Last week, the Delaware legislature sent an interesting bill to Governor Jack Merkell: SB 185, a short, targeted piece of legislation that, if signed into law, will bring Delaware’s lobbying disclosure into the 21st century.

With the passage of SB 185, online disclosure will be the default for all lobbying reports and lobbyist registration. (Paper filing will only be acceptable in the (hopefully) rare event that the electronic filing system is offline.) Further, SB 185 requires that lobbyists “disclose the bill, resolution, or regulation on which they are lobbying...within five business days of contact with a relevant public official” -- which, while not real time reporting, is pretty darn close and puts SB 185 on par with the disclosure deadlines proposed in a federal bill Sunlight supports: the Lobbying Disclosure Enhancement Act, introduced last June.

Of course, these electronic requirements would mean nothing if they remained out of the public’s reach. That’s why one of SB 185’s most important proposals is to charge the Public Integrity Commission -- the agency that administers many of Delaware's ethics and disclosure laws and receives these filings -- with making these reports available online “in a manner in which they can be easily reviewed by bill, resolution, regulation, lobbyist or employer, and that regular updates be distributed to members of the General Assembly.”

These are solid -- but not sweeping -- reforms. Although it’s critical that Delaware -- and all state governments -- require electronic filing and public-facing databases of influence data (updated in real time), when it comes to the transparency of lobbying records and practices, Delaware still has a ways to go. Earlier this year, the state received an “F” in Lobbying Disclosure from the State Integrity Investigation, which issued report cards to all 50 states, grading them based on a quantitative analysis of anti-corruption and pro-accountability laws and measures. Delaware’s “F” earned it the rank of fourth worst in the nation on lobbying disclosure and dragged down its overall score to a C-. Although lawmakers cited the bill (and Governor Markell endorsed it) as part of their effort to improve the state’s score, SB 185 really only improves on the part of lobbying disclosure that Delaware was already doing well: general public access to disclosed information. Prior to SB 185, Delaware was publishing its lobbying reports online for free, but it was not making these documents available in a searchable database (nor was it releasing this info in as timely a manner as possible). SB 185 will change that.

What the bill won’t vastly change is what information lobbyists need to disclose. SB 185 could be strengthened by requiring that the names of the specific officials or lawmakers lobbied are disclosed or if it created provisions for enforcement mechanisms, such as independent audits of disclosure records.¹ But just because 185 could be better doesn't mean that it isn’t worth the Governor’s signature: Policy, like technology, is iterative, and what SB 185 does to demonstrate Delaware’s willingness to use technology to support greater public monitoring can’t be underrated. Plus, SB 185 does require some new information be released: If made law, lobbyists will newly have to identify the specific bill, resolution or regulation they’re working on, a valuable addition to the lobbying information currently available to Delawareans.

SB 185 is an excellent example of a small but important step that all state legislatures should make to solidify public access to influence data, and it provides a great platform for Delaware to build on in its efforts to improve the quality and depth of its transparency laws. Let’s hope they do.

Full bill text available here.

¹ More info on Sunlight’s Lobbying Reform platform.

In what could be a record for shortest congressional hearing, the Senate Rules Committee today discussed S. 219, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act. At the thirty minute hearing, Senators Schumer, Alexander and Tester discussed their support for the bill, which would require Senate candidates to file their campaign finance reports electronically with the Federal Election Commission, eliminating the duplicative, time consuming and wasteful current filing process. Senator Udall announced he would join the bill as a cosponsor, and two witnesses, Secretary of the Senate Nancy Erickson and Paul Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center, echoed their support for this noncontroversial legislation, noting that not only would it save the FEC over $400,000 annually, but it would free up resources for the Secretary of the Senate to implement the STOCK Act. Most importantly, requiring electronic filing of campaign finance reports would ensure that vital information about campaigns’ receipts and expenditures would be available to the public before they go to the polls.

The bill is so straightforward the Senators didn’t even have any questions for the witnesses. So will it pass? Unfortunately, the deciding factor will be Mitch McConnell. For reasons he has never adequately explained, he has been behind the secret holds and poison pill amendments that have blocked this bill for years. In pure Washington-speak, he claims to support the bill without denying that he has blocked it. He has had other senators, included Pat Roberts and John Ensign, do his dirty work for him, offering amendments that had nothing to do with transparency and everything to do with killing the bill. But when we came across evidence that before Ensign offered it, his poison pill amendment in was actually a McConnell amendment, we knew who the culprit was. Don’t just take our word for it. Even Sen. Ensign admitted to working with McConnell on the strategy that killed a prior version of the bill.

Maybe this is the year McConnell will finally give up the fight, let this simple bill pass by Unanimous Consent, and spend his energies on true controversies. Maybe.

McConnell Amendment to E-File

Where else but the United States Senate would digital documents containing vital public information be printed, scanned, emailed, printed again and re-keyed into computers before they could be searched, sorted and analyzed by the public? Because the Senate has exempted itself from the electronic filing requirements that apply to all other political committees, the absurd process is repeated multiple times a year by every candidate vying for a Senate seat.

Tomorrow, the Senate Rules Committee will hold a hearing on S. 219, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, a bill designed to bring the Senate into the 21st Century by requiring Senate candidates to file their campaign finance disclosure reports with the FEC, as House candidates, presidential candidates and PACs have been doing for years. Sunlight submitted testimony urging senators to support the bill. We also joined a coalition urging quick passage of this bipartisan legislation.

There is nothing controversial about the bill. No one has publicly opposed it on its merits. Possibly the most notable feature of the legislation is that a hearing is necessary at all. This bill should have been enacted a decade ago.

The primary culprit behind the failure to enact this bill is Senator Mitch McConnell. For reasons that only he could explain (although he never has) he has blocked passage of this bill by subjecting it to secret holds and poison pill amendments. This is the same Mitch McConnell who once asked, “Why would a little disclosure [of money in politics] be better than a lot of disclosure?"

We are left to assume that McConnell only supports a lot of disclosure when he thinks it advantages him or his party. Otherwise, he will do everything in his power to deny the public timely access to information that is critical to a functioning democracy.

The current process by which Senate candidates file their campaign finance reports wastes time and money, not to mention reams of paper. It is particularly troublesome in the days before an election, when there is more information filed and when delays may mean the public must go to the polls without access to complete information about candidates’ finances.

We hope the days of political gamesmanship surrounding this simple bill are over. It is past time for the Senate to adopt mandatory electronic filing of campaign finance reports.

Testimony of Ellen Miller in Support of S. 219

The day of gadget envy reckoning is upon us as Apple unveils their latest iPad and it seems only natural that the Sunlight Foundation watch this media frenzy in regards to our policy proposals. One particularly confounding (and floundering) situation is that the Senate refuses to use the internet and file their campaign finance reports electronically, though a few Senate offices nobly do.

The current process of filing goes something like this: a senator's campaign staff fills out campaign financial disclosure forms as required every quarter, submits those forms to the Secretary of the Senate who prints them out and sends it over to the Federal Election Commission. The FEC then takes this pile of paper and pays an army of data-entry folks to put those forms back into electronic format and then the FEC posts it online. We might be laughing at this scene set to Yakety Sax if it weren't costing taxpayers an estimated $430,000 every single year! This is stupid.

We tried appealing to their environmental concerns. We tried appealing to their government efficiency concerns. We tried appealing to their debt concerns. Turns out those concerns aren't so strong. Now, we appeal to their gadget envy concerns.

The iPad Proposal:

• Most recently cited cost of not filing electronically: $430,000
• Cost of a brand new 16 gb iPad with WiFi and AppleCare Warranty with taxes: $612.68
• Number of iPads that could be purchased with savings: 701
• Every Senate office gets 7 iPads and the extra goes to the Secretary of the Senate.

Maybe this will bait McConnell out from his cave of baffling obstruction?

Note: This proposal is tongue-in-cheek and we think it's much better for senators to just use their existing computers to file, like the House has been doing for years. Maybe they could put the money they would save towards funding other e-government programs?!

Senators Tester and Cochran, champions of common sense legislation that would require senators and senate candidates to electronically file their campaign finance reports, yesterday offered a version of their bill as an amendment to the STOCK Act. Sunlight applauds their effort and wrote a letter to all senators urging them to support the amendment.

Sunlight has long supported the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, a much needed and long overdue remedy to the absurd system in place in the Senate. Currently, senate candidates file their quarterly campaign finance reports with the Secretary of the Senate, who then prints them out on reams of paper and delivers them to the Federal Election Commission. The FEC then inputs the information contained in those reports into its computer databases. The archaic and costly process delays public access to information about who is funding Senate campaigns, sometimes until after the election takes place.

By contrast, senators’ counterparts in the House, as well as presidential candidates and PACs, have, for years, electronically filed their campaign finance reports directly with the FEC, avoiding the wasteful, duplicative and opaque senate system.

Versions of this Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act have been introduced with significant bipartisan support in multiple prior congresses. No Senator that we know of has ever publicly opposed the legislation. Yet it has not been enacted because it has been the victim of politics. Senator Mitch McConnell has repeatedly demanded that a vote on the electronic filing bill be linked to a vote on unrelated proposal that would, if enacted, actually decrease transparency by posing burdens on groups filing ethics complaints against any sitting senator.

By offering the electronic filing bill as an amendment to the STOCK Act, there is a real opportunity to make this piece of legislation law. We hope it comes up for a vote and that every senator supports it. There is no reason not to.

Letter to the Senate on Electornic Filing Amendment 2012-02-01-1

Today, the Sunlight Foundation launched a campaign urging Senators to voluntarily file their campaign finance reports electronically. Presidential candidates and candidates for the House have filed their campaign finance reports electronically with the Federal Election Commission for over a decade. The reports let the public know what special interests, lobbyists or out-of-state donors might be funding a candidate’s campaign.

U.S. Senators have exempted themselves from mandatory electronic filing of campaign reports, holding fast to an archaic system in which they file their reports with the secretary of the Senate, who prints them out and delivers them to the FEC. The FEC spends about $250,000 and untold hours having the records typed in, line by line, to its databases. This isn’t just inefficient spending of our tax dollars, it’s a waste of time that denies the public real time access to information that can help shape and inform their opinions about the people they will be voting for in November.

Legislation has been introduced to mandate electronic filing by Senate candidates, but the common sense Campaign Disclosure Parity Act has long suffered as a sacrificial lamb in the world of political gamesmanship and its passage is far from certain. Ultimately, a legal mandate will be necessary to ensure universal electronic filing, but until then, senators and Senate candidates can voluntarily file their campaign finance reports electronically, shining a bright and timely light on campaign finance information while decreasing the chances that errors will occur when the data is re-entered.

Only a handful of Senators currently file electronically. The rest should be embarrassed at their complacency and willingness to live in the dark ages. Campaigns already have this information in electronic form, and the FEC makes it easy to file electronically. Supporters of transparency, please call your Senators and ask them to use the net.

To read more about e-filing, check out our handy resource page.

*Photo by Steve Rhode

The Federal Communications Commission announced a new initiative that demonstrates that the agency understands and welcomes full disclosure. As of June 1, the FCC began requiring that details about ex parte communications—meetings with agency staff where only one side of an issue is present to make its case—must be filed electronically. Not only will transparency at the FCC be improved, but the initiative serves as an example of how transparency should work throughout government.

According to the FCC’s general counsel, “disclosing the contents of oral ex parte contacts on the record ensures that interested parties, the public, and the Commission staff all have complete information about the data and arguments that are presented to Commission decision-makers.”

Makes sense to Sunlight. An ex parte contact at the FCC sounds a lot like a lobbying contact on Capitol Hill. Nothing wrong with it, but details need to be disclosed so that interested parties have a chance to know who is saying what about important public policy issues. We’ve called for improving disclosure of lobbyists contacts by, among other things, including naming the Member of Congress’ office with whom the lobbyist met and providing details of the lobbyist’s request. It sounds a lot like the FCC’s requirement that ex parte notices must list of everyone who participated in the meeting and a summary of all data presented and arguments made.

These types of disclosures will improve the dialogue at the FCC and would do the same for Congress. Fundamentally, lobbyists are educators. More disclosure about meetings would ensure that decision makers have a more complete understanding of all sides of the issue at hand.

Naysayers who say that agency communications are different than lobbying Congress should look to the example of Sen. Gillibrand. She publishes all of her official meetings online the day after they occur. She knows that if a voter sees that she has met with a lobbyist whose views they oppose, they can contact her office to make sure their viewpoints are heard too.

The same principle is at work with the FCC’s ex parte rules. The FCC gets it. Hopefully Congress will too.

The Sunlight Foundation and a dozen other bipartisan organizations are seeking Senators who are willing to be among the first to embrace the most modern of trends in the upper chamber—voluntary electronic filing of their campaign finance reports.

Senators Boxer, Cochran, Cornyn, Feinstein, Leahy, Lugar, and Sanders electronically filed their campaign finance reports with the FEC during the last reporting period. Senator Gillibrand recently announced that she too will begin filing electronically on July 15, the next deadline for filing FEC reports. Any senator who supports transparency should join this small group and commit to filing their campaign finance reports electronically starting in July and continuing to do so for every reporting period thereafter.

Failing to file electronically is inexcusable. The FEC makes voluntary electronic filing easy. Senators, or their campaigns, can simply download the agency’s free filing software and contact the agency for an ID and password. In fact, senators who served in the House prior to coming to the Senate are likely to have already filed electronically. Electronic filing has been mandatory in the House for years.

Voluntary filing will never obviate the need for a change in the law. For that reason, the letter also asks senators to cosponsor S. 219, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, introduced by Senators Tester and Cochran. The law would modernize the archaic system in which candidates for the Senate file their FEC reports with the Secretary of the Senate, who then prints them out and delivers them to the FEC, only to have the FEC re-enter the information into its own computer databases. The system costs hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars each year and denies the public timely access to information. Unfortunately, efforts to mandate electronic filing have been stymied since the bill was first introduced in 2003. It is imperative that the legislation is enacted to ensure that all Senate candidates file electronically.

Until the law passes, we urge senators to demonstrate their leadership as well as their support for transparency and openness in Congress by embracing voluntary electronic filing.

The following groups have joined Sunlight calling for voluntary electronic filing and support of the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act: The Campaign Finance Institute, The Campaign Legal Center, The Center for Responsive Politics, Common Cause, Fix Congress First, Judicial Watch, MAPLight.org, OMB Watch, OpentheGovernment.org, Public Campaign, Public Citizen and US PIRG.

Group Letter to Senators on Electronic Filing

Now here is an interesting argument about the legitimacy of the term "open government". In her "Why "Open government" is terrible branding (or whatever happened to participation and collaboration?)", Nancy Scola questions the use of the buzz word while pointing out the Obama administration's attempts at using technology to show accountability. But if you are like me and often inter-changeably use open government with transparency, Scola advises that we should instead engage in innovative ways that expand the term to include transparency, participation and collaboration, instead of just playing a watchdog role that limits us to keeping tabs on what should be transparent. Rebbecca Wilson shows us how we can do this...

• Wilson makes a compelling case for why Waukesha county in Wisconsin needs transparency and accountability in elections. She details the recent race for the state's Supreme Court justice where both candidates are now considering a recount. Her discussion highlights the importance of not entrusting an entire electoral process with only one election official -- as it was with the county's clerk Kathy Nickolaus -- because such a process breeds public distrust in the system. And in a way of offering solutions, she suggests a routine audit of the electoral process especially when paper ballots are used and reporting election results on election night. More on Save our Votes.

• Westchester County in New York is looking for transparency in little know places - small contracts. In the spirit of letting the taxpayer know where their money is going, legislator Sheila Marcotte is asking the county's board of legislators to put the small contracts (which add up to big money) on line. She hopes that by so doing, the often disguised county budget spending will be put to light. Gerald McKinstry shares more on Yorktown and Cortlandt region.

• Arizona has discovered a way out of preventing bankruptcy triggered by payroll obligations and promoting transparency at the same time. Inspired by a Goldwater Institute report that recommended a method of bidding out city services that requires the bidder to take on the responsibility of employee benefits,  SB SB1322 has been introduced to address the state’s fiscal status. Goldwater’s Nick Dranias, who is certain that this is a “managed competition approach,” is asking Governor Jan Brewer to support the bill. Why is Dranias sure it will also give the public access to information of exactly how much city services cost? It’s all on the State Brief.

• Cook County in Illinois has created an open data portal with aggregated public data in a machine-readable format. Erika Slife shares that once the page is ready, both the public and computer programs will be invited to develop new tools that customize data. The Chief Information Officer for the county, Greg Wass has already put aside money for the webpage, which is still in its development stages. See how this project is going to make the Cook County website easier to use on Clout Street.

We welcome today’s guest blogger Matt Rosenberg. Matt is the founder of the non profit Public Eye Northwest and the news knowledge base site Public Data Ferret,a Seattle Times local news partner. You can email him at: matt@publiceyenorthwest.org

From Washington D.C. to Washington state, events conspire to remind us that the quest for open government is still a work in progress. One case in point: Out here in the verdant, drizzly climes of the Pacific Northwest, a recent legislative attempt to ratchet up baseline Web disclosure by local governments and the state ran aground.  Washington State Senate Bill 5553 slipped into a legislative coma after a hearing in the House State Government and Tribal Affairs Committee on March 24th, never even surfacing for committee vote, though it passed the full state senate by a 48-1 vote. Barring exceptional procedural workarounds, it's dead for this session. The bill would have required local governments and state agencies with a current website to post an agenda no less than 72 hours before a regular meeting, including the full text of any ordinance, rule or regulation to be considered. Emergency meeting agendas would be posted online no less than 24 hours prior; and minutes of all meetings within 15 days after approval, to remain online at least a year. The State Government and Tribal Affairs panel's chair, State Rep. Sam Hunt, declined to respond to questions on SB 5553's demise.

When public organizations become private

Even had the measure advanced, there was no requirement in it or existing state law that a local government body have a website, to help boost transparency on meeting agendas and business items. Yet such opacity can bear ugly fruit, as in the case of the French Slough Flood Control District, an under-the-radar public body north of Seattle in Snohomish County. It was recently called out in a state audit for dealing no-bid contracts to two companies, each partially owned by one of its three commissioners. There is not even a current public office for the district listed online, but I managed to track down the manager at his home phone number. He confirmed the district has no website; no plans for one; and no intention to snail mail or e-mail meeting agendas to anyone who so requests. He said (correctly) that our state's open meetings law only required the body to make known the time and place of its regular and other meetings, but that there is wide latitude in the "how" piece. Usually that approach is smart, but not in this instance.

Other local taxing bodies, particularly water, sewer and other flood control districts, and some hospital districts - though supported with public monies - also do not have public Web sites. Their workings remain invisible to all but the most "ïnside" insiders.

New Jersey's State Comptroller Matthew Boxer had a good idea about how to begin addressing this problem. His office took an inventory of New Jersey local governments on whether they have websites and use them for basic transparency. Boxer's February 2011 report found that the 587 local government bodies in New Jersey had combined annual spending and current debt of more than $5 billion, an amount which underscores taxpayer investment in government and the case for robust online transparency; yet more than one-third lacked websites, and those that had them often failed to include basic information on meetings and finances. All states would benefit from similar inventories of local government transparency infrastructure, and then a robust dialog on next steps.

Initiating transparency at the local level

Trust in government is sensed in the aggregate, and what's close to home resonates especially. Expectations are higher. Public bodies and agencies must come halfway across the bridge by better institutionalizing transparency, but responsibility also lies with the community - not just journalists - to demonstrate concretely why transparency matters. Many cities in Central Puget Sound, the fast-growing metropolitan region surrounding Seattle, are already well on their way to doing their part. Unlike some others here, these actors don't need a state law to mandate the basics of online disclosure, they're already hip-deep in it. They're not only posting meeting agendas online, but also embedding in those agendas many individual links to meeting items such as draft legislation, staff and consultant policy reports, regular spending and budget reports, consultant contracts, inter-agency agreements, and more.

These link-rich local government meeting agendas that are regularly posted online can be mined and the highest value news items synopsized by local newspapers, bloggers, and other stakeholders; or by civic information infrastructure projects like our own Public Data Ferret knowledge base, now a Seattle Times news partner.

We found that a consultant's report to the Woodinville City Council on redevelopment options for a seismically vulnerable city-owned historic property, showed the return-on-investment challenge is so daunting it might be better to brave the preservationists and get permission to tear it down.  A Seattle City Council staff report accented the red ink to be borne by the city if as contemplated, it annexed the adjacent unincorporated community of White Center. There would be $4.6 to $16.8 million more in annual expenses than revenues tied to the move, and one-time costs ranging from $8.7 to $54.3 million, all while the city is grappling with major budget problems. The council later backed away from the annexation after the report was highlighted in online media.  An actuarial firm's report to a Seattle City Council committee revealed that the market value of a major city employee pension fund was $1 billion less than its 30-year obligations and that overly generous terms negotiated by the city needed to be corrected to help prevent taxpayer liabilities from growing larger still.

Other tools are part of the accountability arsenal here. Monthly online news releases from the state on disciplinary actions against health care workers are keyed to an online database with related documents, so that the public can access case histories of providers like the medication technician at a West Seattle assisted living facility who while on duty drank a half bottle of whiskey, smoked a substance police lab tests later showed to be rock cocaine, and passed out in a stairwell; or the irritated nurse in another facility who rubbed a soiled diaper into a resident's face. But the database doesn't allow searching by facility, nor do the online disciplinary case history documents usually name the facility involved. Reporters and bloggers can get the latter with a call, but both types of information belong online to start with.

In contrast, the Washington state insurance commissioner's office disciplinary actions database reveals company histories and highlights all recent actions by listing them in reverse date order.

Sometimes in the quest for transparency and accountability, the two Washingtons meet, via reports from the Inspector General of a federal agency. The Washington Department of Social and Health Services was cited in  a recent investigation by the Inspector General's Office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for over-billing Medicaid $8.4 million in reimbursements, by using incorrect treatment category classifications. It is refunding the money, and has upgraded its information systems to avoid a repeat. A General Services Administration IG report found the agency paid tens of millions more for a major U.S.-Canada border crossing station upgrade in Blaine, Wash. than it would have if proper contract price cap procedures had been followed. GSA's Public Building Service, similarly cited in a series of similar reports involving projects in other locales, says it has developed new procedures to ensure the problem does not re-occur. A U.S. Postal Service IG report recently documented current excess USPS office space in the Seattle region with a market value over 10 years of $26 million, and recommended it be sold or leased, part of a series of findings documenting the same problem across several other of the enterprise's regions.

We know that promises of reform, glimpsed in agency responses to IG audits among other places, don't always materialize, or unfold very slowly. But when the information source is the government itself, the results are harder for officeholders and agencies to ignore - if what's discovered truly sees the light of day. And although the work of the erstwhile U.S. Government Accountability, or in Washington state, the office of our stellar State Auditor Brian Sonntag, are periodically covered in the media, much else that warrants equal attention languishes in the dark corners of the "deep web."

While improving the rules of engagement and technical platforms and tools around government transparency are crucial, so is distilling and distributing high-value public information and data which is already freely valuable. It so happens there's a lot of it. Transparency is only as good as what we - who hire and fire the elected officials who are supposed to represent our interests - manage to do with it. To build the case for more and better government transparency, we should remember the importance of regularly demonstrating the concept across all jurisdictions, and in ways that energize and engage diverse publics.