In Paul’s roundup this morning he mentions several of the reports that came from the release earlier this week of the PFDs  –  personal financial disclosure forms –  filed by House and Senate members that profile their personal financial interests — stocks, mutual funds, IRA assets and other holdings and liabilities.

Newspapers and other media outlets all across the country have dug into the reports and are highlighting nuggets they’ve found about the finances of their local congressional delegation. For instance, The Boston Globe found that “six of the 10 House members from Massachusetts are landlords who made thousands of dollars last year on rental properties.”  The Washington Post found a clue as to why former Rep. Al Wynn resigned his seat to take a position with a K Street lobbying firm whose “partners on average make slightly more than $1 million a year”…He needs the money.  And then there is Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who decided apparently that she does not need the money.  The Kansas City Star reports on her walking away from $1 million dollars, having past a deadline last week to pay off the loan she made to her 2004 gubernatorial campaign. As her report indicates, she is one of the more wealthy members of Congress, so much so that she won’t likely miss the fortune she’s walked away from.  And The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Washington bureau chief, Stephen Koff, got especially creative in his review of the reports.  He was able to get independent professional financial advisers to look at and comment on the reports of each member of Northeast Ohio’s congressional delegation. The financial advisors have some interesting advice on what financial strategies the lawmakers have employed in managing their own money. Quite clever.

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Legistorm, a Web site dedicated to providing a variety of important information about the US Congress, has launched a new database of all foreign gifts (whether tangible gifts or travel) received by members of Congress and their staff since 1999. The database details each of the 450 gifts members of Congress and their aides reported receiving in the past decade. Senate rules require that senators and their staff must report all gifts over a $100 value threshold, and House members and their aides threshold has been adjusted for inflation and stands at $335.

Gifts from foreign sources were not affected by the reforms pushed through in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal. The giving and receiving of gifts is all part of diplomatic protocol, and the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act governs the practice. Congressional travel, including transportation, lodging, food and refreshments, make up the bulk of gifts received.

Something seems odd, however. Senators and executive branch officials reported many more gifts than House members. But only one House member, former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), reported receiving any gifts within the past five years. And even his disclosure did not follow the rules: he only reported his gifts while leaving office, years after he received them. Rules require that the disclosure occur within 60 days of receipt of the gift. Roll Call (subscription required) ran a story this morning on foreign gifts, and quoted House members as saying they had received gifts, but none had met the $335 threshold.

Lots of questions still to be asked here.

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Legistorm, the Web site that shares similar goals to Sunlight, that is to make Congress as transparent as possible, has launched a blog. I’m putting it in my RSS reader and I’d guess most readers of this site will want too also.

On this site you can find information about Congressional staff and lawmaker salaries, travel, personal financial disclosures and more.

Update about  the hysteria on Capitol Hill about posting staffer’s financial disclosure forms. 

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LegiStorm - an insanely useful site of congressional information including staffer salaries and other disclosures - has, for the first time, posted PDFs of the personal financial disclosures that some staffers are required to file. For every member of Congress, at least one staffer must file a personal financial disclosure. If a staffer is making the maximum pay, as some chiefs of staff do, they must file a disclosure. Staffers hold a lot of power on Capitol Hill and are often overlooked as recipients of undue influence from outside groups. LegiStorm notes this in their press release:

Most disclosures are relatively mundane and appear to demonstrate those staffers have no discernible potential conflicts of interest, Friedly said. However, hundreds of staffer disclosures reveal ties to interest groups and lobbying firms, either as a past job, a spouse’s work or a future employment agreement. Others reveal lucrative side jobs, adding as much as $100,000 or more to their federal pay.

In an article in Roll Call, LegiStorm’s Jock Friedly explains the importance of publicly disclosing this information on the Internet:

While Member financial disclosures are relatively easy to find online, getting ahold of staff disclosures is much harder, Friedly noted, since it usually requires a trip to Capitol Hill.

“Currently, there’s no way to get this information if you’re a blogger out in California,” Friedly said. “It’s really making things possible that weren’t possible before.”

Friedly also expects some negative feedback due to posting these documents. LegiStorm has been criticized in the past for posting disclosures by staffers, most notably the disclosure of their salaries, by those who feel this information is private and personal. Our fearless Executive Director Ellen Miller makes the transparency argument in Roll Call today:

But in the age of the Internet, full disclosure and transparency can only come when things are published online for the entire world to access, argued Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a group that advocates using the Internet for transparency.

Miller argued that senior staffers have “a huge influence over Members of Congress” and should expect to have their lives scrutinized a bit more than the average American.

“They are senior-level officials of government,” Miller said. “They knew this requirement when they took this job. … It’s nothing that wasn’t available before. This just makes it more available.”

Go check out the new database here.

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The political Web continues to grow as new databases are established every week regularly using new technologies to present important information. I came across three new Web sites, one government and two from nonprofits, today and figured I’d pass them along. The first is the Government Printing Office’s online guide to members of Congress. The GPO’s online guide allows users to search members of Congress by a number of categories, including name, hometown, terms served, and more. The database is fairly rudimentary but it does allow someone to do quick searches for members from a particular state or see how many members have served for 5 terms. This is good step for GPO as it shows that they looking towards using the Web to project information; all they need is to add more search categories and more information for the member profiles. More links to more information makes the data more useful.

Second, we have a great collection and presentation of government RSS feeds from Legistorm. Legistorm’s "The Score" is a one-stop shop for up-to-the-minute government information hosting RSS feeds of the floor of the House, reports from the GAO, CBO, Executive Orders, and Statements of Administration Policy, and headlines from the blog Political Wire. The Score also shows the schedule for the House and Senate floors and the schedule for House and Senate committee hearings. For the lighter side of things they also post top political cartoons of the day. It looks a lot like a preset, government information-only Netvibes page. If you’re watching Congress this is a pretty sweet view.

Third, and somewhat of topic, is the new database on carbon emissions Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) from the Center for Global Development. I bring this one up because it is a massive database, containing information on 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies worldwide, that is using the Web to provide information to citizens concerned about carbon emissions in useful ways. The site allows for searches in variety of categories. I just typed in my zip code and went to the page for Pepco Holdings, Inc., my power company. The individual page for the power company is a striking way at conveying information, using data charts, Google Maps, and allowing comments (particularly useful for individuals who are directly effected by polluting power plants in their area). While not everyone in America is concerned about finding the latest GAO report they are concerned about the air they breathe and the responsibility of the companies providing energy to their homes. The presentation in the CARMA database goes above and beyond that which I normally see. I would of course love to see this information mashed-up with lobbying records, government contracts and grants, member voting records from these districts, etc…

Conveying information that any American can understand and care about on a gut level, whether it’s carbon emissions or polluted water ways, and matching that to information that makes the powerful accountable for their actions (voting behavior or power of influence through lobbying and campaign contributions) will allow power to decentralize back to citizens and voters. The ProgrammableWeb government page that Ellen just wrote about is a great beginning step to making all government and company information mixable and matchable to suit the needs of each American. As the political Web innovates, politicians will have to become more accountable for their actions.

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