In the Senate the lobbying data is maintained by the Senate Office of Public Records (SOPR) which currently enters the lobbyist disclosure reports filed on paper into a database. Did you know -- I just learned this -- that electronic disclosure has been required for lobbyist reports since 1995, but still hasn't been fully implemented?! An apparent glitch in SOPR's computer system is currently preventing the public from searching for individual lobbyists, as well as for issues that interests have reported lobbying on in 2007. How beyond ridiculous is this?
It's absurd because whether the Democrats or the GOP control Congress, lobbyists often set the table. Industry lobbyists make sure that their clients' interests are tended to, no matter who runs the Congress. The Center for Responsive Politics analyzed reports filed last month and found lobbyists spending has topped $1.24 billion in the first six months of this year. For perspective, lobbyists spend a record amount of $2.61 billion throughout 2006. CRP's analysis found:
Continue readingFishy Behavior Catches Ted Stevens No Trouble on Capitol Hill
Quick addition: USA Today reached the same opinion of Stevens today as well.
According to public records and officials in Alaska, The Hill reports that Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) "has quietly steered millions of federal dollars to a sportfishing industry group founded by Bob Penney, a longtime friend who helped the Alaska Republican profit from a lucrative land deal." While the FBI, and possibly a jury, will decide if Stevens has abused his official position it is clear enough that the senior Senator has acted in a manner that is unethical for a United States Senator and a powerful committee chairman (yesterday I wrote that Stevens is the Appropriations ranking member, he is actually ranking member on the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, the second ranking member on Appropriations, and the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member).
Despite the mounting evidence against Stevens he continues to have the support of the Republican leadership and has not been stripped of his committee assignments. Sen. Larry Craig was stripped of his committee assignments and forced to resign (although he is now reconsidering) because he engaged in potentially lewd conduct that was not of the party sanctioned variety. What is more important, sexual, or potentially sexual, behavior or the betrayal of trust and abuse of official, elected positions to gain money and aid your rich buddies? I've seen this scale before and I know which way it should be tilting.
Continue readingSunlight in the Garden State
Here's a politician -- New Jersey Assemblyman Jim Whelan - who appears to understand the value of transparency. He recently introduced a bill in the New Jersey state legislature that would require the online disclosure of public records local New Jersey towns, school districts and state agencies.
Continue readingSenate Legislative Branch Appropriations Review
(Cross-posted from the Open House Project blog.)
The Senate Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill (reported out of committee on June 21st) provides a revealing look into the priorities that Congress sets in funding its own operations. The House and Senate pass separate appropriations bills; this page on THOMAS organizes the appropriations bills for each fiscal year in a remarkably useful manner.
While the majority side of the Senate Appropriations committee did include a brief review of their bill (as did their House counterpart), I’d like to give my impressions of the appropriations from the perspective of an advocate for public access and transparency, using the Senate report as a guide. (The Republican websites don’t feature any press releases, which isn’t surprising, given the minority’s smaller staff and budget, comparative lack of clout in controlling committee functioning, and their opportunity to add dissenting views to the report, as I discovered in reading the House report.)
Ted Stevens’ Home Raided
By now, you've probably heard that agents from the FBI and the IRS raided the home of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who has been under investigation for his links to Veco Corp., whose executives have been among his top contributors over the years (and top contributors to quite a few others as well. A pair of them have also pled guilty to bribing some state lawmakers. One of the issues federal agents are investigating is the role Bill Allen, the company's CEO, played in arranging renovations to Stevens' home, which doubled its size. Stevens says he paid for the renovations out of his own pocket. This raises a question I've thought of before but have never seen satisfactorily answered -- how many kinds of favors are there that someone can do for a lawmaker that don't necessarily leave a paper trail? If someone uses his time, connections, expertise and so on to help a senator hire the right contractor, it doesn't necessarily leave any kind of record. The senator gets a thing of value--perhaps the best price or the finest quality or the fastest service--thanks the efforts of this benefactor. Perhaps it's not the name of the company to hire, but a whispered stock tip that pays off handsomely or an invitation to be in on the ground floor of a can't-miss real estate development. In any case, our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense are asking Sen. Mitch McConnell to ask Stevens to recuse himself from his committee work. Don Surber notes that Alaska has a dubious trio of lawmakers. It's pretty indicative of the state of affairs of the North to the Future state that the Anchorage Daily News has a tab on this page that says, "More Alaska Political Corruption Stories," which takes the reader to this catalog.
Continue readingCiviCRM Integrates SunlightLabs API
If your blog runs on the popular content management Drupal and the community management tool CiviCRM, you'll be pleased to learn the CivicCRM development team is going to make it easier to connect your members to their elected officials with some help from the SunlightLabs API. The SunlightLabs API is a tool for developers that provides handy, machine-readable information about members of Congress. Developers can use the API to more easily look up key information about representatives from different online databases and to find the representatives for a given zip code or state. Since developers have to spend less time managing clerical data around representatives, they can spend more time presenting that information in useful ways to you and I. In this case, CiviCRM developers will be incorporating the data directly into the CiviCRM interface and modules. As David Geilhufe pointed out in an email to us, "People could automatically email all the people in the database within a particular district." The SunlightFoundation.com website runs on Drupal and CiviCRM, so we ourselves will be a beneficiary of this integration. W0ot!
Continue readingGeorge Miller Taps Web 2.0
As David All and I have written, the rules governing member Web sites are not fit for the 21st Century Web. If the rules were enforced with any regularity, instead of used as a scarecrow to keep members from innovating, then some of the best practices by members on the Web wouldn't be happening. Case in point: Rep. George Miller (D-CA).
Today, George Miller announced a new campaign, called "Ask George," calling on citizens to send videos, through video sharing sites like YouTube, to Miller's office regarding the War in Iraq. Miller's office describes "Ask George" as a "distributed, virtual town hall". Miller also suggests that participants in this conversation "tag" their videos "askgeorge" so that his office can go and find the questions. This way, Miller is the one going out to seek the conversation rather than the citizen or constituent who is usually the one seeking out the congressman.
Sunlight Endorses OTA; Markup Pushed to Wednesday
The Sunlight Foundation has sent a letter endorsing a renewed Office of Techonology Assessment to Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Zach Wamp. Wasserman Schultz was supposed to hold a markup today that would have addressed the OTA but it has been pushed back to Wednesday. That means you still have time to contact your member of Congress and let them know that you support the OTA and that they should send the "Dear Colleague" letter they received from Reps. Rush Holt and Michael Castle to Wasserman Schultz and Wamp. Check out this blog post from last week for full directions on how you can get involved. The endorsement letter is below the fold:
Continue readingGregg.
Updated to reflect Kyl's denial.
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Jon Kyl - (202) 224-4521 Judd Gregg - (202) 224-3324
Use this comment form to tell us what you find.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) refuses to tell his constituents if they are anonymously blocking the non-controversial electronic filing bill, S.223. Why won't Judd Gregg come clean and either admit or deny? The only assumption to be made is that Gregg is blocking the bill. It's a shame that Kyl and Gregg have to hide in his office behind staff assistants who know little of what is going on. Come out in the open and answer the question: are you blocking S.223?
Getting Some Answers
From TechPresident this morning...
Following in the footsteps of Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey, and Al Gore, Barack Obama has posed a question on Yahoo! Answers, reports the Chicago Tribune. His question? "How can we engage more people in the democratic process?" . . . The Tribune notes that Obama isn't the first candidate to use the forum; Hillary Clinton and John McCain have been there, done that.
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