While we wait for the new House Rules draft to be posted online, it’s a good time to reflect on... View Article
Continue readingFEC Guts Post-Abramoff Reform
The Federal Election Commission — the supposed referee of fair campaigning — has just created an ethics loophole big enough for lobbyists to fly a corporate jet through.
Continue readingLTE: NYTimes Executive Branch Ethics: Let the Light Shine In
Letter to the Editor at the New York Times this morning. It’s worth posting in full. Published: January 28, 2009... View Article
Continue readingIt’s…………Party Time!
Today, we are launching a new Web site, Party Time, a project to track parties thrown at the 2008 Democratic... View Article
Continue readingLobbyist Disclosure Gets Oversight
Lobbying disclosure reports will finally get reviewed by an oversight body as a result of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA). The Government Accountability Office (GAO) began auditing the first quarter lobbying reports to determine compliance and noncompliance to the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 and subsequent amendments included in HLOGA. The GAO may ask for time sheets and restaurant and travel records to check to see if employees are meeting the lobbyist threshold. The audit results should be released around Sept. 30, 2008, six months after the initial quarterly report filing date. Michael Stern at Point of Order points out some issues that may prevent the GAO from requiring audited firms to turn over documents:
Continue readingA Long Time Coming
Governor Bobby Jindal swept into Louisiana's top job with a pledge to clean up the notoriously corrupt state and has made good by spending his political capital on the passage of sweeping ethics reforms set to permanently change the culture of the Bayou State. Jindal's arguments for the need for rapid ethics changes centered on the need to encourage businesses to invest in the state without requiring them to stuff the right person's pockets. But the part that most sticks out for us at Sunlight is this:
“This is huge,” said D. W. Hunt, a veteran lobbyist at the Capitol. “This is a sea change. This will seriously, dramatically change things. The meta-theme is the transparency.”
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To File or Not To File?
We here at Sunlight take Justice Brandeis' quote to heart, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." The idea is to give the public a clear picture of what is going on with their government. We believe providing more information by expanding disclosure and transparency on Capitol Hill will cure much of what has been called the culture of corruption in Washington. At a minimum openness will help to keep the players, both members of Congress and their staff and the lobbyists, honest even if only out the fear of embarrassment.
That alone can be a powerful incentive...But likely not as viscerally poignant as the fear of legal sanctions. Evidenced by a post Friday on the Legal Times' Influence blog titled "To File or Not to File?" that highlighted how lobbyists are reacting to the recently passed Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007:
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