The House appears to be on the ball in pushing back against the kind of executive branch secrecy that Ellen wrote about here. Just a couple of hours ago they passed a bill, H.R. 6575, the Over-Classification Reduction Act, by voice vote. The stated purpose of the bill is to “increase Governmentwide information sharing and the availability of information to the public by applying standards and practices to reduce improper classification.” Now if only the Senate could get on board and pass the numerous anti-secrecy bills passed out of the House.

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We’re continuing the Sunshine Week festivities with two events dedicated to promoting a more open government. We invite you to join us, and for those of you who can’t make it to Washington, DC, we encourage you to watch the webcasts of the events.

Today at 1pm EDT, in conjunction with Open the Government, Greg Elin of Sunlight Labs will moderate a panel to demonstrate new ways nonprofits have made government data open and useful to the public. Panelists include:

• Sheila Krumholz of Center for Responsive Politics
• David Moore of OpenCongress.org
• Sean Moulton of FedSpending.org
• Daniel X. O’Neil of EveryBlock

The event will be held in the Holeman Lounge of the National Press Club in DC, but you can watch it live online. (You’ll need to register first. The registration page is the same page you’ll visit to view the webcast.)

Then tomorrow at 1:30 EDT, Sunlight and Omidyar Network will host a press briefing featuring Lawrence Lessig, who will announce the launch of his new Change Congress project. Lessig, renowned expert in intellectual property, founder of Creative Commons and Sunlight Advisory Board member, recently changed his mission to combat the influence of money in American democracy. The event will be held in the Murrow, White and Lisagor rooms of the National Press Club in Washington, and will be webcast here.

Hope you can join us!

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In all the festivities surrounding the New Year’s holiday, you might have missed President Bush signing the Open Government Act of 2007 on Monday without comment, the first reform of the Freedom of Information Act in a decade. David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Center for Citizen Media, hails the act for expanding the definition of who is representative of the news media. "This change would significantly benefit bloggers and non-traditional journalists by making them eligible for reduced processing and duplication fees that are available (to members of the media)."

The Associated Press reports that the new law "is aimed at reversing an order by former Attorney General John Ashcroft in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, in which he instructed agencies to lean against releasing information when there was uncertainty about how doing so would affect national security."

(Updated: The Associated Press reported on the new law; the First Amendment Center did not issue a statement as previously reported.)

Ardia also lists other reforms brought by the legislation:

• Broadening the scope of information that can be requested by including government contracting information held by private contractors;
• Assigning public tracking numbers to all requests;
• Denying agencies that exceed the 20-day deadline for responses the right to charge requesters for search or copying costs;
• Making it easier to collect attorneys’ fees for those who must sue to force compliance with their FOIA requests; and
• Establishing an office at the National Archives to accept citizen complaints, issue opinions on requests, and foster best practices within the government.

Steven Aftergood, writing at Secrecy News, voices a tempered view of the reform, saying that the act "does not touch the root of government secrecy, namely the decision to withhold information." The reform does not impact "any of the more than one hundred statutory exemptions from disclosure under the FOIA," he writes, "and it does not address the proper scope or application of the classification system." That’s a task for another day, he adds.

David Corn at MoJo Blog agrees, saying that the reform will likely only mean more timely denials of information. "Well, at least I won’t have to wait so long to be turned down," he writes.

At least the new law doesn’t appear to make things worse. That, in and of itself, is an improvement.

Update: Patrice McDermott, Director of OpenTheGovernment.org writes that the Associated Press reports that the new law "is aimed at reversing an order by former Attorney General John Ashcroft in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, in which he instructed agencies to lean against releasing information when there was uncertainty about how doing so would affect national security."

The law does NOT do this. Steve noted this in his blog and I had noted it to the FOI-L(istserv). The House version passed last March had this provision, but no Senate version ever did.

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…but lots of times just not available through FOIA. The Sunshine in Government Initiative, a coalition of media groups that promotes accessibility, accountability and openness in government policies, has launched the FOIA Files, a repository of descriptions of news and investigative articles that relied on the Freedom of Information Act to pry loose information from the government. It’s searchable by agency, date, congressional district and state, and by whether or not the news organization that did the story had to go to court to get the records it sought.

I couldn’t help noticing a fair number of entries like this one:

The Macon (Ga.) Telegraph, in a report about the public’s frequent unawareness of the presence of dangerous chemicals in their neighborhoods, found that the Environmental Protection Agency refused to provide even redacted copies of risk management plan summaries for five counties in and around Macon. The newspaper requested the summaries under FOIA and the EPA acknowledged they are public, but refused to release them because they contain information about worst-case scenarios.

Following FOIA seems to be regarded as optional by a lot of government agencies.

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President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Freedom of Information Act law on July 4, 1966. In doing so he declared: "A democracy works best when the people have all the information that the security of the nation will permit." Indeed, when members of the public have diligently pursued information under the FOIA, they have identified government waste and mismanagement and exposed significant controversies about government programs.

Now the 41st birthday of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is upon us and a coalition of groups is urging the Congress to pass a bill — currently (and ironically) locked behind a closed door — that would reform the FOIA and make it work better for the public. The OPEN Government Act (S. 849) would enact common-sense reforms to the FOIA and put in place incentives for federal agencies to process FOIA requests from the public in a timely manner. The bill is supported by a large and diverse coalition.

Let's make this 4th of July "Information Independence Day."

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What is it with bills that create more open and transparent government and secret holds? Last week, a Republican senator placed a secret hold on the OPEN Government Act, a bill that would expand and fill the holes in FOIA. OPEN is cosponsored by Senators Pat Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX), who have pushed for greater FOIA rights for some time now. As soon as they get the ability to pass the bill someone in Cornyn's party blocks it. We know that the secret hold comes from a Republican because it came through the leadership. This is yet another instance of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) hiding the identity of a secret holder. Josh at the Seminal has put together a list of senators to call and ask if they placed the secret hold. If you have a moment you should stop by and give your senator a call. Openthegovernment.org, Public Citizen, and the Federation of American Scientists have also put out a call to arms to unmask the secret holder. Do your part and make the call. If they can't end the practice of secret holds anytime soon than we may as well make the secrecy obsolete by unmasking the secret senator every single time.

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We’ve been following the progress of a couple of bills making their way through Congress. H.R. 1309 puts a little more teeth in our Freedom of Information Act–the main lever that the press and the public has for prying documents out of the executive branch (and see here for useful FOIA tips maintained by Investigative Reporters & Editors), while S. 223 would, for the first time, require campaign committees of Senate candidates to file their contribution and expenditure information electronically with the Federal Election Commission rather than sending in stacks of paper (both House and Presidential candidates file electronically).

There are other measures that are worth noting as well (with votes on all scheduled in the House for today and tomorrow). For me, the most interesting is H.R. 1254, which would force presidential library foundations to make their donor lists public. It is unseemly enough to have a foundation seeking millions of dollars from donors–corporate and individual, U.S. and foreign–to build what is essentially a monument to a former president; that they can do so anonymously, while that president is still in office, is a recipe for corruption (The name Marc Rich immediatley springs to mind for some reason…)

H.R. 1255 establishes procedures for releasing presidential records, and overturning the 2001 executive order from President George W. Bush that sharply restricted (and in many cases out-and-out eliminated) public access to these government documents. I’d actually like to see a government records act that goes a little further–former government officials generally have not only much better but also lengthy periods of exclusive access to their records. In 1992, Steve Weinberg wrote a book (along with my old shop, the Center for Public Integrity, called For Their Eyes Only: How Presidential Appointees Treat Public Documents As Personal Property that documented the ways in which presidential appointees “take classified documents with them after leaving public service, use the materials to write lucrative memoirs, and then seal off these documents for decades from historians, journalists, and other researchers.” It’s not just presidential papers to which the public needs better access.

H.R. 985 expands whistleblower protections–protecting agency employees who report waste, fraud, abuse, illegalities and other malfeasance to members of Congress or Inspectors General from administration retribution.

Finally, H.R. 1362 addresses shortcomings in the government’s relationships with private contractors. Rep. Henry Waxman, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, has a summary of the bill’s provisions here. Just a quick observation on this–I’d like to have seen a provision that would try to determine why, for so many contracts for which there is open bidding, only one bidder shows up (which seems to me to be almost as bad as no-bid contracts, and as much of a problem). In 2005, the last year for which we have complete data, ten percent of contracts–worth nearly $40 billion–were awarded under that scenario, according to our friends at FedSpending.org.

All these bills would add to our ability to know what government is up to and keep it accountable–not a bad couple of day’s work for the House if they pass them…

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I was lucky enough to be invited to the bill signing ceremony for S. 2590, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, at the Old Executive Office Building this morning. President Bush’s remarks are here; Glenn Reynolds has a post here; and Mark Tapscott previewed the event this morning. It was nice to meet the two of them in the flesh, as well as a fair number of the folks who are part of the Exposing Earmarks coalition.

It occurred to me while I was sitting there that, had it not been for the Out the Secret Holder campaign–in which citizens not only identified the two Senators blocking the bill (Sen. Ted Stevens and Sen. Robert Byrd) but also let 98 other Senators know that opennness in government was an important issue–there probably would not have been a bill signing today. Sunlight really is the best disinfectant, and let’s hope the federal spending database that this bill creates will provide much more of that. I’m going to try to keep a close eye on the process–we all need to make sure that the database is all that it can be.

In his remarks, Bush said,

You know, we spend a lot of time and a lot of effort collecting your money, and we should show the same amount of effort in reporting how we spend it. Every year, the federal government issues more than $400 billion in grants, and more than $300 billion in contracts to corporations, associations, and state and local governments. Taxpayers have a right to know where that money is going, and you have a right to know whether or not you’re getting value for your money.

I’ll leave aside the obvious criticism I could make (that the IRS, which audits fewer than one percent of income tax returns, guestimates it misses something like $100 billion a year in collections)(okay, I’m not leaving aside that criticism), and instead focus on the “knowing where your money goes” part of that equation–and particularly on the nettlesome details of that. On the contracting side, for example, we need to see not just the contracting agency, the company winning the contract, the amount of money, and the nature of the work to be performed, but also information on whether or not there was competitive bidding; if so, how many companies bid for the contract; how did the original request for proposals read (if that’s how the procurement process was handled); information on whether the contractor was chosen by a member of Congress through an earmark or at the discretion of the government agency; information on whether the contracting entity is performing the work or in turn having a subcontractor perform parts or all of the work and for how much money–these are all just off the top of my head, but they’re something of a starting point. Agencies already collect a lot of this information (on no-bid vs. closed competition vs. full competition; on whether contracts are indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity, cost plus or fixed fee); the rest shouldn’t be difficult to start collecting going forward. I’m not as familiar with the grantmaking side of federal spending, but it seems to me that a similar level of transparency regarding who authorized the spending (whether it’s Congress through an earmark or block grant or federal formula for apportioning money to the states, or at the discretion of an agency), whether the grantee will perform the work or whether a subcontractor will do it, should be disclosed.

There’s a fairly detailed discussion of these issues from the Senate testimony of Gary Bass of OMB Watch (full disclosure: they’re a Sunlight grantee, and reading what Gary had to say about S. 2590 this will give you a pretty good idea of why).

Let’s return a minute to the President’s remarks. He said:

By allowing Americans to Google their tax dollars, this new law will help taxpayers demand greater fiscal discipline. In other words, we’re arming our fellow citizens with the information that will enable them to demand we do a better job — a better job in the executive branch and better job in the legislative branch.

Information on earmarks will no longer be hidden deep in the pages of a federal budget bill, but just a few clicks away. This legislation will give the American people a new tool to hold their government accountable for spending decisions. When those decisions are made in broad daylight, they will be wiser and they will be more restrained.

Okay — that’s the goal. Let’s keep an eye on whether the database will have the kind of data it needs to bring disclosure of earmarks and other questionable federal spending decisions from deep within the pages of a federal budget bill or from backroom decisions granting no-bid contracts to the light of day through online transparency.

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Earlier in the week, my colleague Paul Blumenthal expressed justifiable dismay over a report in The Washington Post arguing that the ethical problems of Congress–which can be viewed both as failings of individuals and as the product of an institutional inability to come to grips with shady behavior–was having little resonance as an issue in the minds of voters. Paul offered plenty of examples in his post to counter that argument, and more here on the bipartisan, citizen-driven effort to make the doings of elected government officials more accountable to their bosses (that’s us citizens, by the way).

More evidence continues to pour in. Paul Kiel of this Justin Rood piece on Rep. John Murtha — who, according to this report in the Hill, is lining up support to become majority leader should the Democrats retake the House in November. Rood writes:

If the Dems take control of the House in November, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), now lauded by Democratic activists for his tough stand on Iraq, is poised to retake the helm of an appropriations panel charged with spending hundreds of billions of dollars on defense-related projects, which he last chaired in the early 1990s. He may even ascend to be Majority Leader in a Democratically controlled House.

Yet Murtha — who U.S. News and World Report once called “one of Capitol Hill’s most accomplished masters at the art of pork” — presides over a tightly connected network of favored lobbyists, former staffers and major campaign contributors that bears a striking resemblance to those maintained by some of the tarnished Republicans he would likely replace.

Murtha’s office declined my request for comment on this article.

Take Jerry Lewis (R-CA). Under FBI investigation, Lewis — now the chair of the entire Appropriations Committee — until two years ago chaired the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which Murtha is in line to take over.

“They’re very similar,” Melanie Sloan told me. Sloan, head of the D.C.-based watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, is a former federal prosecutor. “They’re both using their positions to financially benefit those close to them.” Her self-described “progressive” group is investigating Murtha’s activities, and recently placed him on a short list of “members to watch” for possible corruption.

Murtha won his reputation by setting up a neat, closed circle of largesse, not unlike the one belonging to Lewis.

Both lawmakers have directed millions in government spending to a handful of organizations and individuals who in turn donate to their campaigns, and hire their former aides as lobbyists.

For its part, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington recently published its list of the 20 most ethically challenged members of Congress. I think rankings like these are beside the point (it’s awfully hard to quantify this stuff in any meaningful way), but what’s interesting is the number of members they found, and that they probably could have added quite a few more: it’s surprising that they didn’t include Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey or Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington (see here for a brief summary of questions raised about both lawmakers).

Meanwhile, Liz Mair of GOP Progress is banging away at Sen. Trent Lott and Sen. Mitch McConnell over their roles in blocking electronic filing of campaign finance dislcosure reports for Senate candidates (which would tell us who their big donors are sooner, rather than later).

As Glenn Reynolds put it, “the ‘culture of corruption’ is not the culture of a party, but the culture of a political class.” I’d add only that the antidote is an informed and active citizenry, and a healthy dose of sunlight.

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Brent Cunningham of the Columbia Journalism Review poses this rhetorical question at the end of a post on transparency in journalism. What he is referring to is the push by many bloggers for journalists and their publishers to provide information regarding the author’s political background, affiliations, and biases toward the story. “A reporter covering a proposed smoking ban, for example, should tell readers whether she smokes,” Cunningham writes, “The assumption being that if she smokes, we can infer that her sympathies lie with opponents of the ban, and vice versa.” Cunningham, before posing his final question, concludes by stating, “To assume that we can know what someone thinks by identifying their personal traits, habits, and predilections is a dangerous notion, and really has nothing to do with clarity.” So, can transparency in the political sphere become “a form of blindness”?

Recently DC City Council member Carol Schwartz (R-At Large) wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post opposing open government and transparency. Schwartz stated that the council “would not have been able to negotiate effectively without feeling that they had to censor themselves.” William Stuntz, writing in The New Republic, makes a similar argument against transparency. Stuntz, taking his cue from Walter Lippmann, writes that activist government requires secrecy; that C-Span has effectively made the Congress entirely unpredictable and another place for campaigning and empty rhetoric; that FDR’s New Deal, the civil rights legislation of the 60s, and World War II would not have been successful if we had full transparency and openness.

Certainly there is an ongoing debate as to how much the citizenry should know at any given time, just look at the debate raging over the New York Times’ revelations about the administration’s financial tracking program aimed at terrorists. While the role of the press in America is to be a government watchdog, citizens are taking on this role more and more frequently thanks to the Internet. One could argue that you can try and keep something secret but it will most likely wind up being discovered anyways. For congressmen, and the executive, the appearance of opacity — uncovered in these revelations — can be politically damaging in this age of free flowing information. Corporations understand that transparency, or at least the appearance of transparency, is incredibly popular these days. Mark Tapscott recently revealed what he believes to be the reason that Schwartz supports closed government, “to keep the obvious collusion being sanctioned by government between special interests from being seen by voters?” Transparency forces the justification of such collusion.

In Tapscott’s argument we see that opacity in government makes us blind, which we already knew. However, what happens when we have some transparency? We hear stories like the Jack Abramoff scandal and we see how campaign contributions can be used to influence votes. Suddenly every campaign contribution looks like a bribe and every action looks like it’s bought. A recent New York Times article detailed the large sums of money that Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) was pulling in from her former foes the health care and pharmaceutical industries. Has she sold herself out? Is the industry making in “investment” in a potential future President? Or does this relate to a psychological condition that Clinton has obtained from her massive defeat on health care reform in the early 90s? We don’t know because we don’t know enough, thus we make assumptions.

In this sense limited transparency can create a “kind of blindness” because we only know so much. We know that Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) engaged in a shady land deal and so some people may assume that every land deal that members are a party to are shady. If the members were more transparent this would not be a problem. The same goes for private travel, lobbyist connections, earmarks, contracts, and everything else. Full transparency could alleviate these suspicions. Unlike in Cunningham’s profession elected officials can be fired by the people and thus the people need as much information as possible to make that decision. In journalism, editors and publishers know the particular biases of journalists and they know when those journalists biases have crossed the line (Judith Miller?) and thus when to fire them.

Full transparency forces the actors in government to explain their actions to a public that finds them lacking credibility. Full transparency also forces the public to become more responsible, as it allows them to become actors in the governance process. Ed Morrissey makes this argument in relation to the debate over a proposed federal online spending database, "I predict that 10,000 blogs will be born just to focus on the spending habits of their own representatives. Constituents can use their computers to do their own research on the types of spending that their Congressmen and Senators sponsor." This may be the only way for the government, which is certainly unpopular and viewed as broken by a majority of the citizenry, to regain the trust of its guarantors; and for the people, now given the tools to engage their government, to work as a part of the process.

Mark Tapscott, who is set to testify on said online spending database, provides this quote from Thomas Jefferson, “We might hope to see the finances of the Union as clear and intelligible as a merchant’s books, so that every member of Congress and every man of any mind in this Union should be able to comprehend them, to investigate abuses, and so consequently to control them.”

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