Among the potentially meaningful and important changes to the law in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act is a provision that requires candidates for federal office to report the bundled contributions they receive from lobbyists. Bundled contributions are among the most insidious sources of campaign money because they give a single donor the opportunity to get credit for raising contributions that are often hundreds of times greater than the legal limits applied to individuals. The massive contributions no doubt result in greater access to elected officials. At Sunlight, we believe bundled contributions from any party-CEOs, non-lobbyist lawyers and law firms-should be publicly disclosed. But, the new law limits such disclosure to registered lobbyists, which at least begins to get to the heart of the problem.
The key to this well-intended provision is to ensure that when it is applied, it is not so full of loopholes that any lobbyist worth her $500 an hour fee finds a way to avoid reporting the bundled contributions she forwards to candidates. The Federal Election Commission has the responsibility of crafting regulations that carry out the intent of the new law. The FEC asked for public comment on its proposed rules, and made those comments available yesterday. The comments came from three Members of Congress, groups that champion ethics reform, and others who, for reasons of their own (or their clients) seem to want to keep bundled contributions hidden in the shadows.
And the Biggest Winners of Earmarks Are . . . .
The top-two ranking GOP members of the Senate Appropriations Committee have secured more money in earmarks than all other individual members of Congress. The Hill, reporting on earmark data compiled by Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS), found that Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) nabbed $744 million and $502 million in earmarks respectfully. Since losing control of Congress, the GOP share of funds set aside for special projects have been cut by almost a third, yet these two Senators kept for themselves huge shares. As the paper quotes a Senate Republican aide, the two senators are "not only the kings of pork, they're outright hogs."
Democrats share access to earmarks more equitably among its members.
Continue readingSenators of Ill Repute
MyDD has a review of Senators who've come under scrutiny for questionnable activity, and wonders what's become of the so-called Senate Ethics Committee. So do we.
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FedSpending.org’s First Anniversary
Sunlight grantee OMB Watch is celebrating the first anniversary of their FedSpending.org, a searchable database of almost $17 trillion in federal spending. It's been a big hit, and we want to congratulate our colleagues at OMB Watch for their success. FedSpending.org is a perfect example of transparency in action. It has complete federal government annual data from FY 2000 through FY 2006, and partial data available for FY 2007. It has become the standard for online disclosure of government contracts and grants. For citizens and patriots, snoops, muckrakers, and journalists its become a must. What a service! Coinciding with the anniversary, OMB Watch is releasing new, improved, and even more powerful features of the database. They also have made what they call "major functionality improvements," that includes a "mapping feature on all searches," a "SuperSearch" function for all advanced searching, and other user-friendly functions. With the new features, it appears they are closing in on a warp drive for governmental research and transparency.
Continue readingThe Good Guys Win One for Transparency
Yes! A U.S. district judge is forcing the feds to make public the lobbying records of telecom companies regarding the congressional debate over amnesty in the electronic surveillance legislation. The victory was won by our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who had made the case that the public has the right to full disclosure before Congress decides on the pending telecom amnesty proposals. In addition to the good news above, the judge ruled that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) must make the records public for a December 10 deadline. Yea, again. Timeliness is important when it comes to disclosure. This means that the disclosures will have a role in the ongoing congressional debate. So far, the House and the Senate committees dealing with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) have not yet let the telecom companies off the hook for the illegal spying on American citizens, despite a furious lobbying campaign by the administration and the industry.
Last month, EFF filed suit against the ODNI, demanding any information about telecommunications companies' lobbying efforts. "(The judge) agreed that the Administration is dragging its feet in making relevant information available and stressed that the public has a right to full disclosure before Congress acts on the pending telecom amnesty proposals," said EFF's senior counsel in a press release. "The court's order confirms our belief that aggressive use of the Freedom of Information Act is needed to challenge government secrecy."
Continue readingChamber and NAM Fight Disclosure
Mother Jones' MoJo Blog and The Hill report on how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers are questioning the lobbying disclosure rules in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007. (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 trade groups say that the new rules violate constitutional protections of freedom of association by forcing them to open up their membership lists. So they sent a letter to the Senate secretary and the House clerk asking for a clarification in how it will be applied, charging that the law is vague and broad. Also, the fact the law imposes criminal penalties on groups that fail to accurately disclose their lobby efforts got their attention. "The price for being wrong is extremely high," said the Chamber's top legal officer as quoted by The Hill.
Continue readingNewsTrust Gets MacArthur Foundation Grant
Congratulations to Sunlight grantee NewsTrust.net. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awarded the ‘Web 2.0' news review service a hefty multi-year grant. The goal of NewsTrust.net is to help citizens find and evaluate good journalism online. Fabrice Florin, a former executive at Apple and Macromedia, founded NewsTrust.net as a response to the explosion of web-based media outlets.
Media consolidation and growing distrust of mainstream media are creating "a range of problems for democracy," Florin said in a press release released today, "(including) information overload, misinformation, mistrust and civic apathy." NewsTrust.net provides tools that allow users to filter news, evaluate news stories and reporting, and share stories with other users. The site's focus is on the quality of reporting, not popularity. The whole idea is to help citizens stay informed and engaged in the democratic process. This is a very exciting moment for the good people there. Congrats to them!
Continue readingThe Office of Congressional Ethics
Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the chairman and ranking member of the House ethics task force, will soon recommend that an independent "Office of Congressional Ethics" (OCE) be created to initiate ethics complaints against House members. If done properly, the OCE will serve to shore up the House Ethics Committee, long a toothless watchdog of House Members who seem more willing than ever to cross ethical lines. The New York Times editoralizes about this today.
One of the key features of the OCE is that if complaints against lawmakers are ultimately dismissed, the dismissals would have to be publicly disclosed. As Rep. Capuano said, "Transparency is the key to the whole thing. People have to know that the ethics process is working." We don't know the details of the required disclosure yet, but we at Sunlight would respectfully remind Mr. Capuano that real transparency means timely disclosure in an easily accessible format on the Internet.
Continue readingMore on Sen. Lott’s Resignation
From Harper's Scott Horton:
Continue readingTrent Lott was quick, in his two appearances yesterday, to rule out health and scandal as reasons for his sudden and very surprising resignation from the Senate. But Washingtonians know that whenever a politician leaves to "spend more time with his family," there are likely to be other reasons. Sources in Mississippi law enforcement inform No Comment that FBI agents are now raiding the law office of Richard "Dickie" Scruggs in Oxford. Scruggs is the brother-in-law of Trent Lott, and, as we reported earlier, several Mississippi newspapers openly questioned whether Lott had intervened to protect Scruggs in a recent criminal probe that produced the prosecution of a number of other Mississippi lawyers and judges with whom he was closely connected. Could there be a connection between the FBI raid and the Lott resignation? Just asking.
Illinois’ “Show Us” Amendment
As Justice Louis Brandeis said (I think), states can serve as laboratories of democracy. Out of the Land of Lincoln comes an idea, an effort proponents say is a first step in restoring transparency to lawmaking in the Prairie State.
Citizens and activist groups are attempting to pass the "Show Us" amendment to the Illinois Constitution that would require a three week (21 days) delay from the date all non-emergency bills are introduced to when they receive a final vote. The goal is to give citizens an opportunity to know what the legislature is voting on and give input. Proponents, headed by the Illinois Democracy Project, decry what they call "drive-by legislation," where devious legislators slyly insert changes into bills at the last moment, without other members of the assembly, the press and the public knowing. "Currently a bill could be passed in fewer than 90 minutes, often without legislators having time to read the entire document or knowing exactly what the bill entails," said IDP's executive director as quoted by the Collinsville (Ill.) Herald.
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