Making Government Transparent and Accountable
The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Underlying all of our efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the public's confidence in government
The Sunlight Foundation Blog
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Sunlight Testimony for Senate Rules Committee
Today the Senate Rules Committee held the first of what’s likely to be a series of hearings on Capitol Hill analyzing the fallout and proposing solutions to the havoc sowed as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC. Sunlight submitted written testimony outlining our seven-point plan for a new, comprehensive disclosure that emphasized getting the panoply of campaign finance information online, in real time.
Thought you might like to see it.
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FEC Guts Post-Abramoff Reform
I agree wholeheartedly with this New York Times editorial:
The Federal Election Commission — the supposed referee of fair campaigning — has just created an ethics loophole big enough for lobbyists to fly a corporate jet through. The commission has taken upon itself to reverse the Senate’s self-restriction against lawmakers’ cozy cut-rate travels on corporate jets.
The planes were long provided on demand from favor-seeking executives and lobbyists intent on private time with lawmakers. But, two years after the Jack Abramoff corruption scandals, the Senate banned the practice of paying a mere single-seat rate for commandeering their friendly exec’s company plane. It mandated that members pay the full (prohibitive) charter rate, as if renting the whole plane themselves. This targeted an abuse by which corporations provided jets to grateful lawmakers to dash about on political errands at token prices. (The House went the Senate one better with an outright ban on flying on noncommercial aircraft.)
The F.E.C. gutted the reform by totally misinterpreting it to say it does not apply when a senator is traveling on behalf of assorted party committees and not as “a candidate” himself. This is nonsense by any fair reading of the Senate’s rule, which clearly considers any incumbent an ongoing candidate 24/7, regardless of announced business in hopping a corporate jet.
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Sunlight Provides Comments to FEC to improve its Web site
Yesterday, the Sunlight Foundation filed comments in response to the FEC’s request for ideas on how to improve its Web site and Internet communications. We appreciate that the FEC is making a genuine effort to make its Web site user-friendly and make its wealth of campaign finance data more accessible to the public.
Sunlight offered two new critical recommendations: First, the FEC must hire a Director of New Media to run its Web site. Second, the FEC must provide opportunities for the public to provide input and engage in a dialogue on and about the FEC’s site. We also provide recommendations on the Organization of the Agency’s Web Site, Data Accessibility and Electronic Filing Procedures.
The FEC has scheduled a hearing on improving its Web site for July 29 and 30.
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Disclosure Calvinball?
Apparently, PACs and the FEC are playing a serious game of Calvinball over disclosure rules. Bill Allison at Real Time Investigations looks at the ways PACs get around disclosure requirements by, well, making up the rules as they go along. This is how I imagine the disclosure Calvinball dialogue as it is played:
“I’m in the no-disclosure zone,” PAC.
“The no-disclosure zone only works in odd years and when you sing the ‘I hate transparency’ song,” FEC.
“Pppfffttt!!!,” PAC.
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Senate Obstinacy on Electronic Filing
David Waldman (aka Kagro X) posted a very good piece on Congress Matters regarding congressional transparency and the bureaucratic arguments by institutionalists that often prevent positive action. Waldman’s piece focuses on the priority of technology-enabled transparency in voting records and how the members of Congress may simply say, “Gather the info and do it yourself. We don’t want to spend the money to do it.” He also touches on one area that we focus on a lot here, the lack of electronic filing for Senate campaign finance forms. Waldman draws an analogy between the institutional arguments for not releasing voting records with Senate obstinacy on electronic filing of campaign forms:
A similar issue arises, it turns out, with the drive to get the Senate to file its campaign finance forms electronically, too. I haven’t had any particular need to comb through that information (though it wouldn’t be hard to imagine needing it), but in my discussions with people in the transparency biz, that’s clearly been a big sticking point. Again, though, I could see the institutionalists saying, “You want campaign finance forms? Go ask the [FEC]. We’re the Senate. We’re what happens after all that stuff.” That’s a gross oversimplification, of course, since everyone knows that the general public at least considers it important to know where incumbent Senators have raised and are raising their money from.
If the Senate wants to make an institutional argument about whether it is on them to properly file their campaign finance forms or whether this is an FEC issue, that is perfectly fine. That’s because the problem lies solely with the institution of the Senate and cannot be deferred as an issue with the FEC.
You see, senators do not file with the FEC directly. Instead, they file, on paper, with the Secretary of the Senate’s office, which then passes the documents onto the FEC (where they are copied and housed in a series of file cabinets). Thus, the Senate insists on making its bureaucratic inefficiency a problem for both the information provider and the information seeker. They can’t possibly say, “You want campaign finance forms? Go ask the [FEC]. We’re the Senate. We’re what happens after all that stuff,” because they have made themselves file with the Senate, not the FEC.
When Congress mandated electronic filing of campaign finance forms in 1999, the Senate exempted themselves by carving out a loophole that requires only those filing directly with the FEC to file electronically. Since senators file with the Secretary of the Senate, they became exempt, thus they can’t push this issue off to the FEC or any other information providing body.
If you think this is absurd and want transparency from the Senate, you can help us pass S. 482, a bill that would require senators to file directly with the FEC, thus ending the Senate exemption. Go to the Pass 482 site and tell your senator(s) to cosponsor the bill.
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FEC Backs Electronic Filing
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) recently released their 2009 legislative priorities and right at the top of their list is the electronic filing of Senate campaign finance reports. We’ve been pushing to pass the bill in support of electronic filing, S. 482, and you can help by calling your senators and asking them to cosponsor the bill. (Go here.)
Since the FEC is the entity that has to deal with the current, paper filing of reports, let’s listen to their complaint about the process:
Data from electronically filed reports is received, processed and disseminated more easily and efficiently, resulting in better use of resources. In fact, the Commission estimates at least $250,000 per year in costs directly attributable to current Senate filing procedures would be saved by requiring electronic filing. Reports that are filed electronically are normally available, and may be downloaded, within minutes. In contrast, the time between the receipt of a report filed through the paper filing system and its appearance on the Commission’s web site is 48 hours. Moreover, a Senate campaign filing often consists of thousands of pages, and data from the filings themselves take up to 30 days to be integrated into the Commission’s searchable databases. If such reports were electronically filed, the data could be integrated within a few days.
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How the FEC Can Do It Better
Last month, the Federal Election Commission invited the public to participate in a January 14th hearing on how the agency can improve its compliance and enforcement processes. The FEC is encouraging the public to submit written comments and to testify at the hearing. Naturally, as a frequent user of campaign finance data and often critic of the agency we jumped at the chance.
In our comments (online here), we addressed the FEC’s mandate to disclose campaign finance information to the public with five suggested improvements.
The FEC’s Web site is the most important tool the agency has to fulfill this mandate, and as such it should be much easier for the average person to use. Certain aspects of the site, such as the maps on the homepage, embrace the creative and interesting ways the Internet can be used to inform the public. However, much of the site uses technical or legal language that is difficult for the average citizen to understand. In other cases, data is provided in cumbersome, outmoded ways that fail to take advantage of the dynamic nature of the Internet. The agency’s site should adopt clear definitions, plain language and intuitive use of links and other tools that are the hallmarks of a user-friendly site and should be primary considerations as the agency undertakes a redesign.
(Continue reading…)
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FEC Thwarts Transparency
Yesterday, the Federal Election Commission unanimously approved new disclosure rules regarding bundling, the practice of collecting campaign contributions from friends, co-workers, clients and other associates. (Currently an individual can give up to $2,300 per election to a candidate for president or Congress. But by collecting multiple checks from various sources, bundlers have no limit on what they can raise for a candidate, gaining much favor with the campaign. Lobbyists are masters at the practice.) The FEC was finally creating guidelines for the implementation of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, which Congress passed partly to bring more transparency to bundling.
Unfortunately, the FEC ruling compromises the transparency purpose of the law to ‘provide for the broadest possible disclosure’ of bundling activities. The FEC ruled that campaigns, parties and candidate-affiliated political action committees would now have to disclose the names, addresses, employers and amounts raised by these called “bundlers,” according to CQ. Sounds good, right? But this requirement applies only to registered lobbyists. (Hint: not all influence peddlers are registered.) Plus, the rule applies only when there is a written record of the bundling, or when the candidate gives something to a lobbyist in return like a title or a gift of appreciation, such as an autographed photo. “Knowledge on the part of a candidate that a lobbyist has bundled contributions is not enough under the new FEC rule to trigger reporting requirements, according to the Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “Instead, in the absence of a written record, knowledge plus a tangible benefit to the lobbyist is required to trigger the reporting requirements.”
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Ethics & Transparency Reform Discussions
Conservative bloggers Soren Dayton and Mark Tapscott have been discussing possible ethics and transparency reforms that minority Republicans could push in Congress next year. The issues that they propose are as follows. From Dayton:
First, in both bodies, allow individuals to submit ethics complaints and require the various ethics committees to officially reject complaints.
Second, faster and more complete campaign finance proposals. All contributions down to $5, or even just all contributions, should be disclosed. Electronic contributions should be disclosed within 72 hours, and checks should be disclosed within 72 hours of deposit. These would be real-time disclosed on the FEC website. This would solve the problem that the Sunlight Foundation and others have tried to address with S. 223.
Third, put video of all publicly accessible business meetings online. I am sure that C-SPAN and Google would be happy to help. I know that many committees keep video of markups, but release neither the video nor transcripts.
Fourth, I am sure that there are things that are specific to disclosure of financial interests that we have learned out of the Rangel affair. Throw that in.
And from Tapscott:
First, apply the Freedom of Information Act to Congress. Most Americans resent that Congress passes laws it expects the rest of us to abide by but exempts itself. Ending the 42-year-old congressional FOIA exemption would be a major step in the right direction and one that would call the Democrats bluff on the transparency issue.
Second, require Members and their key personal and committee staff members (chiefs of staff, legislative directors, committee staff directors, legal counsels, possibly others) to maintain online daily calendars recording names and titles of all participants in meetings concerning any proposed legislation or expenditure of federal funds.
Third, abolish the absurd categorical values in the annual financial disclosures required of Members. Show us the money, the shares, the property, the consideration, Congressman. Require the same level of disclosure for key staff members included in the second suggestion.
I’m not going to get into the weeds of Dayton’s campaign finance proposal (there are equally persuasive arguments to be made about whether or not the extent of disclosure proposed by Dayton would fit into the reasoning behind Buckley v. Valeo’s upholding of campaign finance disclosure), but I will make a quick point about S. 223:
The whole crux behind S. 223 and the filing of Senate campaign finance reports is that Senators do not file with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Instead, senators file with the Senate Office of Public Records, which then sends the reports to the FEC. The law requiring electronic filing of campaign finance reports mandates e-filing only for those filing directly with the FEC. S. 223 does one thing: requires senators to file directly with the FEC, thus putting them under the same e-filing mandate as the House. Because of this issue, Dayton’s proposal, if it intends to fix the e-filing problem, would have to include the S. 223 language.
As regards the other proposals, these are my general thoughts:
1. Ethics committee: The whole process is a total mess, completely devasted by partisan tit-for-tat ethics complaints of the past. The Senate committee works far better than the House committee (as in it actually works) and is even required to submit annual disclosures about their activity (see last year’s here). The House committee should accept outside complaints and figure out a fair way to sort them. I don’t know if they need to publicly reject complaints.
2. Video online: A simple yes will do here. See The Open House Project for more.
3. Disclosure of financial interests: Tapscott’s proposal to eliminate the categorical values on personal financial disclosures is spot on. Sunlight has pushed for this and other changes to financial disclosure forms for a few years now. You see the legislative language of our proposal at PublicMarkup.org.
4. Schedules: Some lawmakers do post their daily schedule online. It’s a great way to increase accountability. Also, lobbyists should be required to disclose their meetings with the offices of covered officials as well.
I’m going to leave the application of FOIA to Congress alone for right now.
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FEC Data Guy and Senate Electronic Filing
ComputerWorld interviewed James Allen, the IT manager at the Federal Election Commission (FEC), a month ago and reposted it yesterday. One line in the interview really stood out to me:
We have a T1 line to the Senate so they can file their reports securely and quickly.
After the data has been cleared by our analysts — and we have a 48-hour turnaround time — we post it on the public Web site.
Emphasis added. The Senate does not require the electronic filing of campaign finance reports and most reports, including ours, show that the lack of electronic filing causes gaps in disclosure. Since every office uses the software necessary to file electronically (the last office to use noncompliant software was that of retired Sen. Paul Sarbanes) and the Senate maintains a T1 line directly connected to the FEC, how many Senate offices actually file electronically?
Voluntary filing is allowed, even encouraged. FEC rules also state that, “Once a committee begins to file its reports electronically, on a voluntary basis, it must continue to file electronically for the remainder of the calendar year unless the Commission determines that extraordinary and unforeseeable circumstances make continued electronic filing impractical.”
You can read the rest of the interview here.
