City hall is a living metaphor for the way citizens and government exchange information. People visit their city hall to... View Article
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: Hack Jersey hackathon — public data solving problems
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.
Tom Meagher is the co-founder of Hack Jersey and the data editor at Digital First Media's Project Thunderdome in New York City. 
His team builds interactive news applications, supports computer-assisted reporting projects in local newsrooms and offers training. He served as the data editor for The Star-Ledger in Newark, and he lives with his family in suburban New Jersey. Reach him at @ultracasual or @hackjersey.
Wrapped by the hanging air quotes of New York City and Philadelphia, New Jersey's history of invention and investigative reporting tends to get overlooked. Even within the state, the two disciplines haven't acknowledged each other much. In recent years, there've been hackathons at local colleges or tech groups, but the Garden State's journalists never really mingled with programmers or dipped their toes into building news applications. Until now.
This winter, Hack Jersey held the state's first news hackathon and attracted dozens of journalists and developers to learn from and compete with one another. Sponsored by the NJ News Commons, Knight-Mozilla's OpenNews and many other organizations, the hackathon revolved around a simple (and maybe obvious) idea. By bringing coders and journalists together to use public data and solve problems, we could sow the seeds for an amazing new community here.
Continue reading2Day in #OpenGov 3/29/2013
NEWS ROUNDUP: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released an expanded public database of federal consumer financial complaints this week. The... View Article
Continue readingAs Congress weighs gun control, many states try Congress control
Updated on April 5 at 1:42 p.m. ET (see below)
While attention is focused on the U.S. Senate, which could begin voting as early as next month on gun control legislation, some state lawmakers are trying to move in the opposite direction.
Bills to nullify any gun control measures that Congress enacts have been introduced in at least 37 states since the beginning of the year, according to an analysis using Scout, Sunlight's legislative alert system. To browse the list and click through to the text of the bills, click here.
Continue readingLobbying Disclosure in Menendez Case: Too Little, Too Late
The scandal surrounding Senator Robert Menendez continues. This time it’s not front page grabbing allegations involving prostitutes and private jets,... View Article
Continue readingOpen Access to CRS Reports
Former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”... View Article
Continue reading2Day in #OpenGov 3/28/2013
NEWS ROUNDUP:
- $60,000 worth of lobbying has been disclosed a mere 4 years after an Arnold & Porter partner started working for Vitreo-Retinal Consultants, the eye-care company controlled by noted Bob Menendez (D-NJ) donor Salomon Melgen. Melgen's lawyers had previously claimed that he had never hired a lobbyist for himself or his business interests. (POLITICO)
- The International Sanitation Hackathon, hosted last December by the World Bank, pulled together 1,100 participants in 40 cities and created 30 new apps dealing with sanitation issues. (Tech President)
- The nascent truce between House Oversight chairman Darrell Issa and his ranking member Elijah Cummings is facing its first major test. Cummings is seeking whistle-blower documents from Issa, but the whistleblower in question, who uncovered information related to contracting problems in the Commerce Department, is worried that Cummings might share the information with the Obama administration, setting the whistleblower up for retaliation. (Roll Call)
- The Internet Association is boosting its in house team of lobbyists with some outside help. The association, which was formed late last year, hired Kountoupes Denham and Franklin Square Group. Both firms have experience representing tech clients. (The Hill)
- A new paper out of the New America Foundation suggests that the CRS and GAO aren't enough, especially at current funding levels. Members of Congress need experts to provide them with unbiased research and the paper recommends some state level corollaries that could be adapted to help Congress. (Fierce Government)
- The beer wars are coming to Capitol Hill with a showdown over taxes. Huge brewers and craft operations are waging a proxy war through their respective trade associations, the Beer Institute and the Brewers Association, over the Small Brewer Reinvestment and Expanding Workforce (Small BREW) Act, which would lower taxes on small breweries. (The Hill)
- President Obama is turning to California's billionaires to help him raise money for the DCCC. A trip to California next week includes fundraisers with at least two billionaire bundlers(POLITICO)
Content strategy in a social world – Internet Advocacy Roundtable
At Sunlight we make no secret about using technology to make government more accountable and drive the transparency message further.... View Article
Continue readingLobbying and declining corporate tax burdens
According to a report today in the Washington Post, most companies in the Dow 30 have dropped their tax rates by at least half in the last four decades. The article notes a few factors: the corporate tax rate of today (35%) actually is lower than the corporate tax rate of 1971 (48%); Large U.S. companies today are increasingly multinational companies and so can keep corporate profits overseas; Companies have become increasingly aggressive in their tax strategies. But here’s another factor: Lobbying. Changes in reported tax rates
| Company | 2007-2010 decline | 2007 rate | 2010 rate | 2007- 2009 lobbying (in millions) | Estimated tax reduction (in millions) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exxon Mobil | -1.1% | 41.8% | 40.7% | $81.92 | -$565.32 |
| Verizon Communications | -7.9% | 27.4% | 19.4% | $77.58 | -$1,005.51 |
| General Electric | -7.6% | 15.0% | 7.4% | $73.17 | -$1,082.70 |
| At&T | -40.4% | 34.0% | -6.4% | $70.96 | -$7,359.95 |
| Altria | +0.2% | 31.5% | 31.7% | $63.31 | none |
| Amgen | -7.1% | 20.1% | 13.0% | $58.33 | -$377.16 |
| Northrop Grumman | -11.4% | 32.9% | 21.5% | $57.56 | -$296.08 |
| Boeing | -7.1% | 33.7% | 26.5% | $56.99 | -$321.5 |
| Median among 200 companies | -0.6% | 31.8% | 31.6% | $5.48 | -$13.08 |
Political heavy hitters lining up behind gay marriage
Updated: 1:20 p.m.
As the Supreme Court weighs the issue of equal marriage rights, the political momentum -- and money -- appears to be lining up behind gay rights, an analysis of campaign finance reports for some key organizations involved in the debate indicate.
Gay rights activist rallies outside high court Wednesday
That balance was on display in front of the Supreme Court Wednesday as the justices considered a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act. At least several hundred sign-wielding gay rights activists filled the sidewalk before the steps of the Supreme Court and only a handful of gay ...
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