Glenn Reynolds flags the latest twist on earmarks -- we'll have them, but call them something else:
At some point, [House Majority Whip James] Clyburn [(D-S.C.)] noted, there will be a list of projects funded by the package, and Members want to have input.The list is going to come from somewhere, he said.
House Appropriations ranking member Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) questioned whether the bill can truly be considered free of earmarks when it will be loaded up with complicated formulas directing spending.
Calling it an earmark-free thing and then saying there are established formulas doesn't sound very ...
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Sen.-Designee Gillibrand’s Transparency Record
Today, New York Governor David Paterson appointed Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand to fill Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat. Gillibrand has, from day... View Article
Continue readingUpdate on Earmark Disclosure
Just spoke to Kirstin Brost, the press contact of the House Appropriations Committee, who was kind enough to tell me that while not all of the details of the new earmark rules have been worked out, when members disclose their earmark requests, they will include the name of the beneficiaries. (Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense told us they had heard the same thing).
Still under discussion is whether requests will be disclosed in a standardized format or however members choose to release it.
Continue readingWill Change.gov Post State Funding Requests?
Here’s a transparency suggestion for President-elect Barack Obama’s team from Jan Strasma of Citizens against the Sprawlway. He points to... View Article
Continue readingCountdown to Reform Mandate
On Friday, August 1, 2008, the Clerk of the House must launch a public database on the Clerk’s web site... View Article
Continue readingEarmark Requests Overload House Servers
The House Appropriations Committee has an online interface for members to submit their earmark requests. I haven't been able to find it anywhere on the public portion of the committee's site, but Rep. Peter DeFazio gives us a good idea of what the interface must look like--click here to see what information goes into an earmark request. My favorite bits: "Briefly describe the activity or project for which funding is requested (please keep to 250 words or less, subcommittee online submission will not accept more)" and "Description of project’s legal authorization (e.g. Transportation Bill, Energy Bill, etc.) ... Not all projects are legally authorized and authorization is not a prerequisite for funding." Yesterday was the deadline for members to submit their fiscal year 2009 earmark requests, and Roll Call reported that...
In a sure sign that earmarks remain as popular as ever, an overload of pork requests clogged the House Appropriations Committee’s Web site Wednesday, forcing an extension to the request deadline to next week.The cynicism of Rep. Jim Moran appears to be well founded. Instead of a one year moratorium, how about making all those online earmark requests to the Appropriations Committee instantly public? Continue reading
LegiStorm Posts Staffer Personal Financial Disclosures
LegiStorm - an insanely useful site of congressional information including staffer salaries and other disclosures - has, for the first time, posted PDFs of the personal financial disclosures that some staffers are required to file. For every member of Congress, at least one staffer must file a personal financial disclosure. If a staffer is making the maximum pay, as some chiefs of staff do, they must file a disclosure. Staffers hold a lot of power on Capitol Hill and are often overlooked as recipients of undue influence from outside groups. LegiStorm notes this in their press release:
Continue readingMost disclosures are relatively mundane and appear to demonstrate those staffers have no discernible potential conflicts of interest, Friedly said. However, hundreds of staffer disclosures reveal ties to interest groups and lobbying firms, either as a past job, a spouse's work or a future employment agreement. Others reveal lucrative side jobs, adding as much as $100,000 or more to their federal pay.
Senate Provides Better Tool for Tracking Lobbyists
The Senate Office of Public Records launched an enhanced database for lobbying disclosure on New Year's Eve, one that allows users for the first time to search previously unsearchable fields like "specific lobbying issue." What this means is that you can plug in a bill number -- say S. 681, the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act -- and find out that 19 organizations disclosed lobbying on the bill, including top political donors Citigroup, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, Exxon Mobil and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Perhaps it should be expected that the Swiss Bankers Association also has an interest in the legislation... Pam Gavin, SOPR's Superintendent of Public Records, says that about 90 percent of the 2007 mid-year lobbying reports are fully searchable, and going forward in 2008, 100 percent of them will be. She also helpfully pointed out that the whole database is now downloadable, year by year--the data is available here. Note: If you're having trouble seeing the new site, you might want to empty your cache.
Continue readingGovernmentDocs.org Debuts from CREW
Our friends at CREW are providing a fantastic resource for reporters, bloggers, citizens and government document junkies--GovernmentDocs.org: An online compendium of scanned images of documents acquired from government agencies through the Freedom of Information Act by (right now) a handful of nonprofit groups (including the correspondence logs that Anu's been acquiring for our RealTime project). Documents that once would have been filed away can have second and third lives online, where they can be read, annotated, tagged, and otherwise scrutinized by anyone who signs up to create an account. CREW also uses OCR technology to make the images word-searchable; the results aren't always perfect but they do make the documents easier to navigate. CREW's release is online here, and, full disclosure: Sunlight Foundation supported the creation of the site.
Continue readingThe Machine is Using Ron Paul
A lot of Internet and politics experts have been sitting around waiting for someone in the 2008 presidential race to emerge as the next Net candidate in the mold of Howard Dean. After last night it appears that that candidate has been found. Ron Paul, a backbench 9-term congressman who previously sought the presidency on the Libertarian ticket in 1988, raised over $4 million online yesterday to set the record for most money raised by a presidential candidate online in a 24 hour span. The amazing thing about this haul of money is that it was not organized by the campaign but was instead a supporter generated “cashmob”. (The supporters actually referred to it as a “money-bomb”.) The Paul campaign took advantage of their supporter’s enthusiasm by creating the most transparent campaign finance decision possible: to publish in real-time each online donation as it happens. By making their campaign finance transparent the Paul campaign encouraged their supporters to do their own work by showing them exactly what they were accomplishing. It’s Howard Dean’s bat on crack.
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