Lame duck Rep. Al Wynn, recently defeated in a Democratic primary, announced that he would be retiring from Congress early to take a lobbying job with the law firm Dickstein Shapiro this June. Unlike previous members who have announced their retirement through the revolving door Wynn will remain in Congress, with a fully negotiated and signed contract to work at the firm, until June, giving him unparralleled access for a newly minted lobbyist. Dickstein Shapiro has already released a press release announcing the hire. Unlike Wynn, Trent Lott, Richard Baker, and Billy Tauzin all retired quickly upon announcing their completed lobbying job negotiations. This poses serious conflict of interest questions for Wynn but also serves as a true test of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act and its provisions governing member job negotiations (a provision already filled with loopholes). The Point of Order blog explains:
Continue readingEnd of Sunshine Week Thoughts
If you could treat information about your work the way information about Congress is treated, it would be the equivalent of going into a job interview with a nearly blank resume. A resume is information that a potential employer uses to hire you for a job. And because members of Congress work for us, how can we evaluate their job performance if we don't have meaningful access to information about what they do and who they do it for?
Congress should put information, which relates to the business of lawmaking, online in real time. All their required filings (such as reports about their personal financial investments and their campaign finance reports) should be posted on the Internet in real time and in a way that people can easily search them. The legislation that lawmakers are going to vote on should be posted online three days before the vote so ordinary people can read and evaluate it. The correspondence between Congress and the executive branch should be put online. Congressional earmarks in both the Senate and the House should be fully disclosed with the who, what, where, and why before they are decided on. (For more information click here.)
These measures - and there are no doubt others -- can help create a more open and accountable Congress. The purpose of Sunshine Week is to partake in dialogue about what it means to have an open government and how we can achieve it. The events of the past week are a call to lawmakers to be more transparent and accountable. The image that this week provides is of a united citizenry asking government to be more open so we can trust them again. Let us in because we can help each other run a great nation.
Continue readingCorporate Political Disclosure
Over the past few years a movement among shareholders and activist groups has formed to push companies to publicly reveal their political contributions. While corporations are banned from giving directly to candidates for federal office some states have not banned direct corporate contributions and other groups, like nonprofits, 527s, trade associations, and other political groups, also receive corporate money. The Financial Times reports that five companies are jumping on this transparency bandwagon:
Five large US companies, including American Express and Xerox, will bow to shareholder pressure on Thursday and agree to disclose all their political spending.
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Labeling Lobbyists
Would you talk to this man?
The San Francisco Examiner reports on a proposed bill by San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly that would require lobbyists to wear identification badges when they contact city officials. This seems kind of silly to me. Lawmakers know these lobbyists and should know when they are being lobbied. They don't need to read badges to figure out what is going on. If anything greater and more timely, as in immediate, disclosure to the public should be implemented and not some sort of cattle branding.
(Pictured above: The Open House Project's John Wonderlich, our lobbyist for Big Transparency.)
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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Comcast Blocks Public Access to FCC Hearing
The Federal Communications Commission held a much noted and anticipated hearing in Massachusetts on Monday on the issue of net neutrality. Seating was limited but the hearing was open to the public. Comcast, a foe of net neutrality, decided to take advantage of the limited seating by paying people to sleep in the seats so that net neutrality supporters and others who wanted to watch the hearing would be left outside in the cold. Nice.
In relation to my previous post on coal industry shenanigans, we also need to require disclosure of these types of deceptive practices.
Continue readingCoal Industry Spending Freely to Influece Congress
The coal industry is in the middle of a massive $40 million campaign to make sure that Congress, the presidential candidates, and the American people get to know that black rock in their stockings a little better - and to keep politicians from doing anything to threaten the burning of said unwelcome stocking guest in coal-fired power plants. If you've paid attention to the presidential race you probably noticed that a number of the debates were sponsored by a coal front group called Americans for Balanced Energy Choices and that those debates did not dare to feature a single question about global warming. CNN received $5 million dollars from the group. I'd say they got a good bang for their buck.
Facing a bruising fight over climate change, the coal industry is on the political offensive this election year to ensure that no matter who wins in November, so does coal.
Billions of dollars in corporate profits are at stake for the companies that mine, ship and burn the nation's most abundant domestic fuel.
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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.
Lots Sunshine in Alaska
From Jacob Wiens at POGO:
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This week, the state of Alaska launched a website that tracks every state expenditure of over one thousand dollars, as reported on today's NPR Morning Edition. This makes Alaska the tenth state government to provide such a service to its taxpayers. On a side note, Alaska also has the lowest individual tax burden of any state in the U.S.Alaska calls its website "Checkbook Online." According to the state, this service "...is part of a national trend for governments to develop websites that allow constituents to view financial information in searchable formats. Such websites are widely considered to improve transparency into the financial operations of government."
Legislative History Detective: Senate Electronic Filing
We've expended enormous energy and blog space to advocate for the Senate to file their campaign finance reports electronically, something that probably shouldn't take that much effort, but it does. If you need a primer on the issue you can watch this video we made. One thing of note in this whole saga is that Congress, in 1999, mandated electronic filing for all campaign committees, but somehow the Senate doesn't have to comply. Why is this?
In December of 1995, Congress passed a bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act to allow the FEC to accept electronic filing, a legislative recommendation previously made by the FEC to give them a statutory requirement and funding to create an e-filing system. The bill, which became Public Law 104-79, also changed the filing location for members of the House from the Clerk of the House to the FEC. This seems innocuous, but it is important.
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