Members of Congress are about to head back to their districts for two weeks of townhall meetings, meet-and-greets, and Easter egg hunts (or if they're like me they'll be eating a lot of hillel sandwiches) but they have yet to pass a complete lobbying reform bill. The problem is that S. 1, the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007, has been in stuck in the House of Representatives as the parties fight over Iraq funding. Once that issue is resolved the House is likely to discuss reforms, including, we hope, our transparency agenda. So far the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties has held one hearing on S. 1. The points of contention in the legislation were the disclosure of lobbyist bundling and the increase in the "cooling off" period from one to two years. Republican members of the subcommittee also raised concerns that the Democrats would try to include grassroots lobbying disclosure provisions in the bill. So far, this has been the only action in the House although there are a number of bills that have been introduced.
Continue readingSunlight Accepting Applications for Mini Grants
The Sunlight Foundation is still offering grants of $1,000 to $5,000 to local groups, individuals or any groups of citizens that have creative ideas for changing the relationship between elected Federal representatives and the people they represent. This is the second year of our mini-grant program. Last year we funded five extraordinary programs selected from nearly one hundred applicants.
Successful applicants will receive, in addition to a grant, consulting and strategic support and opportunities for networking. Our goal is to provide that extra element that takes a project from good to great -- server space, a video camera, or access to polling data -- or provide the seed that makes a new project viable. Projects could range from citizen media, to creative use of the Internet to engage citizens in watchdogging, to opening up new ways of communicating with federal lawmakers or creative mapping of lawmakers' activities.
We encourage applications from existing small nonprofits and Web sites, from offshoots of national groups, from individuals, and from informal groups of citizens.
SBA Doesn’t Maintain Correspondence Logs
It seems that there's no standard way for government agencies to maintain logs of correspondence.
I had sent a FOIA to the Small Business Administration offices in
Unfortunately, SBA is not is a position to consolidate the material and give us one final response. Essentially, each of the ...
Continue readingAnother Daily Schedule–Congressional Web Site Survey Update
Rep. Kathy Castor of Florida, a freshman, publishes a daily schedule--that brings the total number of members who do so to six. Here's a sample from Castor's schedule:
Wednesday, March 28
8:30 am - Event, National Democratic Club
9:30 am - Manage Rule for Wounded Warrior Assistance Act of 2007 (Click here to see the video) Continue reading
Another Earmark List–Congressional Web Site Study Update
Add Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas to the list of members who publish information on their earmark requests. That brings the grand total to six, which isn't exactly overwhelming. Brady's list is here; he also says this about earmarks:
Sometimes, when out-of-touch bureaucrats think they know better than local communities, the only recourse left is to direct the federal government to act. Unfortunately, these “earmarks” have exploded in number and cost over the years. Some are snuck into bills without public scrutiny, others are plain outrageous to taxpayers, especially with America’s large budget deficit. Continue reading
Getting Some Answers
From TechPresident this morning...
Following in the footsteps of Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey, and Al Gore, Barack Obama has posed a question on Yahoo! Answers, reports the Chicago Tribune. His question? "How can we engage more people in the democratic process?" . . . The Tribune notes that Obama isn't the first candidate to use the forum; Hillary Clinton and John McCain have been there, done that.
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Does the DoD use searchable databases?
Reading over the letter that Anu got back from Will Klammer of the Department of Defense's Office of Freedom of Information, I'm beginning to get a sense that this project--obtaining logs of the correspondence that members of Congress send to all federal agencies--may be even more difficult than I originally thought. This sentence particularly jumps out:
After reviewing your request carefully, we have determined that your request as presently written, since it would appear to apply to all 535 Members of Congress, is much too broad to enable this Office to conduct an adequate' and effective search for ...Continue reading
Quorum Found, Bill Moves to Full Senate
Word from Adam Bonin is that Feinstein found 10 members of the Rules and Administration Committee on the floor of the Senate and they voted in a side room 10-0 to pass S.223, the Senate electronic filing bill, out of committee. This is excellent news. You can, and should, still sign the Sunlight Network's petition to your Senators urging them to support the bill when it comes up for a vote on the Senate floor. (Link to the petition.)
Continue readingCongressional Web Site Study Update
Some updates, new information, refinements, and so on in the congressional Web site investigation. Dale Neubarger, the chief of staff to Rep. Darrel Issa, emails this link to Issa's 2008 earmark requests; I'll do a separate post on it later, but that's good news. We also heard from Matt Dinkel, the press secretary of Rep. Mike Doyle, who sent us a link to a page which links to the committees on which Doyle serves--that moves Doyle up to a passing score. I think this was a fairly common problem--when members identified or linked to their committee assignments in their bios, they were missed. I'm currently re-reviewing those questions, and finding that particularly when members name their committees in the text of lengthy bios but don't link them, our citizen journalists missed them.
Continue readingBennett Drops his Amendment but No Quorum [Updated]
UPDATE: Our intelligence tells us that the committee will vote off the floor around noon today. Rules and Administration Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) just announced that Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) will drop his amendment allowing the electronic filing bill to move forwards. Feinstein agreed to hold a hearing on a stand alone bill of Bennett's amendment. And now Bennett cosponsors the bill, S. 223. Amazing! However, not enough Democrats showed up for there to be a quorum so the meeting was adjourned without a vote on the bill. The committee will likely vote off the floor once they get enough votes. It's ironic that a disclosure bill will be voted on behind closed doors. The bill should still move forwards.
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