As an energetic promoter of lawmakers posting their daily schedules on line, we've talked about the terrific efforts made by Sen. John Tester and Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, the first two lawmakers to really give us some sense of who they meet with and what they do everyday. But today we realized that the schedules were not actually being archived on their sites, meaning that if you wanted to see how many citizen groups Rep. Gillibrand has met with over the long term, or how much time Sen. Tester spends working on legislation with his staff, you couldn't figure it out. No doubt this is an oversight on their part.
Continue readingSOTU and the Web
It was interesting to see how various bloggers and organizations used the Web last night to engage their networks around the President's State of the Union Speech, beyond their usual blogging. Here are few that showed up on my radar screen -- some of them more Web 2.0 in their approach than others. I must have missed a lot because this list isn't very large nor, frankly, for the most part, very innovative.
Josh Marshall's effort -- calling for video responses to the SOTU -- was the most interesting effort that I saw. Pretty innovative and he got some very fun responses.
Continue readingOpen the Government and Sunshine Week
This week, Sunlight joined Open the Government, a coalition of over 50 groups who are committed to citizen access to governmental information. Open the Government coalition partners include groups like OMB Watch and associations of reporters. We are also starting to plan our own contribution to Sunshine Week, a week in Mid-March dedicated to making Government transparent, and we'd welcome any ideas. We are currently thinking about a panel on congressional transparency and some cool online display of secrecy and openness, but we are, as always, curious to hear your input.
Continue readingNo Raise for You
Russ Feingold and Jim Matheson beware, if you vote to restrict Member's pay again you'll feel it in your own wallet. An overlooked provision in the Senate ethics reform bill would refuse COLA pay raises to any Member who votes for an amendment (or against tabling an amendment) that would stop the COLA pay raise. Pay raises always used to be a difficult vote for Members of Congress as public opinion is consistently against higher wages for our elected officials (although some have opined that Congress would be less corrupt if they all made more money). So, our elected officials put in a mandatory cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) that automatically raises Member's salaries every year.
Continue readingTrying to Keep Up
The Senate took some steps forward last week to make its activities more transparent, but honestly, some of the most innovative and exciting stuff to make government more transparent is coming from individual lawmakers themselves (and in one case government) and enterprising organizations and citizens.
First, take a look at Freshman Senator Jon Tester posting of his daily schedule. How refreshing is this!? I hope others will pick up on his efforts to be really transparent about how he's spending his time, and on those of Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand's too. (Sen. Tester's schedule and Rep. Gillibrand's can be found on their pages on Congresspedia too.) We hope that some of our readers will send what these two lawmakers are doing to their representatives as models for what it means to execute the public's business in a public way.
Continue readingWhy offline is the new online
The history of computing has some interesting trends. First it was all about mainframes. To get anything computed you had to logon to some remote machine so large that if filled a room. Then came along the desktop; desktop apps were (and arguably still are) it. In the 1990's, however, things got pushed onto the web, web sites were the thing, and now with the rise of Ajax, web apps are becoming the new it.
Continue readingWhat We Did This Week
As regular readers know, Sunlight's been lobbying in the House and Senate for its Modest Proposals in the context of the larger package of ethics reforms that the Senate's been considering this week. You win some, you lose some, and we learned a lot in the process.
Sen. Cardin filed an amendment to require contemporaneous online filing of FEC reports, personal financial disclosure reports and travel reports, our top priority. This week, we worked closely with him and with Sen. Reid's office to have some version of the amendment accepted as part of the managers' amendment. We knew early on that the FEC reports were a long shot (outrageously so) as Sen. McConnell had made it clear that anything related to campaign finance would be kept out of the bill. (Go figure. Anything having to do with reforming the campaign finance system doesn't haven anything to do with ethics reform?)
Continue readingWhat’s in the Ethics Bill?
Last night the Senate passed the much anticipated ethics bill that was almost stopped in its tracks. Nearly every newspaper has written up its account of the bill and most are aware of the major provisions of the bill. Many provisions, however, that were added by amendment during the debate have not gotten their fair share of attention. This is a relatively complete summary of all the major and overlooked provisions of the Senate ethics bill:
Continue readingThe Day Sunlight Went Dark
All morning the Sunlight Foundation was beseiged with internet connectivity problems. During this time the staff figured out that without the internet half of the Sunlight staff and consultants would be jobless and the other half would be confined to the library, meeting with shady figures in backrooms of Congress gathering information or held hostage to the phone.
According to Nisha's calculations:
Jobless: Elliot, Greg, Kerry, Carl, Micah, Andrew, Conor, Garrett
Phone Bound: Ellen, Zephyr, Nisha, Eric
Library Bound: Paul
Stalking the Halls of Congress and dusty three-ring binders: Bill, Larry
Continue readingEthics Bill Cleared, Everyone Happy
Well, we have a deal on the ethics bill stall. Republicans have agreed to support cloture for the ethics bill while Sen. Reid has agreed to include the Gregg amendment in the debate of the minimum wage bill next week:
Senators are expected to move toward ending debate on a lobbying and ethics reform bill tonight, after Democratic and Republican leaders reached agreement on a spending rescission proposal from Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) that had threatened to sink the entire package.
The Senate is expected to work into the night to clear as many amendments as possible before a final vote is taken tomorrow.
Continue reading
59063
