Today I would like give a shout out to Louisiana's Between the Lines.

Between the Lines is written by Jeffrey Sadow, who is a political science professor Louisiana State University.  He also writes  Louisiana Legislature Log which keeps track of what is happening in Baton Rouge.  Jeff does a great job keeping track of ethics news from around Louisiana.  The posts are thoughtful and he writes about things with a practical lens.  For example, this post about disclosure requirements for contributions from political appointees or this  post questioning earmark reforms and offering new solutions.

I am definitely glad to read the perspective of a political science professor on local transparency issues.

Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. This week I have highlights from Illinois, Louisiana, and Alabama.

In Illinois, City Barbs has a transparency rally planned for Monday to ask their local government to clean up their act. The DeKalb Citizens for Transparency sent out a press release saying they will have a rally and march to city hall where they will demand a more transparency government.  There have been corruption issues recently so the band of civic cleaners will march with brooms and vacuum cleaners to get their message heard.  Hopefully they will post pictures!

In Louisiana, Between the Lines has a post about earmark reform in the state. The state’s Commission on Streamlining Government recommended that earmarks be eliminated but Jeff Sadan doesn't agree.  He goes into detail to find what the correct policy should be.  I like this post even though I don't understand all of it but it is always great to see what is behind some common problems like earmarks and think through better ways to solve them.

In Alabama, Doc’s Political Parlor has a post about non profits that were  started by politicians given state money but are not being audited. Apparently three lawmakers got funds diverted for a tax and then created non profits to receive the money. The audit of the public funds has not happened around these non profits, it has been three years.

Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and congressional political news. This week I have highlights from  Missouri, Maryland, Louisiana, Arizona, and Minnesota

In Missouri, The Turner Report has a post about an earmark the Center for Public Integrity reported on obtained by Rep.  Roy Blunt.  Blunt got a 4 million earmark for EaglePicher a client of his former chief of staff Gregg Hartley. Clearly there is some revolving door can't be stopped.

In Maryland, Brian Griffiths has a post about the earmarks Sen. Mikulski has been getting for her top campaign contributors. She has gotten $42.1 million total for three companies Northrop Grumman, Thales Communications, and L-3 Communications who also have been giving her a generous campaign contributions over the years.

In Louisiana, We Could Be Famous has a post about Louisiana's Ethics Review Board trying to dodge a disclosure requirement. Government organizations who spend more than $10,000 a year have to file financial disclosure forms. However, the Ethics Review Board requested an exemption to disclosing and was granted the request. If the ethics board gets a pass I wonder what other agencies get one too?

AZ Central has a post about the city of Surprise, Arizona's  proposals to build public trust had a few financial mishaps recently and so the city decided to clean up its image. They want to hire an outside auditor to review the books; they will be creating a searchable Web site of city spending. The interesting part of the spending Web site will be that they will update the site when the checks are written not later.  I look forward to seeing the site.

Bluestem Prairie goes looking for stimulus spending. There has been a good deal of research into what the problems of tracking the money given to states has been. There is apparently no one state or federal agency that maintains a comprehensive public list of projects and no one central clearing house for everything. Recovery spending and its affects are hard to determine.  This makes judging Recovery's affectiveness impossible.

Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and congressional political news.  This week I have highlights from Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, and New Hampshire.

In Alabama, Flashpoint has a post about the a new ethics bill in Alabama and points to and editorial in the local paper saying lawmakers are dragging their feet around it.  This bill would put a cap on how much a lobbyist can spend on a lawmaker each day.  Currently lobbyists in Alabama only have to report if they spend more than $250 a day on a lawmaker.  The new bill would put a cap on lobbying spending to $50 a day and $250 a year. In Kentucky, Page One posted a list of companies and how much they spend on lobbying for influencing Frankfort.  The Kentucky Legislative Ethics Commission posts the info on their Web site.  The list is pretty interesting and you can continue looking on their site to see what other organizations are spending money to influence the state government. Louisiana's Between the Lines has a post about a bill coming up, "that would make officials in jurisdictions of over 5,000 people report on any contributions or loans above $1,000 they received from their political appointees."  The author goes into why this bill might not be the best idea.  He goes into how it could be a waste of taxpayer money to process this information.   He goes on to support a different bill that would put the burden on appointees not elected officials.  He says this will not use so many state resources to support disclosure requirements which he deems as a waste of taxpayer money. Nevada's Desert Beacon is preparing for the upcoming vote on healthcare reform by listing all the healthcare industry donations to  Sen. Ensign.  It would also to see the Maplight.org page for Sen. Ensign when the vote comes up. Democracy for New Hampshire has a post about upcoming legislation that would create exemptions to the state's right to know laws.  "HB 349 is trying to exempt legislator's e-mails from both right to know and court subpeonas; an earlier bill, HB 53, seeks to remove the secretary of state's office (and other executive agencies) from rightto know by redefining what a "public body" is."  How do you redefine a "public body"?  These bills seem pretty outrageous.  States should be making more available not less, let alone going to such extents as to redefine a state agency as not a public body.

Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and Congressional political news.This week I have highlights from Louisiana, New Mexico, Nevada, and Texas. In Louisiana, Forgotston talks about the how some NGOs in Louisiana are getting money from the budget that the state is borrowing.  Forgotson went through and found $24 million being given to NGOs and noted that they weren't listed on Louisiana's legislation site.

Only in New Mexico posts about the lack of transparency in Bernalillo County government's purchase of an upscale office building for government offices.  Jim wants a few questions answered, before the government goes and spends 42 million dollars:  "Who gets the real estate commission? Was there more than one appraisal? What will the operating costs be versus other possible solutions? What will this do to our tax rates? What were the alternatives?"  That sounds reasonable to me.

In Nevada, Reno and its Discontents has a great post highlighting how citizens are using social media tools to cover the conventions.  Myrna the Minx talks about the UpTake's great coverage of both conventions using  "live footage later contextualized completely in researched written reports online."  I concur that the social media presence at the last two conventions has been phenomenal, even the Sunlight Foundation got some great footage that even the MSM couldn't get.

Texas Watchdog reports that "Houston city officials have failed for the past two years to post ethics forms online as required by law."  These ethics forms are required filings that disclose city officials to report any relationships that businesses applying for city contracts. Nothing shady about that.

Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and Congressional political news.  This week I have highlights from Pennsylvania, Tennessee, New Jersey, Maryland, and Louisiana. In Pennsylvania, Policy blog describes how much the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission spent on lobbying this past fiscal year.  Is it okay for government agencies to use public funds to lobby other government agencies?

In Tennessee, Underdog looks into the lobbying expenses of the GoodYear Tire company and finds some interesting facts about what the company lobbies for and what former hill staffers are now on their pay rolls.

In New Jersey, Blog the Fifth has a great post looking into an earmark Rep. Garrett got for police training.  He makes the point that because of the lack of transparency of earmark requests and how the press sometimes refers to them as “grants” it can make the earmark look bad no matter where it goes to.  That is why we advocate for earmark request transparency.

In Maryland, Brian Griffiths uncovered that one of the appointees for Maryland’s Board of Education was an unregistered lobbyist.  This information was not disclosed to the public and Brian questions why they were given the position even though they have no previous experience in education.

In Louisiana, Between the Lines talks about how most of the members of the Louisiana ethics board resigned after changes to the rules created stricter ethical standards.