This morning, the House Appropriations Committee's Legislative Branch Subcommittee marked up its FY 2014 funding bill, agreeing to a plan that would cut funding for Congress and legislative support agencies well below FY 2013 levels, and even beneath sequestration levels for most offices.
Committee leadership claimed that cuts were necessary to "lead by example" and help get the government's "fiscal house in order," but, in reality, the cuts will likely limit accountability, access to information, and the ability of Congress and the legislative support agencies to do their jobs efficiently and effectively. The shrinking budgets could also make it more difficult for Congress to implement a number of important transparency initiatives.
Specifically, the plan would continue several years of cuts to House operations and the Government Accountability Office that have diminished the capacity of both bodies.
2Day in #OpenGov 7/9/2013
- What happens when secrecy laws seem to impede the government? Legal terms get redefined, documents get moved out of FOIA's reach, and rules are broadly reinterpreted. (The Atlantic Wire)
- Obama's remarks yesterday about his administration's management reform revealed his conviction that solutions must come from the private sector - an interesting stance for a Democratic politician. (Government Executive)
- A new rule going into effect next month penalizes businesses that misrepresent themselves as "small" to the federal government for the full value of the contract. (Fierce Government)
- Winning a House seat cost the victor an average of $753,000 in 1978, less than half of what it does today - and that's without factoring in spending by outside groups and super PACs. (New York Times)
- Judge James Robertson, a former member of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, publicly spoke out against the court's limitations in only hearing the government's side of each case, saying that it was closer to an "administrative agency" in its proceedings. (Boston Herald)
A Decade of Nondisclosure: A Brief History of the Senate’s E-Filing Failures
For more than a decade, the Senate has failed to pass no-brainer legislation requiring Senators and challengers to file campaign... View Article
Continue readingIntroducing Congress for iOS
As Congress returns for their July session, the Sunlight Foundation is excited to announce our free Congress app for iOS devices that allows anyone to get the latest from Washington. Download it here.
Continue readingFEC asks Santorum about charges that he bought an endorsement
The Federal Election Commission is asking former presidential candidate Rick Santorum, Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats and an anti-gay marriage organization to tell the agency why it should not investigate an allegation that they violated campaign finance limits during the last election.
Continue readingFree the Bill: It’s time for Electronic Filing Legislation to Become Law
One week from today, House and Senate candidates will file their campaign finance reports. Even this far out from the next elections, many thousands of pages documenting many millions of dollars of campaign contributions will be filed. And those reports will contain some interesting information—which donors are trying to make their mark by giving early and often; which industries are hedging their bets by donating to both parties and which are more partisan; whether there is a spike in contributions that can be tied to a particular issue or interest; and which special interest may be using the campaign finance process to gain access or influence with particular members of Congress.
2Day in #OpenGov 6/8/2013
- Three years after the passage of the Dodd-Frank law, the SEC still struggles to enact even the most straightforward component, a requirement that companies disclose how much more their chief executive makes than other employees. Federal agencies have already missed two-thirds of the deadlines in the legislation, which they attribute to being understaffed, the complexity of the issues, and pushback from business interests. (Washington Post)
- The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, once used primarily to approve wiretapping case-by-case, is gradually becoming a "parallel Supreme Court", making over a dozen rulings on surveillance, all of which are strictly classified. (New York Times)
- Eight months after Superstorm Sandy, tens of thousands are still homeless in New Jersey - but without a sweeping independent appraisal, it's tough to judge Gov. Christie's recovery efforts. His rapport with the White House saw the launch of a "Stronger than the Storm" ad campaign that declares the state "back in business." (National Journal)
- Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced yesterday his plans to run for NYC Comptroller, which manages city pension funds. Spitzer hopes to transform the low-profile job into an influential role governing financial regulation and oversight. (Time)
- With a temporary 3-2 Republican majority, the FEC could vote this week to end its working relationship with the DOJ. The current cooperation aids enforcement of the FECA by allowing free sharing of information about possible criminal violations by candidates, members of Congress and other committees. (Roll Call)
Is a super PAC in Rick Perry’s future?
Rick Perry got permission last year to convert leftover presidential campaign funds to a super PAC, which could help the Texas governor win the kinds of friends he needs to mount a second bid for the presidency in 2016.
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: Local Government Financial Transparency: Scaling It Up
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the 
Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.
Marc Joffe is the founder of Public Sector Credit Solutions (PSCS) which applies open data and analytics to rating government bonds. Before starting PSCS, Marc was a Senior Director at Moody’s Analytics. You can contact him at marc@publicsectorcredit.org.
Groups like OpenOakland and Open City have done some great work in making local government financial data more accessible. Machine readable data sets and visualizations help citizens better understand how their tax money is being used.
Because these efforts typically require volunteers and/or visionary political leaders, they tend to focus on individual governmental units. Since the U.S. has some 80,000 local governments, it is unlikely that these standalone projects will give us anything like nationwide transparency of local government fiscal data. Building a nationwide open data set would be very beneficial because it would allow users to compare their city or county to comparable units across the country. It could answer such questions as “how does our public safety spending stack up against other cities with similar population and crime rate?” It could also allow us to compare the fiscal condition of cities in order to see which are headed in the direction of Detroit, Harrisburg, San Bernardino and Stockton – toward bankruptcy.
A Mountain View California based company, OpenGov.com, is working with several local governments to place their fiscal data online, in graphical form. If successful, this firm could greatly increase the amount of open government financial data – for those governments that are willing to subscribe to their transparency service.
But what about situations in which a local government is unwilling to cooperate and volunteers are unavailable? This universe is likely to include some of the more fiscally irresponsible governments in places that lack tech-savvy, engaged citizens.
In these cases, we can collect and report data on behalf of those governments. Recently, my group, Public Sector Credit Solutions, collected legally mandated financial reports from 260 city governments in California. We extracted standardized data from these reports and placed the information online for free here. We’d love to work with other groups to roll out this type of fiscal transparency to other types of local governments (like counties and regional transportation districts) and to the rest of the country.
Continue readingAloha Hawaii Open Data Legislation!
Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie is signing the nation’s third statewide open data policy into law today (at 11 a.m. HST/5 p.m. EST). The bill, Hawaii House Bill 632, was originally drafted in November 2012, but the open data movement in Hawaii and push for legislation has been chugging along for years now. Chief Information Officer Sonny Bhagowalia and Burt Lum, the executive director of Hawaii Open Data, crafted Hawaii’s Open Data Bill to support the data release that has been going on over the last year (via the city’s Socrata-hosted open data portal, currently boasting over 150 datasets) and in concurrence with a larger program that updates the state’s IT infrastructure.
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