This morning the House Judiciary Committee kicked off their first hearing on immigration reform and it's a great opportunity to remind folks invested in this topic to utilize our Scout project to track developments.
Continue reading2Day in #OpenGov 2/5/2013
NEWS ROUNDUP:
- The Federal Communications Commission is looking to streamline the process inventors go through when testing their products on the airwaves. (Politico)
- The Office of Management and Budget is proposing consolidating federal guidance on grants and financial assistance payments. The move is aimed at reducing paperwork and fraud. (GovExec)
- President Obama is not the first person in his line of work to create a lobbying group that seeks to influence national policy. Former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have gone down - or at least tried to travel - similar paths. (Politico)
- 2014 is on the minds of some of the biggest Republican Party donors, who are funding a group to protect incumbents and find new candidates for the upcoming U.S. Senate races. (New York Times)
- Changes to the U.S. Senate lobbying database over the weekend appear to have broken outside links to the documents, impacting watchdog groups like OpenSecrets.org. A staffer said the changes were made so documents would be available in HTML instead of PDF. (Public Integrity)
- Legislators in Missouri are looking to pass a bill that would require more advance notice of public meetings and increase the likelihood of facing penalties for violating the state's open meetings and records law. (News Tribune)
- Legislative aides in Virginia will receive the same privacy protections under the state's Freedom of Information Act as legislators under a new bill. (Watchdog.org)
Clearspending Released with New Data
It’s a little late, but it’s here! We’ve released an updated version of Clearspending with data that spans from 2009... View Article
Continue readingRep. Raúl R. Labrador’s Super Bowl Politwoop
Update: Rep. Labrador's office has returned our request for comment and blames a "staff error."
Continue readingInside City Hall
We’ve already looked at a few technical definitions of municipal government in the United States, but what about the differences in how local governments are run? It turns out there's a great degree of variability in political structure, and understanding this diversity is an important factor in understanding how policy is made and how the public interacts with and accesses government information.
Here are a few of the most common structures for municipal governments:
- A mayor-council system has a mayor serving in the executive position and a council as its legislative branch. The mayor might be chosen by council members or elected by residents. Council members are chosen in a separate election from the mayor and can represent different districts in a city or a city at large. There is plenty of variance in the relationships between mayors and councils. In a strong mayor system, the mayor can appoint department or agency heads with approval from the council and has veto power for legislation the council passes. In a weak mayor system, the mayor lacks these powers and the council holds most of the policy power.
Why gun control faces an uphill battle in the Senate
As the Senate prepares to take up the first major gun control debate since last December's shooting massacre in Connecticut, a Sunlight Foundation analysis of the political pressures on 26 key senators paints a pessimistic picture for passage. Absent a major pressure campaign to push senators to support gun control legislation, the political calculus points against the Senate passing any reform.
The infographic below details the various pressures senators face on a gun control vote. We've collapsed the factors into a single Gun Reform Index, where 10 is most likely to support gun reform and 0 is least likely. The index ranks each senator relative to other key senators within their own party. More details and explanation follow the graphic.
(graphic by Amy Cesal and Alexander Furnas)
2Day in #OpenGov 2/4/2013
NEWS ROUNDUP:
- Lobbying revenues have declined for the past two years along with the total number of registered lobbyists. These numbers might make it seem like K Street is slowing down, but unregistered lobbyists are keeping the influence world alive. (Roll Call)
- The administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy called for better data about government purchases at a recent panel discussion. (GovExec)
- Big donors are sometimes looking to buy their way to a diplomatic post. A new paper looks at how much money it takes to be appointed to certain positions. (New York Times)
- President Obama's campaign group continued to receive millions of dollars in contributions after the election, according to recent campaign finance disclosures. (Roll Call)
- NASA has launched a second International Space Apps Challenge encouraging developers to contribute code to the space agency's projects. (O'Reilly Radar)
- Texas has approved letting people make campaign donations through text messages, making it the third state to approve such an option. (Roll Call)
Datafest: ‘Amazing things can happen in a very short time’
The weekend's bicoastal datafest focused a dazzling array of talent on the challenge of bringing more transparency in politics. In addition to journalists, teams included PhD candidates in marketing and finance, a business professor from Iowa, a master's candidate in biostatistics, and an energy researcher from MIT. Participants were exuberant about the cross-disciplinary cooperation and the results it achieved. "I never would have found a PhD in math if I hadn't come here," exulted one.
Continue readingOpen Public Access to Court Records, For Aaron #FreePACER #OpenPacer
On Monday, Princeton’s Steve Schultze argued for the right of all Americans to access federal court records online at no... View Article
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: Being average is your superpower
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. 
Sandra Moscoso runs the World Bank Finances Program (https://finances.worldbank.org) by day and works on community efforts around education, active transportation, and open government by night. Sandra lives in small, quaint, Washington, DC, where she tries to get a little biking in with her husband and two children. Follow: @sandramoscoso
Last week, on my way home from work, I met a young man raising funds for a charity. He stood outside of a subway station and as part of his pitch, he asked, "if you could have any superpower, what would it be?" I offered the same answer I have been giving my children for years. "I have a superpower. It's reading." I suspect this both annoys and inspires my children. Given that annoying and inspiring are among my favorite parental duties, I rather like this answer.
Since then, a few things have happened that are making me want to revise my response to that young man.
The Sunlight Foundation recently announced its "new major focus" of "local government transparency," and this has me doing a lot of thinking about the work I do within my community and city I live in.
I have come to realize something exciting. It turns out I have another superpower - I'm average.
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