Yesterday the Senate unanimously voted to close a loophole that may have allowed the SEC to disregard certain FOIA requests. The... View Article
Continue readingDodd and Frank asked to repeal FinReg FOIA exemption
The Sunlight Foundation joined ten organizations today in expressing concern over a provision of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer... View Article
Continue readingReporter’s Notebook: How we got the latest FTA disappearmark data
When we first reported about how we attempted to track down disappearmarks from the Federal Transit Administration, we recounted the difficulties in getting data in an electronic format. In response to our first Freedom of Information request, we were given a 121-page printout of a database, which in the end didn’t accurately include the information we sought: which SAFETEA-LU earmarks went unspent.
When our story ran, the FTA contacted us and said that one reason that FOIA requests are often returned in a printout and not a database form is to allow for the FOIA office to redact or ...
Disappearmarks: Millions in SAFETEA-LU transit earmarks are unspent
Nearly $120 million in Federal Transit Administration earmarks that were introduced and approved by Congress have sat untouched in FTA accounts for years and have now lapsed, according to an FTA list.
The list of unallocated earmarks, which the Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show that funds for these projects should have been used by September 30, 2009 at the latest, but due to various reasons, were never spent. (See spreadsheet below for the full list. Some projects appear ... Continue reading
Case study in trying to analyze earmark data
Each year, Congress allocates billions in earmarks that come in the form of annual appropriation committee requests or are attached to various bills that become law. The Sunlight Foundation thought it would be interesting to examine which earmarks, after all the Congressional debate and bluster has dispensed, actually get spent.
We thought a good example would be the $23 billion in transportation earmarks from SAFETEA-LU, The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users. The act authorized spending on highways, transit systems, port facilities, bus routes and other projects from its passage in August 2005 to what ...
Other dangerous mines? Federal data can’t tell you
Monday’s explosion that killed 25 miners at Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia came at a mine that had been flagged by inspectors for a series of violations – 3000 since 1995 and more than 500 in 2009 alone.
How does that compare to other mines? Because of the way the federal government releases the data, we can't say.
Data on safety inspections is published in the Department of Labor’s Mine
Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) Web site, where users can find information
on mine safety, inspections and violations. But getting to it is the hard part ...
Description of Citizenship Database Available – If You’re Willing to Pay Nearly $112,000
After taking nearly four years to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request, the U.S. immigration agency is demanding $111,930 for records that describe what is in a government database of claims for U.S. citizenship – not the actual database itself.
Balking at the agency’s request, the non-profit group that filed the FOIA says the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is acting contrary to President Barack Obama’s openness directive, creating “arbitrary cost barriers” to what should be public information, and may be illegal.
The Transactional Records and Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse University-based research ...
Transparency Around the World
(Note: this post has been updated since it was first published—see below) It’s Sunshine Week again, and in that spirit... View Article
Continue readingOGD: Defense releases what it already releases
To comply with the Open Government Directive, the Defense Department designated three high-value datasets last week, among them a listing of those requesting more transparency from the Pentagon. DoD released details on the 4,000 Freedom of Information requests it has received as well as datasets with information on service members gender and race, U.S. state, and marriage statistics.
Interestingly, the three datasets that Defense said were its high value releases, fulfilling a requirement of the first stage of the directive, were not marked as agency-reported high-value dataset (with an asterisk) on Data.gov. This seems like a small ...
Local Sunlight
Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series... View Article
Continue reading
59063
