Last night, the House Democrats revealed the much anticipated companion lobbying and ethics bill to the Senate's S.1 (we'll have a more detailed look later). Included in the bill is a provision to put personal financial disclosures and travel reports online for the first time. As you may know, we've been lobbying for this and consider this to be a great victory for transparency in the House of Representatives. We commend the House for continuing to towards a more open and accessible online presence. Thanks to everyone who called or sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi and members of the Judiciary Committee. We've heard that your calls and letters helped push the leadership to include this provision. In the face of newspaper articles doubting the seriousness of the reform effort in the House this provision should indicate that the House is willing to make their own institution more transparent and open to the public at large. Now, for the provision itself. (Clause (a)(2) requires personal financial disclosures be put online.)
Continue readingWhile we’re waiting…
...to hear final, definitive word on the identity of the secret holder, let's take a moment to note that two members of the House are using their Web sites to provide greater transparency. Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who already was among the top scorers on our Web Site investigation, has taken the unprecedented step of publishing his personal financial disclosure form online. Issa says, "Although members are not required to publish their annual financial disclosures on their Web sites, I have chosen to do so in the interest of making these important public records readily accessible." He's the first to do so; here's hoping he sets a trend.
Continue reading“The Senate is acknowledging that we’re in an Internet age”
I just had a call from Howard Gantman in Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office (for the record, I had forgotten that I told their press office I wanted to hear by today or tomorrow, so of course it's not Gantman's fault for not getting back to me before I posted this item a short while ago--it's mine). I asked about the option of putting S. 223 on the calendar -- Gantman pointed to Sen. Russ Feingold's remarks which he said do a fine job of describing the difficulties of going that route -- you need 60 votes for cloture, then the bill is open for debate and amendment in what is a very crowded Senate schedule, and added that, "The only way this bill can make it through is as a stand alone bill."
Continue readingOMB Earmark Database is Live
Here it is. OMB says, in a press release, that...
When the earmarks database was first launched on March 12, 2007, it provided aggregate data on the number and cost of earmarks for FY2005 appropriations, and was able to show this information by agency, office and account. Today's update includes details on individual earmarks, the ability to view earmarks by State and a downloadable file so that the public can sort information in ways they find useful. However, the database is not designed, and cannot accurately be used, to identify the individual sponsors of congressional earmarks. Additionally, the recipient of an earmark identified in the database may not in all cases represent the ultimate beneficiary of the earmark.Continue reading
OMB to Release Full Earmark Database
When we last heard from the Office of Management and Budget, Chief of Staff Rob Lehman told us they were working away at their earmarks database, which they fully intended to fully release--complete with information on all of the 13,000-some individual earmarks--as soon as it was done. (It had been scheduled to go up March 12, which turned out to be a little optimistic.) Well, from what we just learned from Lehman and some of his colleagues at OMB, "as soon as it's done" will be tomorrow afternoon. When it goes online, it will be here. OMB deserves credit for doing this. Visitors will be able to search the Web site by state, by agency, or download the data into spread sheets or mash it up on maps.
Continue readingAnother Daily Schedule–Congressional Web Site Survey Update
Rep. Kathy Castor of Florida, a freshman, publishes a daily schedule--that brings the total number of members who do so to six. Here's a sample from Castor's schedule:
Wednesday, March 28
8:30 am - Event, National Democratic Club
9:30 am - Manage Rule for Wounded Warrior Assistance Act of 2007 (Click here to see the video) Continue reading
Another Earmark List–Congressional Web Site Study Update
Add Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas to the list of members who publish information on their earmark requests. That brings the grand total to six, which isn't exactly overwhelming. Brady's list is here; he also says this about earmarks:
Sometimes, when out-of-touch bureaucrats think they know better than local communities, the only recourse left is to direct the federal government to act. Unfortunately, these “earmarks” have exploded in number and cost over the years. Some are snuck into bills without public scrutiny, others are plain outrageous to taxpayers, especially with America’s large budget deficit. Continue reading
Congressional Web Site Study Update
Some updates, new information, refinements, and so on in the congressional Web site investigation. Dale Neubarger, the chief of staff to Rep. Darrel Issa, emails this link to Issa's 2008 earmark requests; I'll do a separate post on it later, but that's good news. We also heard from Matt Dinkel, the press secretary of Rep. Mike Doyle, who sent us a link to a page which links to the committees on which Doyle serves--that moves Doyle up to a passing score. I think this was a fairly common problem--when members identified or linked to their committee assignments in their bios, they were missed. I'm currently re-reviewing those questions, and finding that particularly when members name their committees in the text of lengthy bios but don't link them, our citizen journalists missed them.
Continue readingCongressional Web Site Study: Correction
We just re-ran some of the numbers for the congressional Web site survey, in particular the number of members whose sites scored 40 points or more. The good news is that the results were better than we initially reported--162 member Web sites had a passing grade, which means that they provided, at a minimum, basic information on the member's official duties in Congress, from the bills they sponsor to the committees they serve on to electronic contact information (an email or Web-based form) which the public can use to write them. That's much better than the number we originally reported, which was that 499 member sites failed to do that--it's actually 374 that fall short on our survey. That number is high, of course, but much better than 499, which of course is good news--the purpose of this exercise was to evaluate the extent to which congressional Web sites functioned as tools for transparency. When it comes to questions of what members do in their official capacity in Washington, it appears that about 30 percent have the answers online.
Continue readingRep. Goodlatte Moves into Passing Territory
Just had a call from Rep. Bob Goodlatte's office--he does provide two of the items we asked about (bills he's sponsored or co-sponsored, and his statements from the Congressional Record (which aren't all in one place--here's one from the same page as the text of the first bill he sponsored this session). I've adjusted his score--Goodlatte now gets a passing grade of 40.
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