Lately I’ve been trying to think about how to make online access to personal financial disclosure reports palatable to the lawmakers who file them. As Ellen pointed out after the Senate debate on lobbying and ethics reforms Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.) voiced complaints that online posting of the documents could lead to identity theft or other crimes. So I went back and took a look at the Ethics in Government Act, which governs personal financial disclosure, to try and figure out to change the law in a way that could actually pass. While considering these changes I realized that doing this would require a balancing act between getting citizens access to the information without too many hoops while making lawmakers feel comfortable. So, I figure I’ll put it to you people of the Internet to help figure this one out.
Continue readingCitizen Journalists: Are Congressional Web Sites Tools for Transparency?
We're launching a new citizen journalism project to find out what members of Congress are doing with their taxpayer-funded, official Web sites. Are they using the sites to further transparency and be accountable to their constituents? Or are they using them to post press releases touting their actions or to highlight favorable stories from the press? We're asking you to dig through the official, taxpayer-funded Website of a member of Congress, and help determine those that act as genuine tools for transparency. We're asking questions in three broad areas: do they provide access to basic information on what they do in Congress (the bills they sponsor, the committees they serve on); do they provide information from or access to any of the legally-required disclosures they have to file (on personal finances or junkets they take), and do they provide any additional information that furthers transparency (their daily schedule, lists of earmarks they've asked for or gotten).
Continue readingOpen House Project is Well Underway
I spent part of the weekend following the very smart conversation that has already begun on the listserv that is forming the core of the collaborative effort for our new Open House Project. I used to consider myself a kind of Congressional process geek (to wit I spent part o the weekend reading the many posts on this listserv), but the folks participating in this collaborative bipartisan effort to study how the House currently integrates the Internet into its operations, so it can make recommendations to the leadership on how to do it better, have an amazing breadth of knowledge.
Continue readingShould Members of Congress Respond to Bad Press with Threats of Lawsuits?
Obviously, no. And I'm sure that Josh Marshall feels the same way. Marshall speculates that Sen. Harry Reid's hiring of a lawyer indicates that Reid might be planning to file a libel suit against John Solomon and his former employer, the Associated Press. I trust that he forgot to add that such a suit--or even the threat of one--would be an assault on the First Amendment and the public's right to know. Sen. Reid is a public figure, and that it's unclear how exactly he has been harmed by the Associated Press story in question, so it would seem that a lawsuit would be problematic from the get go. Remember too that Reid had to amend his financial disclosure forms in response to the AP story (the Senate Ethics Committee is reportedly still reviewing the new filings). The AP continues to stand by the accuracy of the report; if it contains inaccuracies, Reid apparently has not pointed them out to the satisfaction of the AP.
Continue readingTracking Contractors and Lobbyists, and a Congressional Intervention
Add to the list of Freedom of Information Act requests sent out in pursuit of forms SF-LLL one requesting information related to the contract mentioned in this April 20, 2005, story from the Hill, concerning a federal effort to develop and distribute "intelligent transportation technology." As I understand it, this technology lets users access traffic information in real time, to see where tie-ups are and, hopefully, avoid them on their way home. (I think Al Gore might have had this system on his mind during the 2000 campaign, when he made livability one of his themes.) Right now, you can see what such a system would look like at Traffic.com, in part because Traffic.com (actually, its government services division known as Mobility Technologies) was the company that, in 1998, was awarded a federal contract to develop the technology in a few, test cities. Here's The Hill on what happened in 2001, when intelligent transportation technology was supposed to be offered to 50 additional cities:
Continue readingRising Above Principle
I may be wrong, but it appears that Mark Tapscott, who certainly knows better, is suggesting that the utterances of a politician should exhibit some small measure of consistency. This puts me in mind of something that a Tammany Hall pol once said. (I can't remember who, but I don't think it was the memorable and oft-quoted George Washington Plunkitt.) "There comes a time when a man must rise above his principles," the quote goes, and in partisan Washington, that time seems to come quite often whenever Congress is in session.
Continue readingRailroads Hiring Relatives of House Members and Staffers
The Washington Post's Elizabeth Williamson reports that Congress is still family business friendly, particularly on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials:
Days after Jennifer Esposito became majority staff director of the House transportation panel's subcommittee on railroads, her father, Sante Esposito, and brother Michael Esposito signed up as railway lobbyists. Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-Ill.) has just taken a seat on the subcommittee, and in the coming weeks, the railroad industry trade association said, his father and predecessor in Congress, William O. Lipinski (D-Ill.), will register as a railroad lobbyist, too. Continue reading
Members of Congress, Please Fasten Your Seatbelts
Not many planes going back to Washington. Is Congress missing out on all that corporate jet travel they used to enjoy?
Make Your Earmark Requests Now
Both Ed Frank and Mark Tapscott are highlighting an email circulating around the Senate, from the Republican side of the Appropriations Committee:
The Labor-HHS deadline for all requests will be April 13, 2007. This deadline includes any programmatic funding, project funding, bill or report language requests that your Senators would like to submit for the FY2008 LHHS bill. Continue reading
Vanity Fair Scrutinizes a Top Government Contractor
As they so often are able to do, investigative journalists Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, writing for Vanity Fair, offer both a sense of the scale and the substance of the issues raised by the federal government's increasing reliance on contractors.
It is a simple fact of life these days that, owing to a deliberate decision to downsize government, Washington can operate only by paying private companies to perform a wide range of functions. To get some idea of the scale: contractors absorb the taxes paid by everyone in America with incomes under $100,000. In other words, more than 90 percent of all taxpayers might as well remit everything they owe directly to SAIC or some other contractor rather than to the IRS. In Washington these companies go by the generic name "body shops"—they supply flesh-and-blood human beings to do the specialized work that government agencies no longer can. Often they do this work outside the public eye, and with little official oversight—even if it involves the most sensitive matters of national security. The Founding Fathers may have argued eloquently for a government of laws, not of men, but what we've got instead is a government of body shops.Continue reading
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