As stated in the note from the Sunlight Foundation′s Board Chair, as of September 2020 the Sunlight Foundation is no longer active. This site is maintained as a static archive only.

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Deutsche Telekom meets key people opposing AT&T and T-Mobile merger

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While Congress and the Department of Justice are questioning the T-Mobile and AT&T merger, Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile's parent company has been working on a behind the scene lobbying campaign, contacting key opponents to the deal in the last few months, reports filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act show.

Deutsche Telekom, looking to sell T-Mobile to AT&T creating a mammoth corporation making up a large chunk of the U.S. wireless market, has spent $4.3 million in the last six months to lobby and maintain a staff in the U.S., six monthly reports filed with ...

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2Day in #OpenGov 11/22/2011

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Here is Tuesday's look at transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events. News Roundup: Lobbying

  • Religious advocacy groups have expanded rapidly over the past 40 years, according to a new report by the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life. These groups spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year lobbying for issues like school vouchers, immigration, and abortion. (Washington Post)
  • South Korean auto makers accelerated their lobbying activity over the past few years. Meanwhile, American, German, and Japanese companies have tapped the breaks on their government affairs spending. (Politico)
  • The failure of the Super Committee might provide a boost in business to Washington's lobbyists. The automatic cuts triggered by the committee's failure won't start until 2013, giving lobbyists plenty of time to fight them. Meanwhile, a number of programs that may have been included in a Super Committee plan will have to be dealt with in the coming months. (The Hill)
Access to Information
  • The Office of Government Information Services submitted recommendations for improving how agencies handle government wide FOIA requests more than nine months ago. They are still awaiting approval by the OMB. (Nextgov)
  • A new site, NewsTransparency , claims it aims to provide wikipedia-style information about journalists. Critics claim it is just a "conservative way of criticizing the so-called liberal media." (Politico)

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Sunlight Live team to cover GOP national security debate

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The Republican Presidential candidates will meet this Tuesday in the nation’s capital to debate national security, just as they did in South Carolina just two weeks ago. Tuesday's debate will be hosted by CNN and sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute and the Sunlight Live team will cover it.

Over the course of October and November, Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, saw a peak in his poll numbers. During the week of Oct. 21, Cain polled at 26 percent, but has since been slipping. The one-time poll leader is now ...

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2Day in #OpenGov 11/21/2011

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Here is the short week's first look at transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events. News Roundup: Government

  • The Office of Federal Procurement Policy is teaming up with the Small Business Administration to streamline and improve the quality of small business contracting data. (Federal Computer Week)
  • 20 major companies that have spent over $1 billion lobbying for a repatriation tax holiday stand to make a 14,000 percent return on their investment if the measure is approved. (National Journal)
  • Congress is teaming up with Facebook developers for the first ever Congressional Facebook Developer Hackathon. The event aims to examine how social media can interact with legislative data and constituent communications. (National Journal)
Access to Information
  • The U.S. government launched a public registry of unclassified information that still requires safeguards. There are more than 100 policies across the executive branch dealing with this type of information. The registry is a first step towards administering it in a more efficient way. (POGO)
  • Aides to Mitt Romney wiped computer servers after he left office as governor of Massachusetts, making it impossible to retrieve email records from his administration. Last week, Romney stated that his aides followed the letter of the law. (National Journal)
Campaign Finance
  • A conservative PAC is fighting a Washington state law that bans PACs from contributing more than $5,000 to a campaign within three weeks of an election. They argue that the law limits their speech. (Courthouse News)
State and Local
  • The Washington, DC Council is set to consider an ethics reform bill. The legislation would create a Board of Ethics and Government Accountability, set new financial disclosure rules, and more heavily regulate transition, inaugural, and constituent service funds. (Washington Post)
  • The Connecticut Office of State Ethics fined the executive director of Connecticut Working Families $10,000 for failing to wear proper identification while lobbying during the 2010 election cycle. (Lobby Comply)

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