It’s axiomatic that the Sunlight Foundation believes transparency can deter corruption, foster accountability and increase the public’s participation in government.  But that is not to say that in all cases transparency alone is sufficient to ensure a cleaner, fairer democracy.  That is why it is troubling when people in the position of shaping public debate blithely remark that contribution limits should be tossed out in exchange for greater transparency.

David Axelrod, the president’s former top strategist and newly minted NBC pundit did just that through a series of tweets. As compiled by Politico, Axelrod tweeted, “Campaign finance system is a mess. Limits have just created a cottage industry for lawyers who devise schemes to circumvent them. Too much money in politics. But if it’s inevitable, let it flow directly to candidates and demand full disclosure, with stiff penalties. And end the SuperPac and faux SuperPac game that too often allows donors to elude detection and candidates to deny responsibility."

Too much money in politics. But if it's inevitable, let it flow directly to candidates and demand full disclosure, with stiff penalties.2/3

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) February 20, 2013

Exchanging candidates’ unfettered access to the deepest pockets for greater transparency is not a fair trade.  We need disclosure and limits.  Knowing a driver is going 200 miles per hour does not mean it is safe for him to do so.  Similarly, knowing a candidate received $100,000 or $1,000,000 from a single donor does not make that candidate less corrupted or corruptible.  Nor does it foster any faith in our system. As the Supreme Court noted in Buckley v. Valeo, contribution limits are one of the law’s “primary weapons against the reality or appearance of improper influence” on candidates by contributors.  The Court found that these limits “serve the basic governmental interest in safeguarding the integrity of the electoral process."

A campaign finance system that permits unlimited contributions to candidates would encourage an arms race between candidates, each promising access and influence to any sugar daddy willing to fork over a six or seven figure contribution.  A plutocracy would evolve, with voters’ and small donors’ voices drowned out by the amplifying power of unlimited contributions from a few.

We share Axelrod’s frustration with the current dark money system and understand that only the thinnest veneer exists between third party groups and the candidates they support. But rather shredding that veneer, laws should adopted to fortify it.  As a first step, Axelrod’s own proposal of “full disclosure, with stiff penalities” should apply to the Super PACs and 501(c) groups that engage in political activities with unlimited funds. The DISCLOSE Act would have provided such disclosure, had it not been killed in Congress. (It should be noted that, consistent with his continued disappointing actions on transparency and reform, the president failed to use any political capitol to ensure passage of a robust dark money transparency bill.)

Our campaign finance and disclosure system is in desperate need of repair. But giving up on it is not the answer. We need to shine a bright light on all the money already in the system, without opening up the floodgates for still more.

Today, Senator Tester announced that once again he has introduced the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, (not yet online) a bill that would bring the Senate into the 21^st Century by requiring senators and Senate candidates to electronically file their campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission.

The current filing system in place in the Senate would laughable if it weren’t so destructive to disclosure.  Senate candidates file their quarterly campaign finance reports with the Secretary of the Senate, who prints them out on reams of paper to be delivered to the Federal Election Commission. The FEC then inputs the information contained in those reports into its computer databases. Transparency delayed is transparency denied. The Senate system is anathema to anyone who supports meaningful disclosure.

House candidates and presidential candidates, by contrast, have been electronically filing their campaign finance reports for over a decade—streamlining the process and saving taxpayer money. It is estimated that the duplicative paper filing system in place in the Senate costs up to a half a million dollars annually.

Versions of the 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. The only reason the bill is not law is because it has been used for partisan political squabbles.  As the Senate struggles with massive challenges facing the country, from sequestration to guns to immigration, perhaps this year Senators can finally agree to enact a bill that no one can disagree with.

Meet Shea Frederick, our latest OpenGov Champion. Last September, Sunlight’s video team -- myself and Associate Video Producer Solay Howell -- spent two days in Baltimore, MD, with Shea to see how he uses city open data to build useful tools for Charm City residents.

One of those tools is baltimorevacants.org, a dynamic map that lets you search and see more than 30,000 vacant houses and vacant lots in Baltimore. To capture on video the source of that data, we drove around Baltimore filming abandoned houses, streets and even entire blocks that are just left to decay, attracting crime and rats.

Like Shea says in the video, it’s impactful to see 30,000 vacant houses or lots mapped out over the city. But it is even more powerful to see the actual places. I’m still haunted by the sight of all those vacant, rotting houses with boarded up windows and doors we saw all over Baltimore. As a visual storyteller, I could imagine how each one of these houses has a story to tell. Maybe a factory closed, people lost their jobs, packed up and moved, and after enough of their neighbors had left, the ones left behind could not bear to live on an empty street and finally they all went.

Looking at Shea’s work, I realized that data can be used tell a story too, one from real life that literally “connects the dots” and paints with broader strokes to get the full picture. That’s why Shea loves hacking on the open data the City of Baltimore started releasing in 2011: there is always a real life connection to the work he is doing and he can see it all around him.

Another one is an app called Spot Agent that uses parking citation data to warn you if a meter maid might be close by. Then there’s one that uses the city’s 311 data to show the most common problems occurring in any Baltimore neighborhood based on words that appear the most in the service requests, such as “trash,” “rat,” “illegal” or “light.”

He does a lot of this work with the help of other developers and interested citizens, connected through hackathons and other events. There is a vibrant community for this sort of work in Baltimore such that when the city started releasing its data sets through the Open Baltimore portal there already was an active bunch of people ready to go and put it to use. The city has been pleased with that, as these civic hackers can build something for fun and for free in a weekend that would take them weeks, maybe even months to complete and cost tens of thousands of dollars. Shea has been tag-teaming with the city directly, using the data it released and giving the city advice on how the data could be improved upon, mainly that it should be updated in real time instead of doing a one-time dump.

Why does Shea Frederick spend so much of his own time sorting out this data into meaningful, usable formats when he might as well be competing in a cyclocross race somewhere? Well, for one, he loves what he does. And second, he has grown to love Baltimore and wants to give back by giving others tools that can help them connect with what’s happening around the city. This is OpenGov Championship at work: taking data that’s available and putting it to use, and working together with the local government to make it even better.

Our OpenGov Champions are remarkable ordinary people who have done extraordinary things to open up our government. Get inspired by their stories and nominate someone in your community to become an OpenGov Champion.

Last month Daniel Schuman shared five ideas that members of Congress can implement to make their offices more open and transparent. A few weeks later the Advisory Committee on Transparency heard two more ways that Representatives and Senators could show their commitment to transparency without passing legislation or changing broader policies.

Lorelei Kelly, the Smart Congress Pilot Lead at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, and Josh Tauberer, who runs GovTrack.US, argued that members of Congress should hire staff specifically dedicated to working on innovative projects and open government issues.

Lorelei Kelly argued that members of Congress should hire, what she dubbed, "Technology Mashup Fellows" to work in their district offices and find expertise, innovation, and perspective from outside of the Beltway.

Turning his attention to Washington, Josh Tauberer encouraged members to consider hiring a Transparency Director. The director could focus on open government policy and help coordinate new initiatives to make member office operations more transparent.

You can view all of the presentations from the event here. The Advisory Committee on Transparency brings groups and individuals together to discuss transparency issues and share ideas. The Advisory Committee and the Sunlight Foundation do not necessarily endorse the ideas presented in these videos.

On the first day of President Obama’s first term, he had a lot on his plate. The economy was in recession, Osama bin Laden was at large, and war was ongoing.  But, despite it all, the president made clear that he was going to try to clean up Washington, ushering in new era of transparency and accountability. On his first day in office, the president issued an executive order instituting a new policy that banned White House staff from lobbying the administration for two years upon leaving. He also barred staff from working on issues they lobbied on previously and banned gifts from lobbyists to administration officials.

His goal was "to help restore faith in government, without which we cannot deliver the changes that we were sent here to make."

On his first day in office, the president also issued a Memo on Transparency and Open Government, promising the administration’s commitment “to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government…to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.”  The memo promised that the executive branch would “disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use.”  It also called for the creation of an Open Government Directive to guide agencies on how to implement increased transparency.

Contrast that robust and ambitious transparency agenda of four years ago with today. While we don’t know yet if he will be signing any executive orders, rest assured that if he does, none of them will be about making government more open and less corrupt. Indeed, while it is unlikely he will overtly backtrack on the lobbyist ban, many expect to see more waivers used to allow recent lobbyists to work for the White House.

On FOIA issues, some have argued that under Obama, agencies have gotten even less transparent, with agencies vigorously fighting FOIA requests instead of honoring them.

Day one of Obama’s second term won’t result in an Open Government Directive 2.0, even though the success of the first OGD were decidedly mixed.

Transparency and accountability are no less important than they were four years ago. We hope the president returns to these issues during his second term, if not on day one, then very soon afterwards.

Senators Wyden and Murkowski have offered a proposal to shine a light on dark money, and opened it up to comments from the public. We applaud the senators for taking this step and for seeking public input on the proposal. (We've asked for the public's help on our own legislative recommendations, including a proposal to shine a light on dark money.)

Sunlight's comments on the Wyden/Murkowski proposal can be found here. We are happy to see a bipartisan effort on this important issue and look forward to working with the senators as they craft legislation.

Comments to Campaign Finance Disclosure Proposal by