Yesterday, the Advisory Committee on Transparency hosted “the Future of Earmark Transparency” on Capitol Hill.

Speaking at the event were Steve Ellis, Vice President of Taxpayers for Common Sense; Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute and founder of WashingtonWatch.com; and Daniel Schuman, Policy Counsel at the Sunlight Foundation and Director of the Advisory Committee on Transparency.

The Advisory Committee on Transparency is a project of the Sunlight Foundation, and has 18 member organizations. Background materials on earmark transparency are available after the jump.

Resources

• Timeline of earmarks reforms and all bills introduced in the 111th Congress (via Sunlight)
• WashingtonWatch.com’s crowd-sourced earmarks database
• Taxpayers for Common Sense earmarks database
• “Common Sense Earmark Reforms for the 112th Congress,” released by a coalition of good government groups and several Washington lobbyists (via TCS)
• Report on Senate HSGAC hearings on the Earmark Transparency Act
• “Boehner, Cantor vow vote to ban Earmarks next Congress” (via the Hill) 11/12/2010
• “Demint Gathers Earmark Ban Support” (via Washington Wire) 11/9/2010
• “McConnell: Earmark ban won’t save any money” (via the Hill) 11/7/2010
• President Obama’s State of the Union Address 1/27/2010 calling for a unified earmarks database

To join the Advisory Committee on Transparency’s email list, please contact Daniel Schuman at ACT(at)sunlightfoundation.com with your name, email, phone, title, and office.

The Advisory Committee on Transparency’s purpose is to support the Congressional Transparency Caucus’s mission of promoting government transparency by:

• Providing members of Congress with expert advice and resources on transparency issues, and
• Connecting them with potential partners to advance a transparency agenda.

More information about the Advisory Committee is available here

Additional Resources

• A daily summary of transparency happenings
• Join our public discussion group
• The announcement of today’s event