webcasts of committee hearings between February 27 and March 9 and March 26 to April 2, but we couldn't catch them all. For any webcast that we did not watch as it took place, we called the committee to determine whether one took place.

Because there is no official and complete source for all committee hearings, it's likely that we missed some of the archival hearings. In addition, we only monitored hearings during the first quarter of 2012. Some committees may not have met during that time period. Others may have been particularly active. This research was intended as a snapshot of committee compliance with House rules on making livestreams and video archives available.

Finally, our list of archival video on committee websites is accurate as of the date of review. It’s possible additional video was posted after we completed our survey.

Update: We have been assured by Foreign Affairs Committee that the hearing we identified as not having been webcast was in fact streamed live. The hearing was delayed by a half an hour, so it was not webstreamed at the announced start time, but apparently was available at the delayed start time.

Photo Credit: the test pattern is from Gak on Flickr.

This Tuesday, there will be hearing on budgets for the Library of Congress, the Government Printing Office, the Government Accountability Office, and the Congressional Budget Office. It's too bad that the public won't have a real opportunity to learn about these important agencies, as the meeting is not expected to be webcast by the committee, and (if I remember correctly) the hearing room is so tiny that few if any members of the public will be able to attend.

That's too bad, especially because this is the first opportunity to hear firsthand how last year's budget cuts have affected agencies' abilities to do their jobs, and learn about agency and congressional priorities for the upcoming year. It's also the first time we'll hear from the new acting Public Printer  (the head of GPO); and perhaps the newly appointed head of the Congressional Research Service will be presented and introduced by the Librarian of Congress.

Only the House and Senate Legislative Appropriations Committees regularly hold annual public hearings on the workings of these agencies; the oversight committees (Committee on House Administration and Senate Rules) generally do not, and the Joint Committee on the Library and Joint Committee on Printing no longer holds substantive meetings in public.

The new House rules require that all committees provide "audio and video coverage of each hearing or meeting" that "allows the public to easily listen ... and view the proceedings" "to the maximum extent practicable." All of the House committees have at least one hearing room that is equipped with a camera, and the House Recording Studio will provide a camera upon a committee's request. Unfortunately, this hearing is being held in a room without a camera, and I've been informed that the Committee has not requested one. The Appropriations Committee has not scheduled any other hearings for Tuesday, so the room with the pre-positioned camera should be available.

We ran into this problem last year, when the Committee's justification for holding the meeting in the same  tiny, camera-less room (HT-2) was that it was more convenient to hold the hearing in the Capitol than in one of the legislative buildings. Even if convenience were more important than  the public access rule, the House Recording Studio could still provide a camera, and there are rooms in the newly constructed $600+ million Capitol Visitor Center (i.e. in the Capitol) that already have cameras installed. We would send a video crew ourselves, but only organizations accredited by the House Radio-Television Correspondents' Gallery can ask permission from the Committee to record the event, and the Sunlight Foundation doesn't qualify for membership.

Another change from last year is that members of the public are not invited to speak at the hearing, although they may submit written comments. Along with several others, I took the opportunity to speak last year, where I called for bulk access to THOMAS data and public access to CRS reports. I will submit comments for the record, but written comments are much less effective than speaking directly to the Members of Congress. It's too bad, especially because one of the major lessons of last Thursday's House Legislative Data and Transparency Conference  is that the Library of Congress and GPO have apparently been ignoring their legal obligation to make progress on public access to bulk data. Ironically, it was this very Committee that imposed the obligation upon them in the first place, 3 years ago.

As with everything in Congress, things could still change for Tuesday's hearing -- its time, date, location, and whether it will webcast or covered by the media. I plan on attending, and if I can make it into the room, I'll post an update.

The House Appropriations Committee will markup the Financial Services Appropriation Bill, which sets funding levels for the Electronic Government Fund, this Thursday at 9:30 in 2359 Rayburn. This follows on last week's subcommittee vote to partially restore e-gov funding to around $13m for FY 2012 from $8m in FY 2011, which is far less than the $34m appropriated in FY 2010 and 2009. Unlike that hearing, this one is expected to be webcast.

Assuming the legislation passes the House Appropriations Committee, which it is likely to do, it will go to the House floor for a vote, and then to the Senate. It's likely that the Senate will not adopt the legislation in its current form.

It comes as no surprise that Indiana Democrat Pete Visclosky's favorite word to say in Congress is "Indiana." While staying out of the spotlight in Washington, he has been a champion for his Northwestern Indiana congressional district, bringing home millions of federal dollars to create jobs and win fans. Since the decline in manufacturing, new jobs have become essential for this Rult Belt region and Visclosky, from his position on the House Appropriations Committee, has sought to get as big a piece of the federal pie as he can for his constituents.

This hard work bringing home federal dollars has made Visclosky a national news name as his connection to a lobbying firm, the PMA Group, which represented many of the recipients of federal money earmarked by the congressman, has brought him under investigation by the FBI. In the past two weeks, Visclosky's offices and campaign committess have been subpoenaed and he has reliquished control of the Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee to Rep. Ed Pastor.

All of this is due to the connection between campaign contributions flowing from the PMA Group and their clients to Visclosky's campaigns and the millions of dollars in earmarks to PMA Group clients that Visclosky secured in his post on the powerful House Appropriations Committee. After studying campaign contribution data for 1998-2008 (compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics) and earmark data for FY2008 and FY2009 (from both Taxpayers for Common Sense and Legistorm), the connection between those PMA Group clients that contributed money to Visclosky's campaigns and the earmarks they received is clearly evident. The visualization below -- created by our terrific designer Kerry Mitchell -- shows how connected the earmarks are to the receipt of campaign contributions. Click on the image for a larger version:

Note: Due to the lack of earmark disclosure prior to 2007, earmark data is only reliable for the last two fiscal years -- FY2008 and FY2009. Thus, while showing ten years of campaign contribution data, we cannot show ten years of earmark data. There is little doubt that the earmark numbers would be dramatically higher had there been earmark disclosure prior to 2007.

The New York Times reports today on what could be the next great lobbying scandal. After his house and offices were raided by the FBI, Paul Magliocchetti, top lobbyist at the PMA Group, is shuttering his lobby shop. Once seen as the top earmark factory in Washington, the PMA Group fell apart weeks before the FBI raid occurred as rumors circulated that Magliocchetti was under investigation for various reasons, including making fraudulent campaign contributions and potentially trading contributions and gifts for legislative actions--earmarks--from legislators.

According to the Times, Magliocchetti was a pioneer and master of the earmarking process who skirted as close to the ethical line as possible:

[S]everal former PMA lobbyists and former Congressional staff members, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation from lawmakers close to Mr. Magliocchetti, said that for decades he sought loopholes to shower food, drink and gifts on the members and staff members of the House defense appropriations subcommittee. He regularly arranged food deliveries for late-working committee staff members, for example, taking advantage of an exception written into the fine print of the ethics code, the former PMA lobbyists and Congressional staff members said. And each year he hosted lawmakers and their staff members at a legendary Christmas party at the Alpine or, more recently, at the Army Navy golf club, that fit into a gift-rule exception for “widely attended events.” Mr. Magliocchetti helped pioneer the lucrative specialty of helping contractors lobby for military earmarks, the several billion dollars in pet spending items that members of the panel insert in annual spending bills, often with little oversight.

Many are beginning to question whether Magliocchetti is the new Jack Abramoff; the next lobbyist who could ensnare dozens in a corrupt conspiracy. My colleague Bill Allison offered his thoughts on the Magliocchetti-Abramoff comparison at the Real Time Investigations blog:

I’ve told a few people that while the PMA Group scandal is different from Abramoff, in many ways it’s more serious. Abramoff was a sort of Bernard Madoff character, unique in his personal excesses, corrosively corrupting, but still just one guy. PMA Group is a methodical business. It rakes in millions of dollars in lobbying fees. Its employees and PAC contributes a few hundred thousand to various congressional campaign committees and leadership PACs. Its clients get hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks and billions more in federal contracts. Abramoff’s excesses were fairly unique; PMA Group’s business model is standard operating procedure in Washington.

And for the most part I agree with this assessment. (Abramoff's operation was tightly wound up in a racket to ensure the maintanence of power by then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay. So, he wasn't quite a rogue grifter.) PMA Group's excess highlights what one could call a "culture of corruption" that exists around the Appropriations Committee, most prominently in the House.

When we look at the scandals of the last few years, these Appropriations Committee members keep popping up. Duke Cunningham, Jerry Lewis, Alan Mollohan, and now, the Magliocchetti connected John Murtha. Others have come under close scrutiny for their practices including Bill Young, Hal Rogers, Pete Visclosky, and James Moran. It really is an epidemic when this many members of a single committee bring this kind of attention (in many cases, federal investigations) to themselves.

It's doubtful that lawmakers, especially appropriators, want any sunshine shed on the relationships between appropriators and appropriations seeking lobbyists. Perhaps some stricter disclosure rules would help to stop the ethical tightrope walk that the appropriations process has become.

Ted Stevens is toast; Hawaii is the Big Kahuna; and K Street says hello and goodbye. Today's news round-up below:

Down the tubes. Sen. Ted Stevens did not become the first convicted felon to win election to the Senate, as was previously thought. After counting all the votes (that's always a good idea), Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich became the first Democrat to win election to the United States Senate in 30 years (the previous Democrat being Mike Gravel). Stevens was the longest serving Republican in Senate history and not only shaped modern Alaska, but helped it to win statehood when he worked in the Eisenhower administration. The Alaska Daily News has an article on "The rise and fall of Sen. Ted Stevens." I suggest you read it.

With Stevens out and Sen. Robert Byrd stepping down as Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Hawaii is poised to become the Big Kahuna in Washington. Chief among the reasons that Hawaii is set to high-jump over the competition is that the frail 90 year old Byrd is being replaced as Appropriations Chair by the spry 84 year old Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye. Hawaii already gets its fair share of federal money, including huge sums from earmarks.

With Democrats ascendent in Washington, K Street is kicking their GOP lobbyists to the curb or leaving them lonely in their offices with little to do. Meanwhile, frosh Democratic lawmakers are being introduced to business lobbyists in process not too different from an arranged marriage. Two young calves for a vote on the farm bill. "'Introductions are being made to the business community of key moderates coming into Congress, so we can get an early start building relationships,' one Democratic lobbyist said."