The IRS’s admission that it targeted groups with conservative sounding names for scrutiny will no doubt be held up by some as “proof” that the agency can’t be trusted with determining whether organizations claiming to be “social welfare” organizations are actually political organizations in disguise. In fact, just the opposite is true. The agency needs to apply clear and unequivocally neutral rules to its determinations about whether a group is in fact a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, entitled to tax exempt status but not required to disclose its donors, or whether it is a political organization, also entitled to tax exempt status but not allowed to keep its donors secret. Using a shortcut, like whether a group had the word “tea party” or “patriot” in its name to aid in making that determination is dead wrong for an agency that must be scrupulously nonpartisan.
Continue readingWill Congress Redo what it Undid on Political Intelligence Firm Disclosures?
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Continue readingAnthony Weiner’s Transparency in All the Wrong Places
Since resigning from Congress two years ago as a result of some seriously icky tweets, Anthony Weiner has cashed in... View Article
Continue readingSenators Wyden and Murkowski Introduce Dark Money Disclosure Bill
This week, Senators Wyden and Murkowski introduced S. 791, the Follow the Money Act, their bipartisan effort at disclosing money... View Article
Continue readingCitizen engagement matters for transparency initiatives. What makes it happen?
As we begin to think about how to evaluate the impact of technology-driven transparency policies, we are keenly aware of the need to be honest and open about the challenges of implementation. This post is an attempt to practice the transparency we believe in by discussing one of the most formidable challenges facing organizations engaged in this work: Getting people to care. Our jumping off point here is a recent post from the engine room about 11 new initiatives that recently received an award from the Transparency International People Engagement Programme. As laid out by the engine room’s Susannah Vila, the challenges facing all of them sound remarkably similar.
Continue readingSTOCK Act Strikeout Visualized
Last week the Senate, House, and President Obama came together to continue their history of poorly thought out, bipartisan action... View Article
Continue readingOppose Government Waste and Support Government Accountability in a Single Bill
As of midnight last night, candidates for federal office were to have filed their campaign finance disclosure reports with the... View Article
Continue readingAfter TCamp, Become an Advocate for Open Government
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Continue readingOpenGov Voices: Bring That Lantern Over Here: Why Budget Transparency Matters
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the 
guest blog.
Rodney Bent is a U.S. Advisory Committee Member of Publish What You Fund -- a global campaign for aid transparency. He spent most of his career with the US government, including more than 20 years with the Office of Management Budget, as well as time at the State Department and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.
Over the past 18 years, the American public told pollsters they believe the U.S. government spends way too much on foreign aid, reckoning that something like a fifth or a quarter of the federal budget is used for that purpose.
That, of course, is not true. It’s really “just” one percent of the budget, or more than $50 billion. That’s still a lot of money. Senator Everett Dirksen might never have said “a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money,” but here we are talking real money. What does the U.S. taxpayer get for that $50 billion?
It’s hard to know. It should not be.
On January 21, 2009, President Obama said his Administration was committed “to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.” I’d wager that he has done just that – the frontier of knowledge and the boundaries of available data have been pushed out. It is unprecedented, and for that, two cheers.
The Administration needs to do more to earn that third cheer. Unprecedented doesn’t mean good enough.
Sy Syms, the legendary discounter, had it right: “An educated consumer is our best customer.” Transparency in all government spending is essential but transparency in foreign assistance spending is critical. Foreign aid spending is never popular in Congress. American taxpayers, with respect to foreign aid, are neither educated consumers nor good customers. The executive branch should help in the education by being much more transparent in what it does with foreign assistance.
Epic Failure by the Senate on Transparency Provisions in STOCK Act
With little fanfare and even less disclosure, the Senate late yesterday passed a bill that will, if signed into law,... View Article
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