Just a few years ago crowdsourcing was a novel concept, mainly untried. Now that the idea has gained traction, it’s... View Article
Continue readingLobbyist to plead guilty, may provide information on lawmakers, despite ethics committee exoneration
In case you needed a dose of the absurd for your Monday take a look at the case of ex-lobbyist... View Article
Continue readingGov2.0 Presentation: An Open Government Scorecard
I was absolutely delighted to present at the Gov2.0 Summit here in Washington this morning. Thanks to Tim OReilly and... View Article
Continue readingResearching Shelby’s earmarks using Poligraft
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., requested
earmarks for at least ten companies that have been donors to the
lawmaker in this election cycle. Five of those companies have been
long-term contributors to Shelby.
Shelby, who is on the Senate
appropriations committee, requested more than $54.3 million for these
ten companies and has received more than $69,000 in campaign funds from
their employees and PACs since 2008, a quick analysis of his online
earmark requests using Sunlight's newest tool Poligraft.com shows.
Employees
of Radiance Technologies, for which Shelby requested $5 million in
earmarks, have given the lawmaker more ...
Disappearmarks: How highway projects get left behind
(Photo courtesy of Leon Reed.)
In 1991 the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) received a $14.6 million federal earmark to reconstruct a highway interchange in downtown Mobile. After spending a portion of the funds on feasibility studies, engineers found that the project would require a great deal of additional federal and state money to complete. What’s more, their studies showed the proposed improvements would only increase highway speeds by an average of five miles per hour.
So they halted the project. And nineteen years later, $10.6 million of that original earmark remains unused ... Continue reading
Searching Earmarks Isn’t Actually That Hard
Yesterday morning I watched the first markup session of the Earmark Transparency Act. The bill aims to create a comprehensive database of all earmark requests, not just approved earmarks. In its current version, there are over twenty required data elements, including free text descriptions and justifications of the earmark request, as well as related documents. The bill also calls for huge flexibility in the search interface and the API. Overall, it's a win for transparency and a big technical leap forward in terms of how the government thinks about releasing its data. It's biggest opponent in committee was Senator Carl Levin.
Continue readingBaby Steps on the Earmark Transparency Act
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted out S. 3335, the Earmark Transparency Act today, but not without... View Article
Continue readingEarmark no-brainer
The Earmark Transparency Act has been introduced in both the House and Senate, but it needs co-sponsors to move forward. It's time that we tell Congress that we want to know how our money is being used, and thank those representatives that are working to build a more transparent government.
Continue readingDisappearmarks: Billions set aside for earmarks remain unspent
Last week Rep. Betsy Markey, D-Colo., introduced a bill that would redirect some $700 million in funds that have been languishing in Transportation Department accounts, designated to fund projects earmarked by members of Congress more than a decade ago and long since forgotten.
Sunlight's Reporting Group has been tracking these "disappearmarks"--projects requested by members of Congress that are never completed--or, at times, even begun. In some cases, that's due to changes in federal programs, in others, due to local opposition, to projects being ineligible for the earmarked funds, or because state and local authorities simply couldn't ...
Earmark transparency still makes more sense than a ban
The Sunlight Foundation recently sent a letter seeking cosponsors for H.R. 5258 and S. 3335, both known as the Earmark... View Article
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