Jack Abramoff left Washington to serve his prison sentence as a primary perpetrator and beneficiary of its culture of corruption. While his fall from influence prompted many reforms that we were eager to see, there is still a system riddled with loopholes and lacking the transparency we desperately need. Now, he's back. Shilling a book to pay off legal debts and line his pockets, Abramoff now wears the fresh cloak of a reformer who calls to clean the pigsty where he once rolled. We welcome him to the good fight, but honestly, it's hard to believe he's serious.

The master of rhetoric will be speaking at Public Citizen later today - we'll be in the audience and watching online. He frequently boasts he had "100 congressmen in his pocket" yet he has not released the documents or named the names.

After my questioning him on this point, Abramoff responded "Having been to prison personally -- hopefully, Ms. Miller hasn't been to prison and most of your readers haven't been and never will go -- but having been to prison, it's very hard for me to put anybody in harm's way, even people I don't like. And that's besides the point anyway. The point is to change the system." Just five days before his refusal to put anybody in harm's way he told TPM “The only thing I’m doing is trying to make available what I know from my experience so that we can fix this.” Unfortunately we continue to see hollow rhetoric. Instead of waiting until your book stops giving milk, why don't you spill some of those magic beans from the files you still have?

The Sunlight Foundation is committed to lobbying reform and exposure of the full system of influence. That's why we have an outstanding FOIA to see who visited Abramoff in prison, hold public meetings discussing the issue and, of course, encourage public markup of our recommendations for lobbying reform.

Today's event at Public Citizen is an opportunity for Abramoff to convince reformers that he's really serious; helping to fix the system by revealing more substantive information about those who participated in his activities. I don't care whether what he reveals is technically legal or not - decades of exposing K Street continues to prove that it's not always what is illegal that is most troubling, but rather what is completely legal.

Unless Abramoff starts answering these tough questions and open up his treasure trove of information anyone who calls themselves a reformer should be very skeptical of this reformer road show.

Make Abramoff prove himself as a reformer rather than just calling himself one.

Image via C-SPAN.

After launching Sunshine Week with yesterday's successful Advisory Committee on Transparency event, it's a good time to reflect on positive transparency developments around the country (as opposed to yesterday's disheartening news).

Among the inspiring stories that we came across recently, Sunlight was particularly struck by the work of a software engineering class at Virginia Tech. As the Washington Post reported, a professor picked up on the students' desire to find their coursework relevant and dedicated a semester to build a mobile app for the university bus system. After a slew of prototypes and some extra funding, the impressive VT Bus Tracker debuted. It's important to note that this application was only possible with a willing and proactive partnership with the bus system operators.

In light of budget shortfalls around the country, many states have yielded to public pressure to open their books and are putting their financial information online. In the past few months both Indiana and New Hampshire launched 'Transparency Portals' that centralize state spending data. These websites have plenty of room for improvement, but the Sunlight Foundation is excited to see the states dip their toe into the growing community of public officials who recognize public information should be online.

Last week we were interested to watch developments in lobbying disclosure at the state level in Georgia. According to an article in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission is hoping to vastly expand the definition of a lobbyist and allow e-filing across the board -- both principles the Sunlight Foundation includes in our Real Time Online Lobbying Transparency Act. While the proposals in Georgia are hardly perfect, any serious deliberation of lobbying reform is admirable and the Sunlight Foundation encourages these discussions.

What other rays of sunshine are we missing? Tweet @sunfoundation or use the hashtag #sunchat to join us this Thursday for a special Sunshine Week twitter chat.

The committee room before the full crowd arrived.

The Advisory Committee on Transparency's event earlier today was a huge success and we thank everyone who was able to join us. It was certainly a lively discussion and we will be following up on the many topics discussed. I hope our panelists enjoyed themselves and the audience found the 'Washington's Lobbying Fix' illuminating.

The full video of the event will be on our site shortly or, for those who have some nostalgia for the electronic fireplace, you can watch the event on CSPAN2 tonight at 8:30-10:00. Below are more photos from the event.

Photos by Nicko Margolies

On Friday, August 1, 2008, the Clerk of the House must launch a public database on the Clerk's web site for travel and gift disclosures and personal financial disclosures filed by lawmakers. This action is mandated by the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

Earlier this year, under mandate from the same ethics reform bill, the Senate launched a searchable database of travel and gift disclosure forms. Users can also download the entire database in XML format.

By the end of the week, we should be able to see what disclosure looks like on the House's side.