As mentioned earlier, the open government movement made major strides today -- when together with the Participatory Politics Foundation, we launched OpenGovernment Minnesota. This brings the total number of states covered by the OpenGovernment initiative, to six. As we continue to expand this project to include more states, we take note of individual citizens who are being proactive about tracking the legislature in their states. By so doing, we recognize that active citizen participation in government is the key to prompting change and increasing accountability. And we support this recognition by building tools that empower the public to see how their government is functioning. But our role can not simply be reduced to tracking bills. We need to be engaged in the rule making process and reinforcing Public Records Laws and Open Meetings Laws is one such way of doing that. All the while ensuring that the legislative system is not given "special treatment".

• Two years ago, the legislature in Bacon Hill, Massachusetts managed to exempt itself from  the requirements of the Public Records Law and the Open Meetings Law -- using a sweeping ethics reform bill. Now, there are four bills that have been introduced to subject the legislature to the open meetings law. Media and technology lawyer Robert Ambrogi, is challenging the lawmakers to pass these laws if they are true supporters of transparency. Will these bills see the light of day, unlike their predecessors that went no where? Read more on the media law blog.

• A new bill that will make all executive orders issued by the office of the mayor of New York City available on line, has been passed. Currently, the orders can only be accessed via requests through the Freedom of Information Law. Richard Yeh shares that open government advocates are applauding the bill because of the transparency and openness it will create. Legislative text from the bill shows that all memorandum of understanding and similar documents will be available on a government website starting April 1, 2012. See what else the bill says on the WNYC News blog.

• Public information from the governor’s office in Louisiana will soon be accessible to the public. A new bill that will significantly relax the state’s public records law by making all of the Governor’s documents including those related to budgetary issues, public, has been introduced. At the moment, the state is using Act 495 enacted in 2009, which exempts the governor from disclosing any material considered to be under a “deliberative process”. Chad Rogers is sure this bill will go a long way in restoring confidence in the public. Read more about how the bill will change Louisiana from being the only state that exempts the governor's records from disclosure on chadrogers.net

• The Cleveland Coalition, together with several open government supporters including the Sunlight Foundation, will be joining forces for the Transparency Action Plan Summit (TAP) to take place in Cuyahoga Ohio on July 29-30. The first of its kind in the region, the summit will bring together like-minds to discuss transparency initiatives that will make the county a leader in government transparency and public engagement. For more of the action plan details, head on over to Cleveland Coalition.

When it comes to money in politics, Sunlight's Poligraft helps you see the relationships between organizations and the people in power through data collected from its sister project: TransparencyData.com. Another notable organization that tracks money in politics is OpenSecrets.org. With a concise mission to inform citizens, empower voters and advocate for a transparent and responsive government, the organization has garnered acknowledgment for their work. Now continuing the transparency movement is a new project that has been created to, as Stacy Donohue, director of investments at Omidyar Network, puts it  "bring attention to the nation's statehouses".

• The National Institute on Money in State politics (a Sunlight grantee) has started a new project that will involve hiring political reporters in every state capital to rank states for their “susceptibility to corruption”. The State Accountability project is funded by the Omidyar Network through the Center for Public Integrity, Public Radio International and Global Integrity. Read more as Anne Sherwood explains how the project will create online reporting and technology tools to empower citizens to demand for better accountability from their state officials. Its all on Follow the Money.

• The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank in New Hampshire, has launched a new website for the state’s checkbook. NHOpenGov.org is a free, searchable online database that shows details of the state’s spending. Grant Bosse blogs that the website is funded by private donations with information collected through public records requests from official state sources. Check out how the think tank’s transparency director, Josh Elliott-Traficante, is giving the website a nod of approval on the New Hampshire Watchdog.

• Providence, Rhode Island has approved a new ordinance that will require anyone lobbying on behalf of a cause or business to identify themselves as such. Also included in the new ordinance is the requirement that lobbyists register with City Hall and file quarterly reports. Richard Dujardin writes that City Council president  Michael Solomon believes that, although other states may have requirements for lobbyists to register, Providence is certainly among the first cities to actually implement the law. See which lobbyists will be exempted from this new ordinance at the Projo 7 to 7 News Blog.

• Governor Rick Scott has responded to Florida’s struggle with transparency by creating a new website with searchable information on state payroll and retirement records. The website, Florida has a Right to Know contains information of all state employee salaries, though Bob Shaw notes that searches for the Governor's staff came up blank. Is this a half-hearted attempt at being transparent, from the governor whose closing remark on the website is “We will be better if you hold us accountable”? Find out at the Central Florida Political Pulse.

• Now here is an example of how good sunshine laws can help fight corruption: Samantha Swindler, a former news editor of the Times Tribune in Kentucky, noticed a discrepancy in record-keeping in the Whitley County Sheriff’s office and immediately got on it. When she appealed to the state attorney general for open records on the Sheriff’s office, she discovered that the Sheriff was not only selling guns in his barber shop, but also did not record any of these transactions. Caleb Brown shares more about this citizen investigation into public office misconduct using open records on Blue Grass Policy blog.
• Tom Jones, the former spokesman and policy-maker for Shelby County in Tennessee, is asking the Shelby County Legislative Delegation to oppose a proposal to close some public records - pushed mainly by companies looking for government incentives. In his post - “a solution in search of a problem” - he explores keeping the balance between special interests and government while doing away with the culture of secrecy that benefits special interests at the expense of the American people. Smart City Memphis blog has details.

There are a couple of great articles on the ways in which politics and business meld in Egypt from the New York Times and The Guardian.

NYT:

Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt has long functioned as a state where wealth bought political power and political power bought great wealth. While hard facts are difficult to come by, Egyptians watching the rise of a moneyed class widely believe that self-dealing, crony capitalism and corruption are endemic, represented in the public eye by a group of rich businessmen aligned with Gamal Mubarak, the president’s son, as well as key government ministers and governing party members.

“The people around Gamal became the wealthiest group in the country,” said Hala Mustafa, a political scientist who quit the ruling party years ago, saying it was not committed to political reform. “They monopolized everything.”

While Egypt’s gross domestic product grew, so did the percentage of the population that was poor. Rumors of kickbacks and corruption swirled. There have been multibillion-dollar estimates of the wealth of the president or his family, but experts say those are unsubstantiated guesses.

Egypt was governed as a private estate. Mubarak's immediate family is implicated in crony capitalist activities as partners of most of the businessmen who benefited from the regime's corruption. These beneficiaries do not want to leave their palaces, beaches and resorts, lucrative businesses and extreme riches. These are fixed assets that could not be transferred outside the country – although it should be noted that the ruling elites have siphoned off much capital to foreign banks. Nonetheless, it is the country-turned-private-estate they do not wish to abandon – that's why they deployed the thugs in Tahrir Square to terrorise the population. This is a tactic that the National Democratic party has used on many previous occasions. In the national elections to the people's assembly and to the shura council, thugs are hired to intimidate voters and to support rigging the results. At all popular protests, the police set thugs to attack the protesters using all means of intimidation, including the sexual harassment of women participants. Thugs have become an arm of the police and they have been used as informants in popular quarters of the city. They are rewarded with licences to operate kiosks or run minibus services. In a sense, practices of thuggery have been adopted by the regime to maintain itself and protect the interests of the ruling elite for decades now. Facing the growing possibility of losing their illegitimately acquired wealth and power, the regime and its cronies resorted to the techniques and practices that they have previously used with impunity to silence all opposition and resistance. However, the magnitude of popular mobilisation and the resolve to fight for dignity and freedom have rendered the regime's tactics obsolete.

Carol Geiger, Steve Hall and Kathy Posner all have one thing in common. To see their government held accountable and  inspire transparency in the actions of public officials. Using their different platforms, they stimulate public debate while sharing with us the changes in their communities. You too can be like them. Taking opportunity of community blogs enables citizens to voice their opinion about how they are being governed. As this selection of blog posts shows, the public can push for changes that make previously confidential but relevant information such as judgeship applications, known to them. Likewise, read about the latest move to fight fraud in Illinois...

• Illinois State Rep. Jack Franks has introduced a new bill to amend the Illinois State Auditing Act to make it easier for citizens to report allegations of fraud in government. It would also strengthen the state’s Auditor General office. On the Kathy Posner blog, see how she lays out her support for “blowing the whistle a little louder.”

• Greg Abbott, the Attorney General of Texas, has ordered prison officials to disclose details about the drugs used in lethal injections. Steve Hall blogs on the Stand Down Texas Project that the ruling was prompted by the Austin American Statesman requesting information about suppliers and costs of the now scarce drugs.
• Yakov Shafranovich offers a better plan for transparency in Baltimore: publishing all city boards and agencies meeting notices and minutes online, instead of televising them as the city council’s president recently suggested. In Shafranovich’s opinion, it would be “transparent, cheaper, and broader,” to have written records that can be searched and perused online unlike a TV broadcast. On his Shaftek Blog, he also examines the highlights and lowlights of current state and city law on public information.
• Judge Mary Tabor of the Iowa Court of Appeals has recommended that applications of candidates for judgeships in Iowa should be made public in order to build more trust in the state judiciary. Referring to an article in the Des Moines Register, Peter Hardin tracks Iowa’s system for filling judicial positions on the Gavel Grab.

• Carol Geiger of the Texas Vox wrote about the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission’s move to make environment issues more public by releasing a report on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Citizens can post their comments before recommendations are made on January 12, 2011.

Because the Senate failed to pass the DISCLOSE Act before the 2010 election, American voters do not know the full extent of who tried to influence their vote through political spending. That is why the non-partisan Sunlight Foundation, along with a number of other groups including CREW, Common Cause, and the League of Women Voters, today called on Congress to pass a targeted disclosure bill during the lame duck session. Unless Congress enacts a robust, targeted disclosure bill now, the amount of secret money in the 2012 election season will eclipse the spending in 2010.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, this election season companies, unions and wealthy individuals laundered nearly $300 million of dark money through outside groups, not including the political parties. Sunlight’s own analysis of the outside spending this election showed that $126 million of such funds were raised and spent without the disclosure of donors.

The Citizens United case, which opened the floodgates to dark money, made clear that disclosure is a constitutional and crucial antiseptic to the corrupting influence of money in politics. Without it, Americans will never know the names or interests of contributors to the shadow non-profits and Super PACs that played an outsized role in the midterm elections. All election-related information must be available online in real-time to ensure our campaign finance system is fully transparent.

Preventing corruption of our democracy by secret campaign spending far too important for lawmakers from either party to weigh down a disclosure bill with extraneous provisions. A streamlined, focused disclosure bill that still digs deep into the real contributors to campaign activity must be at the top of Congress’ must-pass list during the lame duck session.

Now we know—with only a few exceptions—the results of the 2010 midterms in terms of who’s in and who’s out. But what we may never know is amount of access and influence contributors to shadow political campaigns now have to those who were elected. And unless a robust political spending disclosure bill is enacted, we never will. That is why, first and foremost, Sunlight will be working with the new Congress to pass a targeted disclosure bill that will disinfect the corrupting influence secret political money has on our democracy.

This election season, companies, unions and wealthy individuals have laundered almost $200 million dollars through outside groups to spend on campaign activity, including ubiquitous negative TV ads. (That figure doesn't even include spending by the political parties themselves.) Their generosity was fueled not by civic duty, but by a legislative agenda that will be energetically pursued by lobbyists. While visiting the offices of the newly elected or re-elected, those lobbyists will remind the politicians of their clients’ financial support for their election bids. But here’s the problem; while the lobbyists will be ready and willing to share the names and interests of donors who funneled six or seven digit sums through sham nonprofit organizations and Super PACs, you and I will never have access to that information.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In the Citizens United case that contributed to the current mess, the Court upheld disclaimer and disclosure requirements by an 8 to 1 vote. On Monday, the Court refused to hear arguments in Keating v. FEC, thereby upholding a lower court decision requiring Independent Expenditure Only Committees, or Super PACs, to disclose their donors. It’s time to sweep aside any pretense that disclosure and disclaimer rules are unconstitutional and instead focus on getting a robust transparency law enacted.

Despite the failure to pass the DISCLOSE Act before the midterms, Congress must quickly revisit this issue of disclosure of third party spending so that voters know who is paying for campaign ads in 2012. The DISCLOSE Act contained provisions that went beyond pure transparency measures. In the end, such measures probably didn’t destroy the bill’s chances of being passed, but they certainly didn’t help. Now, we have incontrovertible evidence that secret campaign contributions will influence our elections. Preventing future corruption is too important for Members from either party to weigh down a bill with extraneous provisions. A streamlined, focused disclosure bill must at the top of Congress’s must-pass list.

We can’t follow the money if we can’t find it. Any member of Congress who supported DISCLOSE, anyone who has ever called for any degree of greater government transparency, and anyone who was elected through calls to “take back our government” (in this case, from the hands of secret, wealthy special interests) should be willing to hit the ground running with a bill that precisely focuses on disclosure while uncovering all the sources secret spending so they won’t be secret anymore.

President Obama is speaking to the General Assembly of the United Nations right now. He spoke out on the need to increase transparency and use technologies to increase democratic participation. Here's the relevant quote--full text here:

Each of these countries gives life to democratic principles in their own way. And even as some governments roll back reform, we also celebrate the courage of a President in Colombia who willingly steps aside, or the promise of a new Constitution in Kenya. The common thread of progress is the principle that government is accountable to its citizens. The diversity in this room makes clear - no one country has all the answers, but all of us must answer to our own people. In all parts of the world, we see the promise of innovation to make government more open and accountable. Now, we must build on that progress. And when we gather back here next year, we should bring specific commitments to promote transparency; to fight corruption; to energize civic engagement; and to leverage new technologies so that we strengthen the foundation of freedom in our own countries, while living up to ideals that can light the world.

I ham-handedly tried to explain why Tom DeLay got off-the-hook yesterday when I stated that his ideology overlapped perfectly with the corrupt actions of former super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. What I meant is that it was impossible to distinguish whether DeLay's positions, for example, on labor laws for the Marianas Islands, were influenced by the trips and dining he was provided by Abramoff--via money laundered through a nonprofit--or whether that position stemmed from his conservative belief in free markets with little to no regulation. Prosecutors couldn't figure it out and there was no evidence to go by except for DeLay's statement that he was simply following his ideological beliefs. The money spent on him held no sway over his ultimate decisions, he argued.

A similar argument can be made for lawmakers who receive campaign contributions from lobbyists and employees of firms who receive earmarks from said lawmakers. Take deceased Rep. John Murtha as an example. Murtha could repeatedly state that all that concerned him was getting jobs and infrastructure into his economically depressed district. Same goes for Rep. Don Young, former Sen. Ted Stevens and former Sen. Robert Byrd. All the campaign contributions they were getting didn't matter when they signed off on earmarks for their contributors because they were just looking for viable job-creating projects. You can't necessarily prove that anything illegal happened.

All of that brings us to the Op-Ed by author and lawyer Scott Turow in today's New York Times. Turow does the best job possible explaining the dysfunctional ways in which our legal system views and deals with campaign contributions. One person can be convicted of bribery for offering a $1,000 contribution in exchange for a vote while Rod Blagojevich walks free on a hung jury over charges that he held up funding for a children's hospital over campaign contributions and so on and so on.

Our legal system accepts that the transmission of campaign contributions in exchange for official acts is illegal bribery, yet it fails to properly police this practice. This is mainly due to the circumstances described above. How do you prove that a contribution was intended as a bribe when the action may have taken place despite the contribution? It's impossible. So you get a system where we scold people for the appearance of corruption or improper influence, but don't do anything about it. Take this example that Turow lays out:

For example, in June 2009, the court decided a case involving Massey Coal and its chief executive, Joe Blankenship. (Coincidentally, Massey was the operator of a coal mine in West Virginia that exploded in April, killing 29 miners.) In 2004, after Massey had lost a $50-million fraud verdict to a rival coal company, Mr. Blankenship spent $3 million supporting the successful candidacy of Brent Benjamin to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, where Massey’s challenge of the fraud verdict was going to be heard.

Although Mr. Blankenship’s spending eclipsed the contributions of all of Judge Benjamin’s other donors put together, the judge subsequently refused to remove himself from Massey’s appeal. Unsurprisingly, the court voted to overturn the verdict against Massey, with Judge Benjamin providing the deciding vote.

The case eventually came to the United States Supreme Court, which by a 5-to-4 vote decided Justice Benjamin should have recused himself because of the “disproportionate” influence Mr. Blankenship’s money had in the election. Nonetheless, the court pointedly refused to require the same from other judges who received less grandiose campaign assistance from lawyers and litigants with cases before them.

Moreover, the court appeared persuaded that nothing criminal had occurred, even though its ruling concluded that it was “reasonably foreseeable” at the time that Mr. Benjamin would decide the Massey case and that Mr. Blankenship had a “vested interest” when he spent the money. Given that logic, who can blame Mr. Blagojevich — or Wanda Brandstetter — for asking, “Why me?”

Really, what is there to say? After a six-years the Department of Justice dropped their investigation into former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's connection to the Jack Abramoff scandal. There are a few things left to say:

1) It's really hard to convict someone whose ideological proclivities happen to overlap with the nefarious actions of Washington's former super-lobbyist Abramoff, who was also the target's close friend.

2) The laws written to punish official corrupt activity are very difficult to enforce. Gathering evidence is also incredibly difficult. Absent complete idiocy by the target--Jim Traficant, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Bob Ney, Michael Myers, William Jefferson--it is difficult to prove that corrupt activity took place.

3) The Public Integrity Unit at the Justice Department made some serious progress by obtaining convictions on corruption related charges of numerous targets, but they also completely screwed up along the way. The Ted Stevens charges were thrown out and the unit could never pin down either DeLay or John Doolittle. They also over played their hand by entering and seizing documents from William Jefferson's congressional office.

So, Rep. Alan Mollohan was defeated in a Democratic primary yesterday. He was the second incumbent to lose in the past week (Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah having been defeated last Tuesday) and to many pundits is a canary in the 2010 election coal mine. This is probably true, but let's not forget that Mollohan has been embroiled in an earmark-related corruption scandal going back as far as 2006. We can take the Sunlight DeLorean back four years to read what my colleagues and I were writing back then. Or check out this excellent write-up on Mollohan's Open Congress Wiki page.

Now, you may be asking, well, why this year if his scandal problems began back in 2006? That gave two election cycles for Mollohan to be defeated and that was before the FBI wrapped up their investigation with no indictments or further activity. Despite having voted for a wide margin for both John McCain and George W. Bush in the last two elections Mollohan's (soon-to-be-former) district is a conservative Democratic district at the congressional level. Mollohan previously faced not-so-credible Republican opposition in 2006 and 2008, both Democratic sweep years. This was the first time the scandal-plagued lawmaker faced real opposition within his party. With a long-running scandal and anti-incumbent fever Mollohan was bound to lose. The American people are, as my colleague Bill Allison likes to say, the only ethics committee we need.