Telecommunication industry giants AT&T, Microsoft and Verizon are lobbying hard to kill a data-breach notification bill in the Indiana statehouse, according to Chris Soghoian at CNET.com's Surveillance State blog. Many state legislatures are passing security breach notification laws as a response to the increasing number of governmental and corporate databases divulging personal identification information either by mistake or by criminal enterprise. The Indiana bill would set the state attorney general as the single point of contact for data breaches, who would then post a report on the breach on a Web site, setting a single place for citizens to go to find out about data breaches.
Soghoian reports that at a state Senate Committee meeting earlier this week, 10 lobbyists, most from the telecommunications industry, criticized the bill as setting up a system that would be vulnerable to online fraudsters. The bill's sponsors were the only people speaking in favor of the legislation. He said he expects the lobbyists will succeed at killing the Web site notification requirement in the bill. If money talks, and we know it does, then he is almost assuredly correct. By searching National Institute on Money in State Politics' database Followthemoney.org, you will see that during the last election cycle AT&T made over $172,000 in contributions to Indiana state office holders or candidates running for state office. Verizon made over $48,000 in contributions, while Microsoft gave $2,000. No matter the merits of the bill, the moneyed lobbyists have little fear of their voices not being heard load and clear.
Continue readingLet the Parties Begin
The Hill reports on pressure directed at Speaker Nancy Pelosi to reconcile House ethics rules on lobbyist-sponsored convention parties with the more strict Senate rules, which the Senate reinforced on Monday. A grouping of six watchdogs (Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Democracy 21, League of Women Voters, Public Citizen, and U.S. PIRG) argue that the House rules punch huge holes in the ethics rules passed last fall that were meant to end the long-standing culture of corruption on Capitol Hill.
The new ethics law contains a convention party rule meant to prevent lobbyists from hosting parties to honor members in an effort to curry favor with them. The Senate Ethics Committee makes it clear that lobbyists or the organizations that they work for can't sponsor events feting a group composed solely of members of Congress. In contrast, the House Ethics Committee's guidelines said the new rules do allow lobbyists to sponsor parties honoring more than one member as long as those members are not mentioned by name.
Continue readingNAM Files Lawsuit Against Ethics Law
As the Legal Times' Influence Blog predicted yesterday, the new lobbying and ethics law received its first legal challenge. Earlier today, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) announced it is suing the federal government over the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 saying the law's lobbying disclosure rules are "vague, overbroad and burdensome" and infringe on the constitutional right of freedom of association.
Note that the law requires any organization actively participating "in the planning, supervision, or control" of lobbying efforts that ponies up more than $5,000 in a quarter to disclose their activities and expenditures. The law's purpose is to shine a light on stealth lobbying and sham coalitions, pushing legislation such as those that are often promoted by groups like NAM. The law's criminal penalties on groups that fail to accurately disclose their lobby efforts succeeded at getting their attention. NAM says that the clause in question is imprecise and impacts groups that it is not intended to target. They fear the law will also require it to disclose the names of its members. NAM has requested the court issue a preliminary injunction on the disclosure rules until the court decides the case.
Continue readingNew Filing Requirements Will Reveal New Information
Here's a pleasant surprise in the just passed Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA). One of the law's new filing requirements is that individual lobbyists have to report all "covered official positions" held for 20 years prior to their current filing period. This could provide an amazing amount of new information about where people have lobbied in the past -- information that we've never seen before.
The new provision will be quite significant for lobbying firms. For them, the 20-year lookback applies to all lobbyists listed on any new registration filed for any client with an effective date of Jan. 1, 2008 or later. For most lobbying firms, this means that eventually all lobbyist employees will need to disclose their prior employment under the 20-year lookback.
Continue readingIt’s All Starting to Come Together
Dan Newman, of MAPLight (and Sunlight grantee) writes to say:
We just added links to OpenCongress from every bill on MAPLight. It's part of our new "In the News" tab. For example click here.The link to the same bill on OpenCongress is just above the "Date" column on the right-hand side.
We also created a simple URL structure to make it easy for OpenCongress and others to link to specific bills on MAPLight. (Inbound links like this now work.
We're also in the process of integrating Congresspedia entries into MAPLight's legislator pages, pending some changes on the Congresspedia side to make this technically workable.
And David Moore, of OpenCongress responds saying:
This is great stuff. Check it the interconnections between these two sites. Continue readingWe're happily in the midst of adding reciprocal links on our bill pages. Shouldn't be long.
Death By Budget
Rebecca Carr of Cox Newspapers reports on President Bush's efforts to gut the Open Government Act of 2007 Congress passed last year and he signed into law on Dec. 31 via death by budgeting. In the 2009 budget submitted yesterday (as we wrote last week), Bush eliminates the key provision of the law -- the ombudsman whose job it is to oversee all Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disputes, by moving it from the National Archives and Records Administration to the Department of Justice. The ombudsman office was added to provide independent oversight and settle disputes over FOIA requests. The law authorized funds to address backlogs in the requests and resolve them in a timely manner.
Continue readingIf Bush Can Do It, Why Can’t the Senate?
If President Bush can present his new budget electronically, how come Senators can't present their campaign finances the same way?
Continue readingWhat Internal Emails Reveal
It's amazing what we learn when sunlight shines on the darkest corners of government. In a statement released today Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), we learn that PEER has received a flow of internal e-mails from scientists at the Department of the Interior that undermine the legality of its aggressive offshore oil and gas lease sales in federal Arctic waters. The e-mails make the case that the Bush administration did not adequately consider environmental risks prior to offering tracts in Alaskan waters as it is required to do by law.
PEER has released the emails to the public over the past several weeks, prompting two lawsuits to be filed against the administration. Native tribes and conservation groups are suing the Department of Interior for not fulfilling its legal obligation to consider environmental concerns when deciding the fate of such a development. Another suit charges the administration withheld public documents relating to the oil leases in violation of the Freedom of Information Act.
Thanks to the courageous whistleblowers at Interior and the work of PEER we are getting an unusually graphic view of what happens when government operates in the dark.
Continue readingTo File or Not To File?
We here at Sunlight take Justice Brandeis' quote to heart, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." The idea is to give the public a clear picture of what is going on with their government. We believe providing more information by expanding disclosure and transparency on Capitol Hill will cure much of what has been called the culture of corruption in Washington. At a minimum openness will help to keep the players, both members of Congress and their staff and the lobbyists, honest even if only out the fear of embarrassment.
That alone can be a powerful incentive...But likely not as viscerally poignant as the fear of legal sanctions. Evidenced by a post Friday on the Legal Times' Influence blog titled "To File or Not to File?" that highlighted how lobbyists are reacting to the recently passed Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007:
Continue readingJoint Committee on Taxation: Modest Improvements to Web site
Dana Chasin, senior advisor at OMB Watch, has posted at the watchdog groups' Budget Blog a two-part profile of the new website of the non-partisan House-Senate Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). Dana writes that it's "mostly a look-and-feel improvement" with little new content, however, you no longer "feel as though you're entering a 19century crypt when you log into it."
The 10-member committee, established by Congress in 1926, investigates, reviews and issues reports on federal tax policy. He lauds the JCT for bringing the mysterious methodologies of revenues estimates into clearer view," even though they add that it's only a start. Which legislation the JCT chooses to provide estimates for and the timeframe involved deserve a more thorough explanation. "This process is opaque even to members of the Senate," Dana writes, and "the discreet Delphic charm of the JCT remains fundamentally intact."
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