Sunlight Foundation

Sunlight Weekly Roundup: “Initiatives for 'open government' either improve access or hinder it."

  • While summarizing the changes Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst hopes to implement with the Senate Select Committee on Open Government, Curt Olsen reminds, “Initiatives for 'open government' either improve access or hinder it." Olsen maintains that each change should be watched carefully, as, “ State lawmakers can pass laws that enhance openness and transparency or they can pass laws that cause mischief and erect a new hurdle for taxpayers to have access to government." The proposed changes include: “The use of new technologies and future technological advances as relates to the creation of public information” and “Study ways to define and address frivolous and/or overly-burdensome open records requests. “State lawmakers can pass laws that enhance openness and transparency or they can pass laws that cause mischief and erect a new hurdle for taxpayers to have access to government.” For the entire list and Olsen’s opinion, check out his post on Texas Budget Source.
  • In her assessment of the state of Minnesota transparency, Mary Tracey maintains, “What matters to most citizens is the right to access to information by and about state, regional and local government information – state agencies, county boards, advisory committees and regulators, every entity from the Governor’s office to the local school board. In her post on Poking Around With Mary, she summarizes the open government portals available to Minnesotans: The twin pillars of access in Minnesota are the Data Practices Act and the Open Meeting Law.  Essential guides to each include these:  Open Meeting Law,Government Data Practices Act.  The Legislative Reference Libraryalso offers a comprehensive list of guides and information about parallel laws and regulations in other states." She urges citizens who are concerned with government transparency to “be aware of the agencies’ responsibilities to assure compliance with the spirit and the letter of the law.”
  • In Hawaii, the House Labor and Public Employees Committee on Friday rejected a bill that did not disclose the names and exact salaries but did disclose job titles and salary ranges. The committee decided that names, titles and salaries for state and county workers should remain public information. Siding with advocates of government transparency, a Hawaii state House committee says the names, titles and salaries for state and county workers should remain public information. Supporters of the proposed bill cited identify-theft concerns as the reason why the state should not disclose exact salaries and employee names, however, no one could cite a single case of identify-theft linked to the disclosure of public employee information. Blogger and open-government advocate Larry Geller testified that the measure "threatens to chip away at the edges of public records law." For more information, read Chad Blair’s post on Honolulu Civil Beat.
  • At a forum on Monday, Robert Freeman, the executive director of New York State’s Committee on Open Government, answered audience questions regarding the state’s Open Meetings Law and the Freedom of Information Law. Both, Freeman said, are based on common-sense. On February 2, an amendment to the Open Meetings Law will take effect. The amendment will require boards to provide information about items being discussed. “People were frustrated for years because they didn’t have the ability to become families with records to be discussed during meetings,” he said. ”The amendment will go a long way to providing information before meetings.” For the entire story, see Robin Traum’s post on New City Patch.

       

    Connect with other transparency bloggers in this Transparency Bloggers Google group   and see what others are doing in the transparency movement by joining this Citizens for Open Government Google Group.

Sunlight Weekly Roundup: Thanks to Citizens United, Americans "don't think the government works for them anymore"

In our continued effort to highlight the anniversary of January 2010's Citizens United decision, this month's weekly roundups will take a look at what local bloggers across the country are saying about the ruling. First, we took a look at bloggers from the primary states. Last week, we looked at bloggers from the East coast states. We'll be ending our coverage by rounding up local blogs from the West coast states, where many campaign donations derive.

  • San Francisco's Political Blotter covered Common Causes’ Amend 2012 campaign to reverse the Citizens United ruling. According to  Josh Richman of Political Blotter, “A constitutional amendment will take years to pass, coming far too late to stem the tide of money that’s already flooding this year’s election, but organizers say this effort at least will give outraged voters a voice and inject the issue into November’s vote, forcing candidates to take a position on it.” The campaign's initial drive for petition signatures will focus on Colorado, Montana and Massachusetts; that might expand to Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio and Washington. Common Cause President Bob Edgar said Americans “have lost faith in Washington, they don’t think the government works for them anymore.”
  • Despite 2010’s Citizens United ruling, Montana state courts upheld the state's law banning corporate spending. According to the court, laws burdening such speech are subject to strict scrutiny, which requires the Government to prove that the restriction "furthers a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.” Opponents of Citizens United in Montana worry that a large influx of corporate money has the potential to alter the course of elections and politics in the state. A former house representative maintained that, “Montana, with its small population, enjoys political campaigns marked by person-to-person contact and a low cost of advertising as compared to other states.” For the whole story, check out Patrick Genova’s post on State of Elections.
  • California Assembly member Julia Brownley has introduced a bill requiring that corporate entities making political donations disclose those contributions. The California Disclose Act, AB 1148 deals specifically with accountability in election campaign ads and would force corporate sponsors “to step out from behind cryptic political action committee (PAC) names when they fund political advertisements.” "Currently, the top two donors must be disclosed on political ads, usually behind meaningless campaign committee ads. We hope to really pierce through the committee names to the top three donors behind ballot measure expenditure campaigns,” said Michelle Romero, manager of the Our Democracy voting reform initiative at the Greenlining Institute, which is supporting the legislation. Romero wants political ads to disclose the corporations behind donors, in addition to the donors names.  "Instead of saying, 'This ad was paid for by the Committee for Responsible California,' the ad would list the logos and names of top donors," said Romero. "For example: the donors are Chevron, Comcast, etc." For more on this story, see Lisa Carmack’s post on the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
  • Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley released a statement outlining his opposition of the Citizens United this week. Merkley rails against unlimited corporate influence in elections, saying, “Our nation is unique in world history in that it was founded on the simple idea that the people are in charge. However, our legacy of democracy is threatened by this Supreme Court decision that allows corporations unlimited secret spending to influence elections.” He continues, “As we’ve seen dramatically in the Republican presidential primaries, the massive amount of money flowing into our elections by super PACs is swamping the airwaves and altering outcomes.  Every person should have a right to their say – that’s the beauty of the First Amendment.  But corporations are not people, they are legal entities created by our laws to foster commerce.” To read his entire take on Citizens United, check out Mark Bogart’s post on Baker Quick News.
    Connect with other transparency bloggers in this Transparency Bloggers Google group   and see what others are doing in the transparency movement by joining this Citizens for Open Government Google Group.

Secret Hold Placed on Senate Electronic Filing Bill

Update: Here's Feingold's statement. 

Today Russ Feingold and Dianne Feinstein brought S.223, the Senate electronic disclosure bill, to the floor for a unanimous consent vote. When they asked if there was any objection Sen. Lamar Alexander, filling in for the minority leadership, announced that he had an objection, indicating that some Senator in the Republican caucus has placed a secret hold on the disclosure bill. This is twice in two years that a Senator has placed a secret hold on legislation providing for more disclosure to the public. Last year, it was the Coburn-Obama earmark database bill and a coalition of Right and Left bloggers smoked out both Sens. Ted Stevens and Robert Byrd as the secret holders. Don't these Senators know that we will find out who you are.

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Candidates Less Willing to Share Positions

I had lunch a couple of weeks ago with Richard Kimball, the founder and president of Project Vote Smart, the nation's premier information resource about candidates for public office at all levels. If you haven't checked out your lawmakers (whether Congressional, Gubernatorial or state legislative) on their site, you're missing information you need to know before you vote.

Richard related to me a very distressing fact. That in this age of transparency, candidates are less willing to tell the people where they stand on issues.

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Joke About Congressional Transparency Circulating on the Internet

    <p>Maybe when your seemingly wonky topic (e.g. transparency) makes it to status of a joke circulating on the Internet, your time has come. That's sort of the way I felt this morning, when the following appeared in my morning email. (See the last item.)</p><blockquote><br /><br />Put about 100 bricks in some particular order in a closed room with an open window. Then send 2 or 3 candidates into the room and close the door. Leave them alone, come back after 6 hours, and then analyze the situation.<br /> <br /> If they are counting the bricks, put them in the accounting department.<br /> <br /> If they are recounting them, put them in auditing.<br /> <br /> If they have messed up the whole place with the bricks, put them in engineering.<br /> <br /> If they are arranging the bricks in some strange order, put them in planning.<br /> <br /> If they are throwing the bricks at each other, put them in operations.<br /> <br /> If they are sleeping, put them in security.<br /> <br /> If they have broken the bricks into pieces, put them in information technology.<br /> <br /> If they are sitting idle, put them in human resources.<br /> <br /> If they say they have tried different combinations, yet not a brick has been moved, put them in sales.<br /> <br /> If they have already left for the day, put them in marketing.<br /> <br /> If they are staring out of the window, put them in strategic planning.<br /> <br /> If they are talking to each other, and not a single brick has been moved, congratulate them and put them in top management.<br /> <strong><br /> Finally, if they have surrounded themselves with bricks in such a way that they can neither be seen nor heard from, put them in Congress.</strong><p>&nbsp;</p>
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Mid-Morning News:

  • The Club for Growth Blog reports that Rep. [sw: Jim Moran] (D-VA) is really excited about earmarking. “When I become chairman [of a House appropriations subcommittee], I’m going to earmark the s—t out of it,” Moran buoyantly told a crowd of 450 attending the event.” Can we please get earmarking transparency -- QUICK!
  • The David Safavian trial is about to be handed to the jury to decide the former Bush administration official's fate. Did Safavian abuse his position to help Jack Abramoff? Was it a mistake for the prosecution to not send Abramoff to testify? Will Safavian's bumbling testimony lead to a guilty verdict as Ken Lay's did? I'm putting my money on the latter.
  • CongressDailyAM reports that the Democratic Caucus will vote on Thursday on the Steering Committee's recommendation that [sw: William Jefferson] be stripped of his seat on the Ways and Means Committee.
  • Also in CongressDailyAM, Speaker [sw: Dennis Hastert] (R-IL) plans on naming conferees to the lobbying and ethics reform conference committee. Don't expect much of the conference committee or the legislation that they create. Whatever comes out of that committee it will not be reform.
  • The Washington Post's Jeff Birnbaum reports that Congress is about to make it infinitely more difficult to lobby members of Congress through email. If you wish to send an email to your representative you will now have to complete a math problem. I'm going to go with MoveOn's Eli Pariser's statement about this: "We should be living in the golden age of politics -- an age in which every member of Congress can easily have a two-way conversation with his or her most engaged constituents. Instead, we're seeing bunkerization." Exactly. And why don't we have instant, searchable Internet disclosure of all information reported in Congress? This is the 21st Century isn't it?
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Transparency for Government Contracts

When we created Sunlight we made a point to note that the issue of greater transparency for government actions was a nonpartisan issue. We saw support for it across party lines in our initial polling and we see it again today in an editorial in the conservative newspaper -- the Examiner --which endorses transparency for government grants and contracts. The paper strongly supports Sen. Tom Coburn's Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590) that would make all information about federal contracts and grants available to the public free of charge in a searchable, downloadable online format on the Internet. (Coburn is the original sponsor of the proposal, and the measure is co-sponsored by the unlikely bedfellows of Sens. Barack Obama, Tom Carper and John McCain, R-Ariz.)

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