Lobbying disclosure reports will finally get reviewed by an oversight body as a result of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA). The Government Accountability Office (GAO) began auditing the first quarter lobbying reports to determine compliance and noncompliance to the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 and subsequent amendments included in HLOGA. The GAO may ask for time sheets and restaurant and travel records to check to see if employees are meeting the lobbyist threshold. The audit results should be released around Sept. 30, 2008, six months after the initial quarterly report filing date. Michael Stern at Point of Order points out some issues that may prevent the GAO from requiring audited firms to turn over documents:
Continue readingUSASpending.gov 2.0
In October 2006, Sunlight grantee OMB Watch set up FedSpending.org, a free, searchable database of federal government spending. Subsequent updates have allowed public access to approximately $16.8 trillion in federal government spending, with complete annual data from FY 2000 through FY 2006 and partial data available for FY 2007. The site was so successful that the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (FFATA) set up USASpending.gov within the Office of Management and Budget, which Congresspedia dubbed "the ‘Google' of federal spending" by bringing tremendous transparency to how and where government spends tax dollars. As the site says, it's searchable and accessible by the public for free, and includes for each federal award:
1. The name of the entity receiving the award;
2. The amount of the award;
3. Information on the award including transaction type, funding agency, etc;
4. The location of the entity receiving the award; and
5. A unique identifier of the entity receiving the award.
U.S. Sens. Tom Coburn and Barack Obama, the original sponsors of the FFATA in 2006, recognize there is more to be done. Moments ago, Coburn and Obama introduced the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008 (S. 3077), which would require the federal government to go beyond summary data on contracts it currently posts.
Curious Campaign Contribution and Vote Sponsorship Connection
When Disclosure Isn’t Disclosure
The Hill highlights a problem that we've seen far too often with personal financial disclosures. Lawmakers do not always follow the rules in properly filling out these important disclosure forms. More often than not, the public is not privy to the lack of disclosure because oversight is spotty at best. Sometimes it takes an unfortunate story to point out what is lacking from a financial disclosure form:
Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.) could face fines for leaving a heavily indebted mortgage off her financial disclosure statement, according to campaign finance experts.
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Following Hastert Through the Revolving Door
Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's days raising money for his political campaigns might come in handy when he sits down with the clients of his new employer, law and lobbying firm Dickstein Shapiro LLP.
The firm has a long list of clients in the health care sector -- an industry that provided generous support for Hastert's during his time in Congress.
According to lobbying reports filed by the Senate Office of Public Records and the firm's website, Dickstein Shapiro's current and past clients include about a dozen pharmaceutical or health care companies. The health care sector has ...
Continue readingMidnight Rulemaking
OMB Watch sez:
Saturday's New York Times has an article about the White House's new policy setting deadlines for any regulations agencies intend to finalize during the Bush administration. The policy, outlined in a memo sent by Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, says, "Except in extraordinary circumstances, regulations to be finalized in this Administration should be proposed no later than June 1, 2008, and final regulations should be issued no later than November 1, 2008."
Bolten issued the memo under the guise of reversing "the historical tendency of administrations to increase regulatory activity in their final months" — commonly known as midnight regulations. In reality, the memo may simply change when the clock strikes midnight in order to insulate potentially controversial rules from disapproval by a new administration.
Read OMB Watch's analysis.
Continue readingCrowdsourcing Parliamentary Video
Our friends at MySociety.org have a new crowdsourcing project that's really neat.
They have added video of debates in the House of Commons on their TheyWorkForYou.com Web site and are asking individuals to help match up each speech with the corresponding video clips. Wow. They are crowd sourcing all the work that the technologists behind Metavid have been doing themselves for C-SPAN coverage of Congress. Recently Metavid has added ways for you to help too.
TheyWorkForYou.com provides a randomly-selected speech from Hansard, the printed transcripts of debates in Parliament. You can search the video for the correct snippet. You then timestamp the video by hitting one button button.
MySociety.org has set up a "top timestamper" contest as well. Check it out.
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GAO on DOD
Last week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report that details the extensive revolving door where former Department of Defense officials are now working for defense contractors, creating glaring conflicts of interest.
GAO's report found that in 2006, defense contractors employed over 86,000 former DOD employees who had left the agency since 2001. The report found instances where former DOD officials were working on contracts under the responsibility of their form agency, office or command. And they found nine instances where former officials are working on a contract "for which they had program oversight responsibilities or decision-making authorities while at DOD."
This isn't a newly recognized problem. A 2004 report by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) on the revolving doors between the government and large private contractors found "conflict of interest is the rule, not the exception."
Continue readingTransparency, Bush Administration Style
The Washington Independent reported late this week on the Bush Administration's Orwellian use of the word "transparent" to describe its disregarding scientific opinion in favor of corporate interests in setting regulatory policy.
Environmental Protection Agency chief Stephen Johnson used the new pet word last week to describe the process used to reverse EPA recommendations for limiting smog. Appearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Johnson said of the administration's decision, "It's been a very transparent process." As if.
The next day, another Bush Administration official, the top regulatory officer with the Office of Management and Budget, used the word to describe new EPA rules that allow the Pentagon and industry to keep the EPA from evaluating toxics. OMB Watch has a helpful factsheet on the decision. Incredibly, the White House has the nerve to call this transparency.
One thing is transparent alright -- the Administration's total co-option by corporate interests. They don't even try to hide it anymore.
Continue readingProject Vote Smart Rocks
Richard Kimball wrote today to say that Project Vote Smart's Voter Self Defense "Manual" is complete. He thanked seven different people and organizations for our ideas and for helping make it happen. But in fact, it's the tens of millions of Americans who use this site who should be thanking him and Vote Smart's remarkable staff and volunteers for what they have created.
Usage of the site has exploded. It gets as many as 7 million hits a day (you read that right, that's hits per day) -- a 2300% increase over any other election year first quarter. Their estimate is that will get some 30 million hits by the election's end. Cite those stats to people who pooh-pooh American's interest in politics.
One hundred and fifty-four organizations, Clear Channel, LA Times, Gannet News Service, Dish Network among others are using their APIs to enrich their own reporting. (Sunlight modestly helped Vote Smart's able technologists in this arena.) Vote Smart aggressively developed their APIs because of the core desire to give everythin g they have to anyone might be able to use it, multiplying their work many-fold. Theory proven right.
Many kudos Vote Smart friends. Job well begun! (The job is never done...)
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