Making good on part of the House of Representative's commitment to increase congressional transparency, today the House Clerk's office launched http://docs.house.gov/, a one stop website where the public can access all House bills, amendments, resolutions for floor consideration, and conference reports in XML, as well as information on floor proceedings and more. Information will ultimately be published online in real time and archived for perpetuity.

The Clerk is hosting the site, and the information will primarily come from the leadership, the Committee on House Administration, the Rules Committee, and the Clerk's office. The project has been driven by House Republican leaders as part of an push for transparency. Important milestones include the adoption of the new House Rules in January 2011 that gave the Committee on House Administration the power to establish standards for publishing documents online, an April 2011 letter from the Speaker and Majority Leader to the Clerk calling for better public access to House information, a Committee on House Administration hearing  in June 2011 on modernizing information delivery in the House, a December 2011 public meeting on public access to congressional information, and finally the late December adoption of online publication standards.

Today's effort focuses on House documents, but there is a similar series of requirements for committee and other documents that will be addressed as the Clerk's site is further built out. Three things strike me as particularly important for what has happened today

First, the House made a commitment to do something concrete -- publish documents online in machine-friendly formats by January 2012-- and they did that. All too often, transparency promises fall by the wayside or are beaten back by bureaucracy. This is a commitment made, and one that is being kept. (We will keep a close eye on things, just in case.)

Second, the ongoing process of releasing documents online, in real-time, and in machine-readable manner is a tremendous sea change from the slow and ponderous paper publications that are often late,  fairly difficult to use, and unfriendly to computers. PDFs, by themselves, are simply insufficient for transparency purposes, and have been for a very long time, and it's important that we're moving towards making information available in such as a way as to maximize its usefulness.

Third, the House is forging ahead the best it can. It would be ideal to have the Senate joining the House in this effort, or have legislative support agencies taking the initiative, but all too often these joint efforts result in nothing happening. It's important for everyone to make the best progress they can, and that's what's happening here.

It will be fun to see when the next shoe drops.

Today we introduce and welcome Jason Williams as our guest blogger. Jason is a Political activist and blogger on both local and national issues since 2005. He also hosts a daily afternoon political talk program in Northern Utah.

With a 21-7 vote, the Utah State Senate last week approved an overhaul of the state's Government Records and Access Management Act (GRAMA). HB477 would shield lawmakers' voicemail, text messages, instant messages possibly even email from public record. Only one Republican voted against the bill. Senate sponsor Sen. Lyle Hillyard explained in an email exchange with a constituent his reason for co-sponsoring the bill:

Some people who know me don't know there is a difference and some think that when I am out of the office that my senate e-mail is the only way to contact me. Our staff is tired of the threats from the media and we plan on working with them if they want after the bill is passed if there are changes to be made but let's do it without threats of going to court.

First introduced in a surprise hearing by House sponsor Rep. John Dougall, the bill would also allow agencies to charge "professional rate" fees for requests, and guide courts to seek a "preponderance of evidence" justifying a releasing documents. The current GRAMA law instructs courts to focus on the public benefit of release. The bill passed the house 61-12 on Thursday, and the Senate less than 24 hours later so as to avoid, in the words of Senate President Michael Waddoups, letting it "fester" over the weekend. Sen. Hillyard declared proudly, "I'm doing this for future legislatures!". The House released this statement after final passage:

A core concern with GRAMA is the distinction between a conversation and a record. When GRAMA was created it wasn’t fathomed that day-to-day conversations would be considered as records. But what you and we now consider a digital conversation is now considered public record: text messages, voice mails, instant message logs. If that’s the case, why not just mic up every elected official and the tens of thousands of public employees across the state? Not only is it an impossible task, it’s also a gross invasion of privacy. And so we come to Rep. John Dougall and House Bill 477. The bill resets GRAMA with today’s technology in mind and clarifies legislative intent where court decisions have swung the pendulum dangerously far in one direction.

The Senate majority issued a statement, as well as the audio of Rep. Dougall's bill introduction. Lawmakers quickly moved on to controversial immigration reform bills, hoping to regain control of the narrative.

What they didn't count on was an enraged public.  This bill has drawn criticism from both progressive and conservative state organizations. Even Eagle Forum president Gayle Ruzicka, normally kind to the legislature, said "I hated the process," and called parts of the bill "outrageous."

Reaction was broad, bipartisan and decidedly against the changes proposed. By Monday morning, the Governor's office had been flooded with calls and emails demanding a veto of the bill, an online petition had garnered nearly 1,000 signatures in a matter of hours, and two separate rallies had been planned for the final few days of the legislative session. Even after veto threat from Governor Herbert resulted in a rare recall of HB477 to change the implementation date a rally organized on Facebook by local blogger Bob Aagard drew more than 150 protesters to the Capital Rotunda. But that night, the Governor signed the bill into law, promising a non-binding "work group" will be formed to consider amendments before implementation. The Utah Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists responded:

Perhaps worst of all, HB477 strips from Utah’s public records law language stating clearly that government records are presumed to be public and that the burden is on government to show why records should not be disclosed. This is critical language, language recognized by the statutes or common law of every state in the country.

“With one scribble of a pen, the governor made his state the most secretive in the nation, as well as more backward than most countries, including Mexico and Albania,” said SPJ FOI Committee chairman David Cuillier. “This will price citizens out of their government, encourage corruption and online sweetheart deals, and embolden those who would undermine democratic principles.

Legislators have responded to the backlash from transparency advocates, angry voters and journalists by scapegoating local media as unable to report objectively on the issue, accusing the public of not understanding the bill, and anecdotal misleading justification for the changes. Bill sponsors Dougall and Hillyard have said they only seek to protect legislators' private communications. What they don't explain is that the current law already does.

HB477 represents an arrogant legislative body placing their own position and power above the right of citizens to know what business is done in their name. In a state already challenged by one of the lowest voter turnouts in the country, Utah legislators have acted selfishly and in bad faith, placing themselves above increasing the confidence of Utah voters in the integrity of their public institutions.

A second rally is planned at the Capitol tonight, the final night of the 2011 legislative session, at 6pm, and a citizen referendum petition to completely repeal the law has been filed with the Attorney Generals office. With the Governor's signature, HB477 is set to take effect July 1st.

The Utah Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Utah League of Women Voters are hosting an HB477: What's Next? event to build a strategy:

Utah SPJ/League of Women Voters Sunshine Week event:

"HB477 May As Well be Law - Now What"? March 17, 7 p.m. Salt Lake City Library, Lower level, Rooms A&B

More resources:

On Facebook: Repeal Utah House Bill 477 and Utah's Right to Know. Shine a Light on Government Rally.

Organizations: Utah Society of Professional Journalists and RCFP Utah.

Local coverage:  The Salt Lake Tribune and The City Weekly.

For more of Jason’s work, check out these blogs: (Utah) The SideTrack (National) MyDD (Radio) Host, KVNU's For the People

IBM Research recently released Many Bills, a new companion project to their wildly successful Many Eyes visualization tool set. Many Bills is billed as a visual bill explorer. More accurately, Many Bills is a web based, color coded visualization of 2009 U.S. congressional legislation. At its very heart the site tries to reveal what the different parts of a bill may be about by using computer learning to analyze and categorize the text of a particular piece of legislation. Because the analysis comes from a computer, they assign confidence scores to each section based on the likelihood that the categorization is correct.

While the default view can be a bit overwhelming at first, I've found that the "minified" view is a great way to review a series of legislative revisions/versions at a glance. More importantly, it also provides a quick and easy way to see where potentially unrelated legislation has been tacked on to a bill. For example, it is possible to see where the unrelated provision allowing visitors to U.S. National Parks to legally carry licensed, loaded firearms was inserted into the Credit Card Act of 2009. Just imagine if we could look at pending legislation in this "minified" color coded categorical view!

Sunlight recently spoke with the creators of Many Bills and offered a variety of feedback and suggestions for future features and options. We think there is a lot of potential for this project and we are really looking forward to the evolution of the Many Bills product. Congratulations to our friends at IBM!

A couple of days ago I wrote about some of the potential transparency issues related to the decision by House and Senate Democrats to skip conference for the health care reform bill (see here for background on what conference is). After thinking more and more about the issue I'm inclined to believe that the issues raised with skipping conference relates more directly to a structural shift in Congress that far too many are ready to ignore. (For more on the conference committee controversy see this post by John Wonderlich.)

Ezra Klein, who has been focusing on congressional malfunctions for the past few months, points out the major shift in congressional relations and partisan behavior in recent years:

...understanding the United States Congress as an institution gripped by ideological competition is simply wrong. It's an institution gripped by electoral competition. The political scientist Frances Lee puts this particularly clearly in her new book, “Beyond Ideology.”

"Parties," she writes, "are institutions with members who have common political interests in winning elections and wielding power, not just coalitions of individuals with similar ideological preferences." According to her data, senators in 2004 are 63 percent more divided along party lines than senators in 1981. It's no coincidence that the rise in party-line voting has coincided with the ideological realignment of the parties. Now that the parties agree internally, they can focus their efforts on winning power.

The dynamic that this electorally centered process creates is one in which the minority has no incentive to help the majority pass legislation. Rather than working to include conservative ideas in the health care bill there is total opposition from the Republican side. In this era, the key for the minority party, especially one that has suffered successive losses, is to kick the majority out and regain power. It's like a football team who throws in the towel in the middle of a losing season to acquire a high draft pick. Might as well aim to regain power in the future than play the game in the present. It worked for Republicans in 1994 and Democrats in 2006.

This new era (the past twenty-some-odd years) of Congress poses numerous problems for transparency in the legislative process. This largely stems from the fact that what has been viewed as the normal legislative process in the past no longer applies.

The majority rushes bills through Congress with little time for lawmakers or the public to review them. Omnibus bills obscure hidden provisions in the crammed, rushed appropriations process. Earmarks are used to fund the districts of endangered incumbents. Speeches on the floor and in committee hearings are akin to Javanese shadow puppetry so as to avoid the all-powerful gaffe patrol. The Rules Committee holds late night sessions – more so in the past than currently, but other problems still persist – prior to a bill's consideration leaving little time for lawmakers to review a bill's rule.

In many ways, there are moves to address some of these changes in legislative behavior. The passage of a rule requiring legislation be publicly available for at least 72 hours before consideration would reduce the ability of the majority to rush legislation. There have already been some reforms to the Rules Committee, while others continue this discussion. Earmarking is reduced and vastly more transparent. These are not fixes to get back to some “normal” legislative process that no longer exists, but ways to adapt to the way the legislature works in a partisan and electorally focused era.

There are countless debates circulating regarding how best to adapt to this new legislative era. Transparency advocates should be aware of the way Congress has changed and focus on adapting the transparency agenda to reflect this changing dynamic rather than seeking to return to a “normal” procedure that has long since become irrelevant.

On Friday, the House of Representatives passed the cap and trade bill after an incredibly messy process left little time for congressmen and the public to digest the final version of the bill. I think that process taught us a lot about how Congress mangles procedure, but also, in some ways, how Congress is trying to be more transparent, but not quite getting it right.

Looking back at what happened with cap and trade, we see that Congress, inexplicably, released a new version of the bill on a Monday evening before a Friday vote, with an explanation that this would not be the final version. This bill, the printed version, did not have a bill number written into the header, instead it look like this: H.R. __.

This what we'd call a discussion draft, and it's something that we've been seeing Congress release a lot more lately -- likely due to pressure to make their operations more transparent. The managers of the cap and trade bill could have easily not released this discussion draft and dropped the whole new bill on Thursday or Friday. Instead, they released part of the bill on Monday and then 300 more pages on Thursday night. It's great that Congress is releasing discussion drafts. They increase the ability of the public to peek inside to internal debates as they occur and hopefully have a say in the process. However, the time to publish discussion drafts is not the week a bill is being voted on, it's when the bill is still being formed in a location with necessary transparency rules, like a committee hearing.

So this brings up an important point: when is the best time to read the bill? In many respects there needs to be a rule requiring bills to be posted online 72 hours prior to consideration for lawmakers and the public to know what is in the bill. But that isn't the best period for citizen engagement in the legislative process outside of telling your congressman to vote "yea" or "nay". The real sausage making happens in committees and we are seeing efforts by committees to release discussion drafts and versions of bills that they are working on. This is where discussion drafts are useful -- not in final moments before consideration occurs.

Let's run down areas in the legislative process where citizen engagement can have an impact and what Congress ought to be doing to increase transparency and provide a window for engagement:

1) Committee process - Where the real work gets done. Release of discussion drafts, manager's statements, chairman's mark would allow for much greater engagement by citizens in the process and would help other lawmakers and their staff familiarize themselves with the process that created legislation.

2) Prior to consideration - Pass a 72 hour rule so that all bills must be made publicly available online for 72 hours before consideration. While there is less chance for direct input by citizens this allows for organization in favor or in opposition of both the bill and proposed amendments to the bill. This also provides time for lawmakers and their staff to read the bill.

3) Post passage - This would be the area covered by President Obama's five day bill posting pledge. I don't think there is too much value here as the President likely already knows whether he will sign or veto a given piece of legislation. More transparency theater than anything else.

The next big debate in Congress will be around health care. Hopefully, Congress doesn't only provide adequate time prior to consideration for the public to read the bill, but also continues to make efforts to provide drafts to the public during the committee process.

There is currently some wacky legislative maneuvering going on with H.R. 2454, the cap and trade energy bill, that puts a serious spotlight on the failure of Congress to make bills properly available. According to the New York Times:

House Democratic leaders late last night released a revamped, 1,201-page energy and global warming bill (pdf), clearing the way for floor debate Friday even though it remains uncertain if they will have the votes to pass it.

The House bill posted on the Rules Committee Web site has grown from the 946-page version adopted last month in the Energy and Commerce Committee. Sources on and off Capitol Hill said the bulk of the changes largely reflect requests from the eight other committees that also had jurisdiction over the bill, including the Ways and Means Committee and Science and Technology Committee.

The bill is only available online at the House Rules Committee and is reported as "text of the bill to be introduced." Despite having a bill, H.R. 2454, that has been reported out of the Energy & Commerce Committee and discharged by eight other committees, there is now, suddenly, a new bill that is almost 300-pages longer -- but it's still being considered as H.R. 2454. Stay with me here.

Here's the timeline:

Introduced - 5/15/09

Reported with amendments out of Energy & Commerce - 6/5/09

Discharged by Education & Labor and Foreign Affairs Committees - 6/5/09

Discharged by Financial Services, Science & Technology, Transportation, Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Ways & Means Committees - 6/19/09

Placed on the Union Calendar, Calendar No. 90 - 6/19/09 (This version is 946 pages)

Submitted to House Rules Committee - 6/22/09, 4:22pm (This version is 1,201 pages)

So, where along the line does the bill suddenly expand by 300 pages? According to the New York Times, the various committee chairs held behind the scenes meetings and hashed out a compromise with no allowance for public input. (What lobbyists were involved in those meetings?) And now we are expecting a Friday vote on a bill that has had no public hearing in a committee with jurisdiction over it and that is not yet available in the main engine of public disclosure, THOMAS.

This raises serious questions about how we expect Congress to disclose their activities to the public. Is a bill posted to the House Rules Committee and not THOMAS truly publicly available? While the bill may be available for 72 hours prior to consideration, the public does not have reasonable access to it. Nor does the public know how the final details were reached.

And that isn't even the worst part. This, apparently, isn't even the final bill. The final bill will be a manager's amendment that will be drafted later this week! From a posting on the House Rules Committee, we know that the deadline to submit amendments is Thursday at 9:30am. And there is talk that this will be voted on on Friday. Thus, the final version of this bill will likely only be available for less than 24 hours.

Sunlight has been advocating for all bills to be posted online for 72 hours prior to consideration. It doesn't look like that is going to happen here. If you think that Congress should read the bills they vote on, you can tell your congressman to both support the Read the Bill resolution, H. Res. 554, and to give the public enough time to read the final version of the cap and trade bill, whenever that is made available.

As Open Left's Chris Bowers says about this process:

[Y]ou don't get to know what is in the bill until it is too late. Further, you get no chances to improve the bill.

This is an unacceptable process and it needs to change.

The New York Times has a story today on President Obama's 5 day bill posting pledge and how this transparency promise has both not happened as promised and evolved. Quoted in the piece is Sunlight's Executive Director Ellen Miller noting the overall lack of utility in the President's promise.

"There isn’t anybody in this town who doesn’t know that commenting after a bill has been passed is meaningless."

While I've rightly criticized (as has Jim Harper) the breaking of the promise to post bills for comment five days before signing them, the reality is that no organizing can be done in comments that would make a difference after the bill is out of Congress.

The White House is now saying that they will start the five day count before the bill has made it out of Congress, stating that this makes for a more transparent process. This is relative nonsense as the White House is a part of different branch of government and the comments they receive on an unfinished bill won't make it to the 535 lawmakers in the Legislative Branch.

What needs to happen is for Congress to require both bills and conference reports to be posted online for at least 72 hours before consideration begins. Right now there is a resolution in the House to do exactly that, H. Res. 554. If you thought that President Obama's (now-broken) promise to post bills online for five days was a good idea, this is a far superior alternative. Since bills get written in Congress, not the Executive Branch, the provision of time prior to consideration allows citizens to voice their concerns directly to their representatives, whether over the phone, the internet, fax, or direct contact, during a legislative time frame that could actually effect the final product.

You can tell your congressman to support H. Res. 554 (the "Read the Bill" bill) here and you can sign our petition to Congress telling them to pass H. Res. 554 and give us all a chance to read the bills they consider.

(Update: The New York Times is asking if you support the 72 hour rule for Congress or Obama's five day bill posting pledge. Go tell them what you think.)

One week into the 111th Congress and lawmakers have already introduced hundreds of bills. Of those few hundred bills some are bound to be concerned with what we're concerned with: transparency and government ethics. Using Open Congress' awesome bill tracking powers, I've compiled a list of the bills that relate to Sunlight's work. You can find them by joining the Open Congress community and becoming my friend, or just keep reading below the jump.

H.R.36 Presidential Library Donation Reform Act of 2009

H.R.35 Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2009

H.R.311 To cap discretionary spending, eliminate wasteful and duplicative agencies, reform entitlement programs, and reform the congressional earmark process.

H.R.420 To prohibit the use of Federal funds for a project or program named for an individual then serving as a Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, or Senator of the United States Congress.

H.Res.40 Amending the Rules of the House of Representatives to require each standing committee to hold periodic hearings on the topic of waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement in Government programs which that committee may authorize, and for other purposes.

S.49 A bill to help Federal prosecutors and investigators combat public corruption by strengthening and clarifying the law.

S.103 A bill to require disclosure and payment of noncommercial air travel in the Senate.

S.104 A bill to prohibit authorized committees and leadership PACs from employing the spouse or immediate family members of any candidate or Federal office holder connected to the committee.

S.105 A bill to amend the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to establish criminal penalties for knowingly and willfully falsifying or failing to file or report certain information required to be reported under that Act.

S.133 A bill to prohibit any recipient of emergency Federal economic assistance from using such funds for lobbying expenditures or political contributions, to improve transparency, enhance accountability, encourage responsible corporate governance, and for other purposes.

S.162 Fiscal Discipline, Earmark Reform and Accountability Act

These last two bills are of particular interest. The latter bill, S. 162, is the previously blogged Feingold-McCain earmark reform legislation. I've attached the actual language below (unfortunately it takes the Government Printing Office a while to get legislative language online) for you to peruse.