(Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr) We didn’t elect Mike Pence president – but he’s one heartbeat away from the Oval Office,... View Article
Continue readingOpening up Indiana’s hard to reach legislative data
Accessing Indiana's legislative documents is hard to do in a consistent way. So, we created a work-around that obtains bill text and makes it available to anyone via our Open States tool.
Continue readingSunshine and shadows: Statehouses tackle open records laws in 2015
The 2016 state legislative sessions have already witnessed a host of important actions, with legislators across the country considering measures to increase and decrease governmental transparency.
Continue readingSouth Bend, Indiana Signs Open Data Policy
FAIR drops multi-state TV buy against Senate immigration bill
Last update: June 4, 6:40 p.m.
One week before the Senate is to begin debating a sweeping immigration reform bill that has bipartisan support, a leading opposition group is launching a multi-state ad buy, records in Political Ad Sleuth reveal.
UPDATE: The Federation for American Reform has spent at least $89,250 on TV buys in various markets this year, after TV stations posted more ad contracts Tuesday, according to a review of Ad Sleuth records (You can view all of the ad buys here). And in addition to the TV markets mentioned below, the group's ad ...
Continue readingObama phones go by another name in Congress
Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty's intriguing story today about the coining of a term and its political impact got us to wondering just how far the term "Obama phone" had embedded itself into the political culture. We've written before about how compounds of President Barack Obama's name have become politically charged.
We took a look via Capitol Words, Sunlight's tool that scans the Congressional Record and allows users to analyze speech patterns.
So far, no recorded mentions of "Obamaphone" or "Obama phone" on the floor of the House or Senate.
However, we did find a number ...
Continue readingSunlight Weekly Roundup: Indiana narrows public’s ability to review government emails
Indiana’s new public access counselor has limited the public’s ability to request and review the email exchanges of government officials.... View Article
Continue readingIn Indiana, stimulus grows rainy day fund
The North West Indiana County Times recently pointed out something fascinating about how Indiana was using funds granted to it under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act:
Indiana State Budget Director Christopher Ruhl confirmed the federal stimulus money was used to provide basic tuition support dollars for school districts, allowing the state to squirrel away funds that normally would have been used for that purpose.Continue reading
"The state dollars saved were placed in our education rainy day fund," he said. "The special session budget required those funds be transferred from the education rainy day fund to the state general fund in ...
Vis-a-Visclosky: Or How I Learned to Take Campaign Contributions and Turn Them Into Earmarks
It comes as no surprise that Indiana Democrat Pete Visclosky’s favorite word to say in Congress is “Indiana.” While staying... View Article
Continue readingLocal Sunlight: April 24, 2009
Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series... View Article
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