As the STOCK Act keeps marching through the Senate, on the heels of a State of the Union push from the President, and after a CBS news expose ignited interest in a longstanding proposal from Rep. Slaughter in the House, that Sunlight has supported.

We've been very involved in reviewing and suggesting changes to the draft bills, and here's a summary of our advice:

1. First, Sunlight is very supportive of the STOCK Act. This fall's expose made a convincing case that insider trading is a real problem, and that Members sometimes put personal financial profit over their official responsibilities.

2. Perhaps even more significant is the threat to public confidence in government posed by this phenomenon -- the public loathes insider trading, especially from Members of Congress.

3. Whether insider trading was technically illegal, recent hearings have made clear that no one was capable (or willing) to fully oversee the issue.

4. The Personal Financial Disclosure system, resulting from the post-Watergate 1978 Ethics in Government Act, is long, long overdue for serious examination and oversight. It may be the envy of much of the rest of the world, and serves as a model for accountable disclosure in other governments, but still suffers from a sort of inter-branch detente, where no one wants to legislatively reopen the complex issues involved in requiring personal finances to be disclosed. If the US is to lead on accountability systems, we should lead on maintaining and strengthening them, too. GAO and others should review the pfd system more broadly, and outside the narrow view of an insider trading scandal.(More on this from GAO to come soon.)

On to the bill text

1. We had significant concerns about earlier drafts of the bill, since overbroad language ran the risk of criminalizing leaks. Those concerns have been dealt with in more recent drafts. Either the Rules changing language has been watered down and turned into a requirement that the Ethics committee create appropriate prohibitions, or the language has been modified by adding "intent" to the kind of information sharing that is prohibited. In either case, sharing information is very unlikely to get accidentally criminalized.

2. On enforcing information sharing restrictions, though, the later drafts have significantly weakened the text of the bill, where "personal gain" is a pretty narrow standard, and the Ethics committee is unlikely to be the most reliable source of strong public interest standards. There's a difficult balance to strike here, between Speech or Debate clause issues (where the Executive is Constitutionally barred from meddling in inherently legislative tasks) and potential unintended consequences, the bill's enforcement mechanisms are tricky.  We have a strong preference towards Rules changes over executive branch enforcement, but have little experience in financial investigations, so have little advice on crafting the final shape of the mechanisms.

3. Sunlight has been pushing for stronger disclosure of both the a) personal financial disclosure forms and b) the new financial transaction reports (to be reported when Members move their money). Both categories of information should be required to be public, should be shared as soon as they are filed, and should be filed electronically.  Additionally, we have detailed advice about how such electronic filings systems should be designed, to capture as much information as possible, and to add useful structured data at the time of information collection. (Daniel will have more on this topic soon.)  The information should be available in bulk, and no login should be required at all to dowload the data.  (That's a ridiculous requirement contained in the most recent Senate draft.)

4. None of these forms should be destroyed after 6 years. The House and Senate can afford to preserve a two foot tall stack of paper (in the worst case), and can certainly afford to make a digital copy of information perpetually available, especially when it's as politically and historically significant as these disclosures will be.  This information should be maintained online in perpituity, and also regularly transferred to NARA's Center for Legislative Archives for safekeeping.

5. Sunlight supported the LDA reforms aimed at political intelligence firms, and also understands why the recent drafts suggest a GAO report on their function -- they're somewhat poorly understood.  For our thoughts on elite, commercial services that republish congressional information, see this post. The key point: insofar as these services are worth the price of admission, they reinforce disparities in privilege and access.

Those are our main points on the STOCK Act.  We've got other technical corrections and suggestions, and would be happy to talk to anyone looking for help or thoughts as the legislation moves. We're also happy to see this one piece of legislation pulling along other important reform issues that have languished -- from e-filing in the Senate (more on that soon) to honest services, and even a 72 hour rule in the Senate (where did that come from, Senator Coburn?). Maybe the Senate should have an open amendment process on a reform oriented bill once a quarter.

Update: There's one more provision we've strongly opposed that I should make note of: there's no justification for requiring logins in order to access dowloads of Senate data, as the latest draft requires.  That provision should be removed.  It's wasteful, and discourages reuse. If Data.gov can offer bulk downloads with no login requirement, so can the US Senate.

A bill to make federal agency reports to Congress available to the public online has garnered bipartisan support in the House, a companion bill in the Senate, and the thumbs-up from the Government Printing Office and transparency advocates. The Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act would gather together all reports to Congress from federal agencies in one place. It requires that they be published online by GPO in bulk, in open formats, and in a timely fashion, so that people can easily learn about the work of the federal government. As things currently stand, the reports are scattered about online, in the infrequent circumstance when they can be found at all.

Representative Mike Quigley (D-IL) introduced the legislation in the House in May (HR 1974), after which it was promptly considered by the Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, endorsed by Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), and unanimously reported out of committee. The bill currently has 17 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle, including senior Republican leader Greg Walden (R-OR).

Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) introduced companion legislation in the Senate in July (S. 1411) along with Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Tom Coburn (R-OK). Co-sponsorship by the co-chairs of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee bodes well for its future consideration by that committee.

The Government Printing Office, which would be responsible for implementing the legislation, wrote a letter in May indicating its ability and willingness to put the law into effect. Additionally, a coalition of organizations (including Sunlight) wrote to Congress in support of the legislation.

To become law, some hurdles remain. The Committee on House Administration, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, and the Senate Rules Committee would all have to indicate their assent, setting the stage for consideration on the floor by the House and Senate. It's time to enact this bill into law.

Andrew Noyes writing in Congress Daily notes that the e-government reauthorization (referring to the original e-gov act of 2002) is in doubt:

OMB officials and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman and ranking member Susan Collins have battled behind the scenes in recent months to reauthorize the E-Government Act of 2002 before President Bush leaves office, but a standoff in the Judiciary Committee has probably killed the bill, sources said Wednesday.

It seems that the issue in question is a somewhat relevant provision governing privacy impact assessments, proposed by Senator Leahy:

The staffer argued the amendment is unrelated to the e-government reauthorization itself, which has no Republican detractors. Leahy seems willing to sink the reauthorization if his amendment is not added, the aide said, noting that "he has taken a hostage, and has expressed a willingness to shoot it."

It's too bad the e-gov reauthorization looks at least temporarily sunk, it's the vehicle for all sorts of things we'd like to see, with improved language and guidance on sitemap protocols among them, which guides agencies to expose their data to search engines, the primary finding tool of today's online citizen.