I just had a chat with Rob Lehman, the chief of staff of Office of Management and Budget, who assured me that, contrary to this report, there is no "caving" on their announced intention to publish a comprehensive list of earmarks online. Lehman explained that OMB's release today will be something less than the complete database that would "identify and catalogue earmarks in all appropriations bills and certain authorization bills, including report language," in part because the data isn't ready. Those of us who've worked with federal data, especially federal data drawn from multiple agencies, would probably agree that the one week OMB gave itself to review all the data followed by one week to post it all online was probably overly ambitious.
Continue readingAction: Progress on Electronic Filing Information
We've obtained a witness list for Wednesday's Rules and Administration Committee hearing on the Senate electronic filing bill. According to Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office, the witnesses include:
- Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) - the bill's sponsor
- Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) - the principle Republican cosponsor
- Nancy Erickson - Secretary of the Senate
- Steve Weissman - head of the Campaign Finance Institute
- Thomas Mann - Brookings Institution Congressional scholar
- someone from the Federal Election Commission
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Word on the Hill: Bush Will Reneg on Earmark Transparency Commmitment
Today, OMB was going to release a list of earmarks. UPDATE: See the blog post above. Bill Allison talked to OMB about reasons for delay. From Mark Tapscott:
Word is circulating on the Hill that the Bush administration is going to release only a limited database of earmarks later today or maybe no database at all, but just aggregate or summary data. Seems the White House legislative staff fears releasing the database would offend members of the appropriation committees in Congress. So, the public gets the shaft, again, on a topic on which there is no doubt where the American people stand. Continue reading
Urgent Call to Action: Senate Hearing on Electronic Filing of FEC Reports
The Senate Rules and Administration is holding a hearing on Wednesday on a bill that would require electronic filing of Senate FEC reports: http://rules.senate.gov/hearings/2007/031407hrg.htm This bill is long overdue -- candidates for the House already file electronically and the only reason to oppose it is that candidates don't want members of the public to know, at the time of filing, who has donated to their campaigns. We tried to get this into the lobbying reform bill in January and the Porkbusters coalition pushed on this late last year after the Coburn-Obama success. As we know from that effort certain elements were blocking the bill in committee. This is our chance to get the bill out of committee if we put enough pressure on the right committee members.
Continue readingAjaj: Ajax2.0
Is Ajaj the new Ajax?
Continue readingSunshine Week Starts Today
Today is the first day of Sunshine Week, with over 500 papers printing articles and editorials about the need for more open government in the last 24 hours alone. Please, spread the news in the blogosphere -- make this the year that Sunshine Week becomes a rallying cry for bloggers who are looking to open up government. As AP CEO Tom Curley writes in a Q & A about Sunshine Week, this year is different than the last two years:
"The Sunshine Week momentum (in 2005 and 2006) forced elected officials to choose between public service or self service. We saw some very powerful officials become openly defiant of efforts to do the public's business in public. In a strange way they inspired a new generation of investigative reporters and stiffened the resolve of editors. Persistent reporters at local, state and federal levels helped save billions of dollars and even lives by what they were able to uncover last year. Continue reading
Update from last blog post
Another Update: "Hacked" isn't right. Apparently they screwed up at U.S. News and Bonnie Erbe's post got Barone's name on it. The Internets strike again.
In my last blog post I quoted from a post from Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report. Barone's post, which I excerpted, stated his outrage at the attorney firings and at Sen. Pete Domenici's ethics in calling Attorney David Iglesias. The only thing about the post is that Barone didn't write it. You see, his site was hacked and the post, sensibly explaining the outrage over the Attorney firings, was not his work at all. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming. (hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)
Continue readingDomenici In Trouble; What About Wilson?
The Washington Post reports that the Senate ethics committee is investigating Sen. Pete Domenici's (R-NM) role in the alleged pressuring and subsequent firing of Attorney David Iglesias. Domenici announced that he has hired K. Lee Blalack, the former defense attorney for Randy "Duke" Cunningham, to represent him. The revelations in the committee hearings on Tuesday clearly have pushed this story further as it appears that, despite constantly changing excuses, two Members of Congress put unprecedented pressure on a U.S. Attorney to bring down indictments to help the re-election campaign of Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM).
Continue readingOMB Will Release Earmarks Database Monday
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is set to make public its earmark database on Monday, March 12. That should includes recipient name and address, earmark cost, description, an indication of whether or not the earmark is statutory or non-binding, and relevant bill or report language--this should provide great fodder for anyone interested in entering our Sunshine Week mashup contest. Thanks to Sean Davis of Coburn's office for the tip.
Continue readingAttention Bloggers: What are You Doing for Sunshine Week?
I'd like to collect a list of blogshine activities. Email to me at zteachout at sunlightfoundation.com. If you're NOT doing anything, Sunshine Week starts March 11--it was started in 2002 as a series of "Sunshine Sundays" by Florida Editors who were opposed to rollbacks in Florida's sunshine laws. Those Sunshine Sundays stopped about 300 provisions from going forward. Newspapers around the country will be running pro-transparency editorials starting on Sunday, and when the blogosphere and the MSM have real synergy, magic can happen. To learn more about Sunshine Week generally, see the Sunshine Week homepage.
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