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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Massa, Maf54 and the Ethics Committee
And now to totally contradict my previous post stating why no one needs to talk about tickle-monster Eric Massa.
The House voted today 404-2 to recommend that the House Ethics Committee reopen their probe into Massa’s misconduct and examine whether House leaders were aware of his misdeeds and whether they failed act quickly enough. This follows on the heels of reports that an aide in Speaker Pelosi’s office was informed in October that Massa was living with aides, hired too many aides, cursed around staff and appeared to be going on dates with openly-gay male staffers from other congressional offices.
On first blush these don’t exactly rise to the level of ethics investigation material — congressmen have been known to live with aides in the past and if he wants to cheat on his wife with adult men, that’s his prerogative. Either way, the Ethics Committee should look into whether there was any more information relayed to leadership prior to the reported receipt of complaints about harassment in February and whether they responded properly or not.
Already, this case is being compared to the 2006 Mark Foley scandal. I’m not really sure that it rises to that level for a number of reasons. That being said, let’s take a look at what made the Foley scandal toxic for the congressional leadership who covered it up. (Continue reading…)
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Potential House Health Care Vote Switchers Reliant on Party Campaign Money
Seven key Democrats seen as potential vote-flippers on the health care reform bill are heavily reliant on campaign funds from party leadership and online progressive activists.
According to campaign finance data at the Center for Responsive Politics, all seven Democrats–Reps. Jason Altmire, Suzanne Kosmas, Frank Kratovil, Scott Murphy, Glenn Nye, Michael McMahon and Betsy Markey–list Leadership PACs (political action committees) in the top three career industry donors. Three of the seven members are also heavily reliant on money from Democratic campaign committees or outside progressive fundraising through the web site Actblue.
The seven Democrats were identified in an Associated Press survey of members who previously voted “No” on the House health care reform bill. With pressure mounting to pass the Senate’s health care reform bill and the resignation of key members along with the death of Rep. John Murtha, Speaker Nancy Pelosi must round-up lawmakers like these seven to vote “Yes” after a previous “No” vote.
The upper Democratic leadership is particularly active in contributing to these lawmakers. Five of the seven lawmakers–Kosmas, Kratovil, Murphy, Nye and Markey–count the PACs of Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip James Clyburn in their top twenty career individual donors. Rep. McMahon counts two of the three Democratic leadership PACs (Hoyer and Clyburn) in his top twenty.
All of these seven lawmakers are either freshmen or, in Rep. Altmire’s case, a sophomore. Freshmen and sophomore lawmakers are often in greater danger of losing their next election and, therefore, more reliant on party and leadership funds to finance their victories. This puts them in a situation where the leadership has significantly more sway over their floor votes than other members.
Similarly, outside activists can push a lawmaker towards a certain vote by contributing or withholding funds. Rep. Scott Murphy, who won a special election in New York to replace appointed-Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, is the top recipient among the seven lawmakers of money from ActBlue, the online progressive clearinghouse for campaign contributions. Murphy received $315,807 in individual contributions through the ActBlue site making ActBlue his number one career individual donor. Rep. Betsy Markey also received a significant amount of campaign money through ActBlue with $124,090 coming in from the site.
See below for totals: (Continue reading…)
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Introducing Sunlight Live
As the Open Government Directive was announced in a live webcast back in December, Sunlight tried something a little different by covering the event live in a variety of formats at once.As is a norm around here, we basically just got a lot of people in a room, tried a bunch of stuff and paid attention to what seemed to work. At the end of the announcement we simultaneously had a tweet stream from across the open government community going, a live blog, and a Google Wave. We threw the obligatory word cloud at it, sent email blasts, and followed up with blog posts about the Directive’s many components.
It was fun and seemed to be pretty effective. And it also got us thinking…
What if we were able to “cover” live events in a new way using government data that we’re able to compile and connect it to political events and personas of the day?
Today we’re going to take this idea to the next step by beginning to connect government data such as campaign contributions or lobbyist meetings to a political event in real-time. As Republican and Democratic leaders come together to debate health care in a public forum, Sunlight is going to provide an alternative to the mainstream media’s coverage. In a replicable pilot we are calling Sunlight Live, our team will connect data such as the aforementioned lobbying contributions or “revolving door”connections the meeting’s participants may have, and put them right next to the video feed, as any particular politician is speaking.
http://sunlightfoundation.com/live
We think Sunlight can offer a unique live perspective on the debate in the midst of the media frenzy, by focusing not on the merits of health care reform, but on the money, connections, and influence data to which we have created access. In addition to displaying data from Sunlight and its grantees’ projects, our staff will once again be live blogging, facilitating online conversation via Twitter, and engaging the open government community in research as the debate unfolds. We don’t yet know exactly what we’ll need or what will work best …but that’s the point.
We’ll be getting things started at 10am with the beginning of the meeting. Hope you’ll join us!
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The Little Things We Take For Granted
So, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer announced that they were going to place the final health care bill online for 72 hours prior to consideration yesterday. Where did they decide to do this? Twitter. And no one raises a hackle at all. It’s just accepted that this is a valid announcement of an important transparency policy. What better way to demonstrate how far Congress has come in terms of social media use and transparency than to have the Speaker of the House announce a transparency policy on a widely-used social media site.
It wasn’t too long ago that lawmakers weren’t even allowed to officially use Twitter, let alone any social media site, to communicate with everyone else. The Sunlight Foundation was at the forefront of changing that policy starting in 2007 and culminating in rules changes in 2008. John Wonderlich summed this all up way back when:
In May of 2007, the Sunlight Foundation released the Open House Project report, which included an entire chapter on the issue of Franking Reform. That chapter, prepared by David All and Paul Blumental, has guided our advocacy and discussions of web use restrictions since then.
Those discussions simmered until earlier this summer, when tensions between Members of the Franking Commission briefly escalated (the part of the Committee on House Administration that handles Web restrictions). This summer’s discussion caught some media attention, and unsettled some web-savvy Representatives, and ultimately engaged both parties’ leaders in the House.
The Sunlight Foundation capitalized on the chaos, creating the first twitter-based petition in the site letourcongresstweet.org, which amassed twitter-based signatures, and displayed vigorous support for updated rules from online communities across the political spectrum.
While House officials maneuvered publicly, the Senate passed similar reforms with a bit less fanfare. As recently as last week, agreement looked unlikely from the House committee, with Roll Call reporting that an attempt at negotiations ended in “an emotionally charged hearing and a breakdown in negotiations.”
That’s why we were suprised and delighted to get word from the Committee on House Administration that a new agreement had been reached. This measure wasn’t just a slight rewrite, however. The new guidelines represent an enormous change, one which has new media staff from both parties glowing.
And now we just take for granted that serious policies are announced over Twitter. Personally, I think that is awesome.
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Pelosi & Hoyer Say Final Health Care Bill To Be Online For 72 Hours
Last week, Jake wrote that “it is utterly imperative that the final version of the bill be online for the public to view for at least 72 hours.” The House Majority just announced that they will do just that (via #HealthReformNow):
Pelosi and Hoyer say final health reform bill will be online for 72 hours before House vote so Members and Americans can review #hcr
This is a great development and another big win for those who have called for the bill to be available to the public for 72 hours throughout this whole process. The Sunlight Foundation has called for the health care bill to be available to the public for 72 hours at each point that versions have come to the floor. In each of these instances the majority has acquiesced and posted each version, from the House bill to the Senate bill, for at least 72 hours prior to consideration. Those of you who have signed the Read the Bill petition and put the pressure on Congress to be this transparent have been vital in ensuring that we have access to this major bill before lawmakers consider, debate and vote on it.
Earlier this week, Ellen explained the importance of the 72 hour requirement:
Think of posting something on line for 3 days as a ‘safety valve’ – a final chance for citizens, media, lawmakers and lobbyists alike to look at the whole package giving everyone one last opportunity to raise questions and concerns about the bill. If readers are in an advocacy mode they have time to mobilize others in support or opposition, and/or take action in whatever form they see fit.
There is no measure more important to debate in the open than health care, and this is a moment when we all need to be champions for public, online disclosure and engage with our government. With 72 hours, the buck can actually stop with citizens the way our Founders intended. We know that Congress do it because congressional leadership has already done so at other critical points in this debate.
Of course, we still need to make sure that this promise is kept and that won’t be done until the bill has been online for 72 hours and then brought to the floor. Let’s keep it up.
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Gillibrand Touts Transparency
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said today that the final version of health care legislation will be available for at least 72 hours before debate. She also spoke out strongly in favor of transparency for congressional schedules, earmarks, and legislation in today’s conference call with bloggers organized by Blogher, which I moderated on behalf of the Sunlight Foundation.
Sen. Gillibrand has been a longtime advocate for transparency, which Paul Blumenthal has blogged about here, here, and here.
The call was part of a series sponsored by Blogher to connect bloggers directly with legislators. Other lawmakers who have participated are Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Sen. Amy Klochubar, Rep. George Miller, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Jeff Merkely, and Rep. Cynthia Lummis. Many have spoken out about transparency.
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Pelosi Addresses e-Parliament Conference
Speaker Pelosi yesterday spoke on a panel to kick off the World eParliament Conference 2009, in the US House of Representatives.
Her prepared remarks are available here, and include the following:
“In the history of American democracy, there was a time when a message could travel only as fast as a horse could gallop or a ship could sail. Today, a message from the American people to their representatives in Congress travels as fast as a citizen can twitter, blog, or post to Facebook…
Led by the innovation and enthusiasm of young people, Americans and Members of Congress are holding a running conversation – in real time. There is no greater tool to increase transparency than the internet. Now, Americans can watch committee hearings, check votes, read bills, and review financial disclosures–all online. Next month, they will be able to see exactly how Members of Congress are spending their office funds, and at the start of next year, they will be able to watch and search our House floor proceedings in real time.
Clearly, Sunlight agrees that “there is no greater tools to increase transparency than the Internet.”
Also, “watch[ing] and search[ing] floor proceedings in real time” will be a welcome addition to the current real-time web presence of the House.
Speaker Pelosi also engaged in a long aside during her delivered remarks yesterday, invoking the distinction between disclosure through office-hours-basement-binder-public-inspection and disclosure in real time, online, expressing an explicit preference for the latter.
Ellen is presenting this morning, and I’ll also be tweeting from much of the event.
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House Health Care Bill Online
Earlier today, the House unveiled the final version of their health care reform bill. You can view the full bill here. The bill contains a time-stamp (look in the bottom left-hand corner of the bill) noting its introduction occurred at 10:05 am on October 29, 2009. We’ll be counting the hours before it is brought to the floor for consideration. Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised that the bill would be made available online for at least 72 hours prior to consideration. Considering the House is not set to take up the legislation today or tomorrow, the bill will have been available for the public to read for over 72 hours.
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Ask House Speaker Nancy Pelosi About Health Care
Tomorrow morning at 11:30 a.m. Eastern, the Sunlight Foundation joins Blogher in moderating a conference call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about health care. Blogger participants will have the chance to talk to Pelosi directly and ask her about issues deeply affecting their lives.
Pelosi has already committed to posting the final version of health care legislation for 72 hours before it comes to a vote. I hope to ask her how she plans to handle the longer term issue of lobbying disclosure reform, given what we’ve seen in recent weeks with the health care lobby wars going at full blast.
To sign up to ask your own question, click here. Or if you’d like me to ask something, please let me know in the comments section below.
This call is the fourth in a series, which has also included Rep. George Miller, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers, and Sen. Amy Klochubar. All have spoken out about the importance of transparency in the health care debate and beyond. Here is Rep. Miller, exerpted from a transcript of a call last week:
Nancy Watzman: And I’d like to ask you a very quick question as representative of the Sunlight Foundation which cares very much about transparency in government. I’m wondering what will you see transparency playing in this, you know, in the debate and what role you think it should play?
George Miller: Well, you know, I think it’s a very important part of this debate. As you know when we finally passed the three bills prior to the August break they were up on the Internet.
My Committee site, my personal site got an exceptional number of hits from people who either read it or in fact downloaded it. It was quite amazing the number of – numbers of people who downloaded it.
And I assume the other committees and the speaker site and other sites in the Congress got those same kinds of requests. As we now near the end of this process, when this bill is finalized, I mean, as I said earlier we’re going to go to the Congressional Budget Office, we’ll get new costs and then we’ll have to make changes according to that.
And then when we’re ready to introduce the bill, when the bill’s introduced that bill will be on the Internet for 72 hours. And if there is a manager’s amendment which would be – usually it deals with making relatively small changes but it could be some other issue that pops up.
And if that manager’s amendment – when it is approved by the Rules Committee that will also have to be on there for 72 hours. So in my, you know, ordinarily around here you introduce the bill.
That bill would be on the Internet for 72 hours. During that time you might be putting together a manager’s amendment so – and that manager’s amendment is approved by the Rules Committee.
Another 72 hours would run so you can see here spaces of time, you know, made – whether it’s two 72-hour periods or something – somewhat longer than that. But the final drafts of the bill and the manager’s amendment will both be available on the Internet for that period of time. Speaker Pelosi is committed to that and the rest of the issue is committed to that.
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This Week In Transparency – June 19, 2009
Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from this week:
In Sunday’s print edition, The New York Times editorialized about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordering electronic disclosure of lawmakers’ expense spending. They also encouraged the Senate to open up as well. Candidates for the Senate are the only federal candidates who fail to make their campaign finances available online in a timely fashion. “A measure to finally prod the Senate into modern times with electronic campaign filing awaits action, providing Republican obstruction can be defused. That’s not enough. It should be followed up by the Senate also putting expenses on line.” Getting the Senate to pass timely online disclosure is a Sunlight priority.
Also in its Sunday edition, The Virginia-Pilot editorialized about Congress opening up its data online. “Until recently, members of Congress have expended little effort to make their reports viewable online. But recent stories by The (Wall Street) Journal, as well as lobbying by government watchdog groups, apparently spurred lawmakers into action.” The editorial notes Sunlight pointed out that (Pelosi’s) plan calls for the reports to be posted in a “portable document format,” or PDF, file. However, a searchable database would be much more user-friendly, allowing taxpayers to pull up and compare multiple reports.
NextGov’s Aliya Sternstein reports on Sunlight obtaining and posting a version of the RFP for the Recovery.gov redesign. Sternstein quotes Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs director, “We’re not in government contracting, but we’re in transparency … and it’s crazy that the only place you can get this RFP” on Sunlight’s Web site. “The reason that we’re doing this is so we can inject ourselves into the process and expose it to the public,” Clay said. “We’ll be blogging about the whole thing. This Web site is supposed to serve the people, so let the people build it to their specifications.”
On Tuesday, MAPLight.org and their partner the California First Amendment Coalition achieved a huge victory when the State of California agreed to give the public access to the state government database of how state lawmakers vote. In December, the two groups filed a lawsuit seeking access to legislative votes. In response, the state has set up a database of Senate and Assembly bills and votes that it updates daily. MAPLight is working to combine data on all contributions California state legislators receive with the new database of how each politician votes. “It will combine data on all money given to members of the California state legislature with the newly available database of how each politician votes, revealing patterns of money and influence never before possible,” Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, blogged about the victory for open government earlier in the week. The Berkeley, Calif., -based MAPLight constructed a similar database on Congress, which The New York Times’ Freakonomics blog highlighted on Tuesday.
