The Office of Government Ethics took an important step towards greater transparency yesterday when they launched an improved system for online access to public financial disclosure reports.

The Sunlight Foundation has advocated for online access to personal financial disclosure reports for years. The House of Representatives started putting their reports online in 2008. The Senate and Judiciary do not provide online access to their reports.

The new system puts executive branch financial disclosure documents (SF 278 and OGE Form 278) in one place and simplifies the request and retrieval process. Requests for copies of certified public financial disclosure reports and Certificates of Divestiture for people nominated by the President to Senate confirmable executive branch positions can be submitted online, with access to results available in seconds. Ethics agreements and waivers are available on-demand and interested parties will not have to submit a formal request to view them.

In 2009 the White House began providing online access to SF 278 Request Forms. The move was an improvement over the old paper system, but the process was still time consuming and complicated. There was no central hub of documents. Instead, after a formal request was made the reports were located and sent via email. The new system represents a significant upgrade.

The information now available online covers individuals appointed after January 20, 2009. If you are looking for information prior to that date you will still need to submit a paper form, available on the OGE website.

We are happy that the executive branch is joining the House in making their reports readily available to the public. The Senate and Judiciary should join the Executive and House of Representatives and put their information online to ensure that the sun shines on financial disclosure reports across the government.

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey wrote this post. 

In an effort to extract some transparency from the Obama administration regarding the waivers for lobbyists handed out by OMB and appointee financial disclosures, Jake Tapper runs into the Iron Curtain of the Press Secretary's office:

(Update: Now with video!):

TAPPER:  Robert, two questions.  One's a housekeeping one.  In the name of the transparency that you and the president herald so much, is there any way we could get the copies of the waivers that the OMB issues to allow certain cabinet posts or deputy posts...

GIBBS:  I'll check.

TAPPER:  ... free of the ethics constraints that you put up? And, also, the disclosure forms that your nominees put out that go to the Office of Government Ethics, that somehow they're not able to e- mail or, you know, put on the Web, is there any way we can get copies of those?

GIBBS:  Yes, I will check.  I don't -- I don't know how those forms are distributed.

TAPPER:  Just based on listening to the president's rhetoric, I'm sure it's something he'd want to do.

GIBBS:  Well...

TAPPER: The other question is...

GIBBS:  Knowing of your crystal clarity on his opinion, I'll certainly check.

TAPPER:  He doesn't believe in transparency?

GIBBS:  Did you have another more pertinent question?

TAPPER:  I think that's pretty -- I think it's fairly pertinent, your cabinet nominees and whether or not they pay their taxes and whether or not they have speaking fees with all sorts of industries they're suppose to regulate.  I think that's fairly pertinent.  You don't?

GIBBS:  Obviously I do.  And obviously the -- the president does.

Just in an effort of positive public relations, one would think that these documents would be made readily available through the Internet (I'm sure some of the people at the White House remember that thing). The failure to post financial disclosures online is just inexcusable, and also just bad politics, and the release of the OMB waivers is absolutely necessary to determine what issues lobbyists going into the administration will recuse themselves from. The administration has opened themselves up to these kinds of critiques and, despite the difficulty of starting a new administration, they need to hurry up get these types of issues sorted out.

Also, transparency isn't just a bunch of web sites and data and releasing information online (although that's all great, too), it's also allowing conversations to be held with candor. Everyone knows the press wants to be adversarial, but the Press Secretary's office should no longer continue with the tradition of stonewalling and evasion. Gibbs should be allowed to speak more freely and openly, and thus be more transparent.

(Hat tip to Michael Stern for pointing this out on the Open House Project list.)

• Lawyers allege that Sen. Ted Stevens received additional gifts outside of the over $250,000 in labor and renovations to his chalet. These gifts included a $2,695 massage chair, a $1,000 sled dog, and a $3,200 "hand-designed" stained glass window.
• Rep. Charles Rangel will recommend that the House Ethics Committee look into his personal finances after reports from the New York Post and New York Times revealed that Rangel failed to properly report income from a Dominican vacation home on both his personal financial disclosures and his income taxes.
• However, an Ethics Committee investigation may take time as the committee does not have a chairman at this time following the tragic death of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones. Rep. Gene Green is the likely temporary replacement, although Speaker Nancy Pelosi won't appoint Green until after a Sept. 10 memorial service for Tubbs Jones.
• The Federal Election Commission will hold a hearing on Sept. 17 on proposed rules for the disclosure of contributions bundled by registered lobbyists.

While the Senate struggles to pass a bill that would require them to file their campaign finance reports electronically, one office in the House of Representatives is having serious disclosure problems of their own. The office of Rep. Bill Sali consistently files campaign finance disclosures and personal financial disclosures late, with dozens of amendments and corrections. The reason: they don't know how to use computers. From the Politico:

One complaint? When the office files reports to Congress, they need to be amended. According to the Idaho Press-Tribune, the office has “filed 41 amendments to its required finance reports since 2005.”

And Sali’s office files late, apparently. One of two congressmen to do so. “Like 13 days late was the last one,” snitched a spy (and a newspaper, too). “And they chalked it up to computer problems.”

See here for the actual statement sent to the FCC: “I am unable to file the 2nd quarter 2008 FEC report, as FEC technical support is still attempting to fix the Sali for Congress data file. I first attempted to upload a file to the FEC site on June 6. I again tried on June 9, using the new FEC software update, without success. I then sent FEC technical support a copy of the Sali for Congress FEC file. FEC technical support is still attempting to fix the file so that it may be uploaded. I am in regular contact with FEC technical support and the FEC analyst, in an effort to resolve this matter.”

Sali's problems with computers are so acute that the Idaho Press-Statesman ran an entire editorial on his epic disclosure fail.

U.S. Rep. Bill Sali needs to get his house in order. This has nothing to do with how he votes in the House of Representatives, but how the basic everyday operations run in his office.

...

The real bottom line is that it is important to file reports on time and accurately — it’s not a joke.

Disclosure is not a joke. Rep. Sali should take public disclosure more seriously and perhaps figure out a way to train his staff on computer use.

As required by the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, the Clerk of the House launched an online database for current personal financical disclosures. The site only hosts PDF copies of these reports and is only searchable by member, not by anything they list on the reports. (I also had difficulty loading the PDF in the most recent version of Adobe Acrobat.) Kudos to the House for moving towards much greater transparency!

If you want to see how this information can be displayed in a more user-friendly and compelling way, check out the Open Secrets Financial Disclosure database.

Michael Stern at Point of Order, one of the better blogs for legal issues in Congress, covers the legal background of the charges brought against Sen. Ted Stevens. Stevens is facing seven felony charges for deliberately filing false financial disclosure forms to the Senate Ethics Committee. Give Stern's explanation a read; it'll be worth it when following the Stevens trial. Steven's trial starts on September 24.