Late last week, PMA lobbyist Paul Magliocchetti was sentenced to 27 months in prison and a $75,000 fine after pleading guilty to making illegal campaign contributions. For five years, Magliocchetti illegally used corporate funds from the once powerful PMA lobbying firm to reimburse friends and colleagues who made contributions to political candidates. Magliocchetti’s illicit generosity helped him secure earmarks from Members of Congress for many of his clients.

Some small measure of justice is served by Magliocchetti’s sentence, but if there were real time online reporting of lobbyists’ activities, perhaps it wouldn’t have taken five years to detect his scheme. Or, perhaps the scrutiny that comes with more frequent, detailed disclosures would have had a deterrent effect—Magliocchetti might have been less likely to commit a crime had he thought he risked being caught.

Sunlight is embarking on a campaign to improve lobbyists’ disclosures. (Check it out here, and sign up if you want to learn more.) Among the changes we propose is a requirement that lobbyists identify, in real time, who they are meeting with and what they are asking for. Such disclosures will, we believe, improve the democratic process and the ongoing policy dialogue by providing the public a clear idea of the issues that are hot on Capitol Hill and the interests that are lobbying in support or opposition to them. In the Magliocchetti case, such disclosures might also have quickly uncovered, or even prevented, the corrupting influence of Magliocchetti’s money laundering scheme.

The above image is of the Connecticut legislature hard at work. I spot one game of free cell, one game of solitaire and one guy reading ESPN.com. This may be why they don't allow computers on the floor of the House or Senate. Then again, you can always play crossword puzzles during committee hearings.

The New Republic has an excellent profile of Rep. John Murtha and the city of Johnstown, PA. This is one of the better pieces about the scandals swirling around the powerful Defense Appropriations Chair. This section stood out to me:

After much trial and error, in the mid-1980s, Murtha and Johnstown’s civic and business leaders finally arrived at an effective economic rescue strategy: leveraging Murtha’s position on the defense appropriations subcommittee to build a defense industry in Johnstown. For Murtha, it was a perfect solution--resolving the tension between foreign policy and local politics that had come to define his career. And it turned out to be a pretty good deal for Johnstown as well. “I remember being at some kind of party around 1983, and I met the head of economic development for the Pittsburgh region. And I said to him, ‘What would you do if you were running economic development here?’ ” recalls Mark Pasquerilla, who was then working for his father Frank, a shopping mall and hotel magnate and the richest man in Johnstown. “And he said--I remember this quote--‘I’ll tell you one thing that I would do: I’d grab onto Murtha’s coattails so tight, and I’d never let go.’ ”

Three lawmakers closely linked to the PMA Group lobbying and earmarks investigation have seen their collective campaign fundraising drop by 58% compared to the first quarter of 2007, according to the Washington Post. Reps. John Murtha, James Moran, and Pete Visclosky all were top recipients of campaign donations from the PMA Group -- before it disbanded -- and its clients.

Visclosky is the only one of the three to renounce campaign donations from former PMA Group lobbyists and former PMA Group clients. He has also forgone all earmarks for private firms. Unfortunately, this makes the connection between the contributions and the earmarks all the more clear, raising more questions about the Indiana congressman's prior actions than in quelling the potential pay-to-play questions. As my colleague Bill Allison writes, "Let’s see…could there be a connection?"

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.