Last month, I blogged about the Center for Public Integrity’s brilliant expose’ “Shadow Government,” dealing with federal advisory committees, the secret, multi-layered and unaccountable bureaucracy that influences much of the federal government with precious little oversight and largely no record of their activities. There are over 900 committees, boards, commissions, councils and panels that advise the various agencies of the Executive Branch and the White House, meant to offer government expert opinions on various topics.

To recap, the Center’s investigation found:

- committees packed with industry representatives;

- members are added or removed for political reasons;

- subcommittees and working groups are created allowing decisions to be made behind closed doors; and

-         records are sealed if they exist at all.

Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News blog reports that, on Wednesday, the House passed a bill that would amend the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 (FACA).  The new reform is meant to strengthen the public disclosure provisions of FACA, which was itself a reform devised to bring more openness to the advisory committee process.

(more…)

0 Comments

Last week, The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) released The Shadow Government, another of their eye-popping reports that they are so known for. The report is the result of an investigation of federal advisory committees, the secret, multi-layered and unaccountable bureaucracy that influences much of the federal government with precious little oversight and largely no record of their activities. There are over 900 committees, boards, commissions, councils and panels that advise the various agencies of the Executive Branch and the White House, meant to offer government expert opinions on various topics.

The CPI investigation found:

- committees packed with industry representatives;

- members are added or removed for political reasons;

- subcommittees and working groups are created allowing decisions to be made behind closed doors; and

- records are sealed if they exist at all.

CPI has a cool chart showing some of the real-life impacts of this opaque bureaucracy.

Many of these issues were the reason that Congress passed the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 (FACA). They wanted to discourage the influence of "locker-room discussion" on agency decisions that was so common, as Wikipedia puts it. FACA requires:

- members of the advisory committees be appointed without considering political affiliation;

- agencies have committee members file conflict of interest disclosures; and

- committees disclose more of their activities.

The reform worked for a while, but the old problems have returned with a vengeance. Federal court decisions, congressional action and inaction, and Bush Administration policies have fostered the weakening of FACA.

U.S. Reps. Henry Waxman, chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) are sponsoring the Federal Advisory Committee Act Amendments of 2008 (H.R. 5687), which is meant to improve balance, transparency and independence. In April, Waxman’s committee passed the bill.

Veteran journalist Jim Morris was the investigation’s project manager. And I am happy to report he has now joined the Sunlight Foundation as our program director. Jim modestly says that he and his team only scratched the surface with their report and invites other journalists and citizen investigators to join in. CPI has a online tutorial on how to use the FACA Database.

0 Comments

Here’s another arena in which a little bit of transparency (as a means to oversight) would go a really long way. In what looks like a really terrific book — Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story — investor David Einhorn tells the story of corporate malfeasance and government looking the other way. (Wonder why? Read the book but I suspect this might have something to do with it.

Einhorn says:

The story you are about to read exposes the grim realities of unchecked corporate misconduct by a bad company and the failures of proper regulatory oversight. . . . The story I am telling is one that has been surprising and unexpected - even to me. I think it is important and needs to be told. This book reveals some serious problems in the regulatory landscape that I am in a unique place to discuss. I care that the SEC and other regulators seem to have stopped enforcing laws against corporate malfeasance. I care that company officials can lie with impunity on public conference calls. And I have been appalled that the government officials overseeing the lending programs that Allied has defrauded are so indifferent and unwilling to act even when presented with clear evidence of abuse. The overall lack of law enforcement is startling.

If we are going to permit the retribution against the whistleblowers shown in this story - defamation, investigation, invasion of privacy and so forth - then we surrender public free speech. If we allow the people in this story to operate outside the law, then we nourish a corrupt business culture. Rather than turn a blind eye to the fraud I witnessed, I made a decision to stand up and speak out despite the consequences. I hope my story inspires regulators and government agencies to do the right thing

The book’s gotten some terrific reviews. And half the profits from the book (it was released two days ago and it’s already No. 40 at Amazon) are going to two Watchdog Group that Sunlight knows well - POGO and the Center for Public Integrity - because absent government these two nonprofits are among the best in keeping their eyes on this kind of bad behavior.

0 Comments

Yesterday, the Center for Public Integrity released their new report Windfalls of War II, exposing how contractors over the past three years made a mint off the spoils of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. An earlier 2003 report, Windfalls of War (heavily researched by our Sunlight colleague, Larry Makinson) looked at Uncle Sam’s spending on private contractors from 2001 through much of 2003.

In this new report, the Center says that the federal contract system for the two war zones is "marred by missing contracts, unidentified companies, a lack of competitive bidding and the absence of minority-owned companies as primary contractors." By the end of 2006, CPI reports, U.S. contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan have grown to $25 billion, while oversight has seriously deteriorated.

Here’s just one of the many horror stories they report: The feds awarded one company alone, KBR, Inc., over $16 billion in contracts for projects in Iraq and Afghanistan over 2004 through 2006, almost nine times the amount awarded to the No. 2 contractor DynCorp International.

CPI sifted through Iraq and Afghanistan contract transactions by accessing the U.S. General Service Administration’s Federal Procurement Data System. Even though CPI says that the GSA has made the search process more transparent than when they were researching the 2003 report, much more openness and transparency is warranted. The updated report does not include all Iraq construction contracts, and detailed transaction information is not made available to the public, CPI reports. Also, nearly $20.5 billion went to undisclosed foreign contractors. That’s a lot of cash considering we have no idea who it went to and for what purposes.

Another Sunlight friend (and in this case a grantee), OMB Watch, built FedSpending.org, after years of frustration over not being able to obtain information about federal contracts and grants. The site is a searchable database of $14 trillion in federal government spending, and is meant to be a more open and accessible tool for citizens to find out how the feds spend their tax dollars. OMB Watch and the Sunlight believe the public has a right to know how its elected government spends taxpayer dollars. Of course, many in government do not want citizens to have this information. Once the public has access to this data we can hold elected officials accountable for the priorities they set.

Corruption, cronyism and incompetence in defense contracts have been widely exposed over the past few months. And there has been congressional action intended to provide more oversight.

0 Comments

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:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce continued to be the top spender, lobbying government officials to the tune of $21.2 million, or more than $115,000 a day. Other top spenders included General Electric, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, American Medical Association and AT&T. Overall, health sector interests spent the most money, moving ahead of the financial, insurance and real estate sector for the first time in years. Health interests spend more than $193 million between January and June; 53 percent of the money was spent by the prescription drug industry alone. But the single largest lobbying contract was between an investment firm, Blackstone Group, and Ogilvy Government Relations — $3.7 million (or about $20,000 a day). Private equity firms and hedge funds have ramped up their lobbying to persuade Congress not to raise taxes on their profits.

Why should we care? In April, the Center for Public Integrity released an analysis looking at the spending of the pharmaceutical industry from January 2005 to June 2006, finding that the industry and its trade groups spent a record $155 million lobbying the federal government and its agencies. Why the record spending? "During that time, the drug industry heavily — and successfully — lobbied against Congress’ revisiting a provision in the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 that barred the federal government from negotiating on drug prices," reports Pharmaceutical Online. "Also on the lobbying agenda were protection of lucrative drug patents and prevention of the importation of lower-priced Canadian drugs." In other words, the drug companies spent $155 million to protect their profits at the expense of the average American family’s pocket book and ultimately public health.

You can search CRP’s database in four ways: search by name for a company, lobbying firm or individual lobbyist; search for the total spending by a particular industry; search for the total spending by lobbyists on a specific issue; or view the amount spent to lobby a particular government agency.

And in the meantime, call the SOPR at 202-224-0758 and tell them to fix their computers.

Update: The Center for Responsive Politics just emailed to say that the gitch was fixed: 

Whether it was your blog post, our newsletter item or an act of God, SOPR has apparently fixed the glitch that was preventing the public from searching for lobbyists by name and viewing which issues interests reported lobbying on, according to our lobbying team. We’re in the process of downloading the data and it should be posted in our Lobbying Database within the next 24-48 hours.

 

0 Comments