Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and Congressional political news. This week I have highlights from Hawaii, New York, Tennessee, New Hampshire, and Florida.

In Hawaii, iLind.net goes through the state ethics commission’s failure to act when the Hawaii Superferry, Inc didn’t fully disclose their lobbying efforts. iLind.net makes a good case for why the ethics commission should be more forceful when these types of violations occur.

In New York, Politics on the Hudson has created a database that shows what earmarks Albany legislators brought to their districts.

TerryFrank.net in Tennessee highlights, an editorial in Tennessean, on the status of an open records bill in the state legislature. The bill has been passed out of committee but with amendments to make it more difficult to gain access to public records.  A provision would lenghthen the time requests can be complied with and would give different access to documents for in state and out of state citizens. 

GraniteGrok of New Hampshire has a great post about the movement to put more local government information online by the citizens of Gilford, New Hampshire. There has been a move to look at what improvements could be made to the local government’s Web site. It also highlights the work of SunshineReview.org, who have a very handy ten point government website transparency checklist.

I have been meaning to highlight Florida Politics for their weekly roundup on the bills that having been going through the Florida state legislature.

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I have highlights this week from Delaware, North Dakota, New York and Earmark Corner.

DelawarePolitics.net reports that the State Senate Minority Leader Charlie Copeland will support the FOIA request for Citizens for Clean Power for documents and expenditures from recent Energy Committee hearings about wind power. “I fully support and have led this General Assembly on the issue of transparency in government,” said Copeland. “I believe that if tax dollars are involved, people have a right to know how those dollars were spent. I fully support the release of these documents.” Excellent point Sen. Copeland, keep honoring those FOIA requests.

The Say Anything blog, in North Dakota, reports that a new database was created to show the budget and expenses for all the school systems in North Dakota.

In New York, Room Eight highlights an article in the NY Daily News that shows 40% of City Councilors have a conflict of interest with non profits that receive state money. This story comes at the tail of the controversy surrounding City Council Speaker Christine Quinn creation of fake non profits to funnel city money through. These stories make it obvious that non profits also need some transparency in regards to their relationship to elected officials.

Earmark Corner has highlights from Florida and South Carolina.

South Carolina Politics Today reports that the State House has just passed a bill that would require lawmakers to fill out a form when making budget requests so they can be identified with a potential earmark. This is a great transparency measure that will bring the earmark process out into the open.

The All Florida Blog lists some of the earmarks coming to the Tampa area from the state budget. It is important to see where earmarks are going and how much they are.

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This week I have highlights from Tennessee, South Carolina, Oregon, New Jersey, Minnesota, Delaware and Hawaii.

In Tennessee, Knox Views reports that the Knox County has put the campaign financial disclosure reports online for all candidates in Knox County races. The financial disclosure forms are pdfs of the actual paper reports and put on the election commissions’s Web site.

In South Carolina, SC6 has three very interesting posts investigating the campaign contributions given to Rep. Jim Clyburn. Part one looks into Rep. Clyburn’s campaign donors and where his contributions are coming from and how many of them are coming from constituents versus out of staters. Part two looks at companies that have never contributed to Rep. Clyburn in the past but suddenly started and then received a federal grant. The third part goes into the interesting donations coming from a New York City based corporate law firm that gives barely any money to federal level candidates outside New York but have given to Rep. Clyburn. These posts are interesting and are another reason, for why it’s important, to have campaign donations available on the Federal Election Commision’s Web site and OpenSecrets.org. Good job SC6.

In Oregon, Orygun has a great post that thoroughly explains the issues happening with the Oregon Revised Statutes that I highlighted earlier this week.

PolitickerNJ.com has a great March Madness esque competition to find the smartest New Jersey legislator. All you do is vote on which lawmaker you think is intellectually smarter. While I don’t know if someone can really measure someone else’s intelligence without knowing them, it is a fascinating way to see what constituents think about their lawmakers.

In Minnesota, Bluestem Prairie has a list of federal grants Rep. Tim Walz got (correction: I misunderstood Rep. Walz announced these grants did not get them) for area airports.

Two bloggers in Delaware want a state spending database and can’t seem to understand what could be causing state legislators to not mandate one. DelawarePolitics.net writes a post about a new law under consideration that would be put the spending for school systems online and also would introduce a state budget spending database. He even goes into details about what other states spent on a database and what it would cost Delaware since FedSpending.org became open source. Kilroy’s Delaware highlights TheNewsJournals state spending database and asks why Delaware can’t get this done.

In Hawaii, Poinography highlights a post at National Conference of State Legislator’s blog about how legislative voting systems don’t review voting by legislator. He then goes on to say Hawaii also doesn’t and you have to go through thousands of bill status pages to get the information. He might even take the initiative to “write a perl script able to automatically extract the data from those history pages… Which means that one of the (paid!) computer geeks at the Lege should be able to do the same.”

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This week I have highlights from Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey and Alabama.

In Virginia, Bacon’s Rebellion has a great post on the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority asking people to put up YouTube videos about how miserable their commutes are. The NVTA is hoping that the northern Virgina legislators will see them and will create NVTA taxes and fees and enact a statewide transportation plan. The second half of the post asks, since NVTA is a partial state agency, if it is wrong to use state money to lobby for state funds.

Howard County Maryland Blog has an update on the status of legislation that would create a state spending database, the bill just passed the Maryland House and Senate and is waiting for the governor’s signature. Also the Howard County Council has unanimously approved a measure to have a county level spending database created by 2010.

In Missouri, the Turner Report posts about how Gov. Matt Blunt has two siblings that are registered lobbyists in the state of Missouri. I wonder what Thanksgiving dinner is like?

In New Jersey, the Ruins of Trenton has a post on a bill that would allow municipalities and government entities to satisfy public notice requirements for certain announcements by placing the notices online. The bill just passed assembly and is on its way to the state senate. Assemblyman Cryan said it best "With Internet access and usage continually on the rise, it makes good sense to allow the public to access meeting notices and other government documents electronically." I couldn’t agree more, however, newspapers aren’t too happy. Currently all notices have to be posted in newspapers which means government agencies have to buy a a large protion of ad space.

In Alabama, Doc’s Political Parlor has a great post discussing a statement made in the state senate by State Senator Scott Beason. Sen. Beason asked the body if the legislature was “shirking” their duties by having the people vote on laws. Beason said, “It is up to us to look at the issue, study the issue, debate the issue, come up with the best possible legislation for the people of the state - the best we can do. Then it’s up to the people to decide if what we did was right.” The discourse about what the job of the legislature is and how much citizens should participate is definitely more topical now with more participartory tools and the internet. Sunlight has recently encountered this discussion in response to our latest project PublicMarkup.org.

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This week I have highlights from Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New Jersey and New York.

In Oregon, Open Government News and Issues, spends some time talking about using Legistorm’s database containing information on privately funded congressional travel. Oregon’s own Senator Smith, and his staff have taken trips totaling $190,000 or more. Rep. Blumenauer has 70 approved trips for a total $156,000.

Pennsylvania’s KeyStone Politics blog highlights a tentative $400 million contract granted to Unisys for managing the state’s data center. Gov. Rendell’s approval of this contract caused a stir in the state house when lawmakers asking why competitive bidding wasn’t considered.

South Carolina Politics Today highlights a new state spending database. The new website allows people to find itemized agency spending by month, as well as year-to-date agency spending by several categories. State expenses are broken-down by whether General Fund, an earmark or federal money was the source of the funding. This data can also downloaded by anyone. Good Job South Carolina!

In New York an interesting conversation is happening between three New York bloggers (Rochester Turning, Fighting 29th, and the Ontario Republican) and the local television station 13WHAM’s blogger about whether bloggers are journalists and traditional media. Read this ongoing conversation about the changing nature of news and media.

Earmark Corner:

Pennsyltucky Politics blog talks about Rep. Todd Platts pledge to not request earmarks. Rep. Platts has claimed earmarks have been used to do some good things for the district but the process of getting them needs to be reformed so he won’t be requesting any in the upcoming appropriation bills.

In South Caronlina, Palmetto State Progressive, reports that Sen. DeMint has supported $30 million in defense department earmarks despite his well known opposition to them.

In New Jersey, Blog the Fifth, has a series of posts on identifying who the recipents are of the $2.5 million in earmarks that Rep. Garrett sponsored. Some digging revealed that $1.5 million, that is for 2kw Military Tactical Generator Improvements, went to Dewey Electronics. The other million, was for Lightweight Munitions and Surveillance System (LMSS) for Unmanned Air & Ground Vehicles, went to Imperial Machine & Tool, Inc. Good sleuthing Blog the Fifth!

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This week I have highlights from New York, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Maryland, Delaware, Hawaii, Alabama, and Iowa.

In New York, the Fighting 29^th, gives us an update on last week’s story about Rep. Kuhl’s trip to Brazil. The story produced by WHAM-13 notes that after the original story Rep. Kuhl’s office sent the news station a list of the expenses except for how much the air travel was. Apparently the government does not disclose how much military travel costs. After Rep. Kuhl’s office sent them an itinerary with flight hours they figured the airfare cost $28,000. I wonder why they wouldn’t disclose that?

Keystone Politics in Pennsylvania highlights the open records legislation that has been approved unanimously by the state house and is being sent to the governor to sign. This right to know law makes all government records public unless the document’s custodian can prove that they are classified.

Lowell at BadLand Blues highlights an interview with the governor about a bill regarding open government. The governor feels that open disclosure could violate privacy rights of citizens. The interview also gives the sponsor of the bill a chance to respond to the Governor’s accusations.

The Howard County Maryland Blog highlights the Maryland Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2008. This bill is being sponsored by Howard County delegates and will allow citizens to see how the state of Maryland spends tax money.

DelawarePolitics.net talks about the nepotism in Delaware. He would like to know how many family members of elected officials are being employeed by Delaware. Fair question maybe its time for people to investigate these links like we did in Congress is a family business.

ILind.net of Hawaii talks about his involvement the Sunshine Blogger Project. The goal of the project is to find out whether America’s governors archive the e-mail correspondences that go into and out of their offices. More importantly can they provide copies of those e-mails when members of the public request them. ILind request covered all governmental emails sent or received by the governor’s office during the four day period of February 1-4, 2008. Hopefully the bloggers participating in this project can get some positive disclosure.

In Alabama, Doc’s Political Parlor, talks about the new state senate bill that will ban PAC to PAC contributions. It does not, however, ban PACs from giving to political parties which could create a loophole. The loophole is being actively discussed and will be PACs contributing to parties, who will then, contribute to another PAC. Two steps forward one step back.

In Iowa Cyclone Conservatives points people to the Facebook and MySpace pages of Reps. Steve King and Tom Latham and Sen. Chuck Grassly. It’s great to see elected officials taking advantage of a new medium to connect with constituents.

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This week I have highlights from Idaho, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Washington.

In Idaho, IdaBlue, has a new blog roll category, “legiblogs”, this lists all the state legislators that have blogs (or blogislators). There are four blogs currently listed and they all seemed to be updated regularly. It’s great to see elected officials considering blogging as a way to communicate with their constituents.

In Louisiana, Blagueur, highlights a Washington Post article talking about Rep. Richard H. Baker who is in talks to become president of a hedge fund lobby. Also in Louisiana, In the Loop highlights the historic state house organizational session. This included a day long briefing on Louisiana’s Code of Governmental Ethics. This was meant to lead the State Reps through the ethics code and educated them about the requirements for financial disclosure and lobbyist regulation. This was a great opportunity to learn Louisiana’s Ethics Code before the special sessions in February on ethics reform.

In Missouri, the Turner Report, talks about how State Rep. Dwight Scharnhorst introduced bill HB 1548, which, he admitted was written by a lobbyist. This bill would exempt sales tax on purchases of “equipment, machinery, materials, supplies, fixtures, and shoes used in the sport of bowling.” A little more research shows that this bill was previously submitted last year by Rep. Ron Richard, the House Speaker-elect, who happens to own a chain of bowling alleys. How convenient.

In Nebraska, Smith Watch, has a very interesting summary of Rep. Adrian Smith’s first year in Congress. Complete with voting summary and some analysis of who gave him money and how often he voted in their favor.

In New Mexico, LP at New Mexico FBIHOP, highlights the very cool The Santa Fe Reporter’s Muckraker’s Guide to New Mexico. The guide has links to campaign finance, earmark, crime, and various other information any good muckraker would want.

In Washington, Olympia Time, highlights how the state legislature now has RSS feeds for bills which will allow people to subscribe to bills and track changes.

Earmark Corner

The usual ruckus around earmarks has slowed to a disgruntled murmur with people mostly focusing on the election. I did want to highlight a great summary done by Smith Watch on Rep. Adrian’s Smith earmark requests and his opinion on the status of earmarking.

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This week I have highlights from Georgia, Missouri, Michigan, Maryland, and am introducing Earmark Corner.

Georgia’s Tondee’s Tavern, went to a Senate Town Hall meeting and taped the answers. This is a great example of how bloggers are ensuring that local events are covered.

Missouri’s Turner Report, highlights state Senator Kevin Engler (Farmington) bill that would ban public officials from accepting meals, beverages, tickets to sporting events, and other forms of entertainment from lobbyists. This is a big lobbying reform bill, and Local Sunlight will be keeping tabs on its progress.

Right Michigan has an interview with State Representative Brian Cally (Portland). Blogger Nick asks him a few questions, including:

Anything else you’d like to discuss or address with the bloggers at Right Michigan

Open government is good government. Perhaps the biggest weakness in state government today is that much of the decision making process is not open to public scrutiny. Take the budget debate for example. Many of the details on line item spending are kept secret, even from the legislature who is charged with approval of the budgets. I’ll bet the budget would be balanced without tax increases if every single line item of state government spending was published on www.michigan.gov.

Kudos to Rep. Cally for being open to the bloggers and good government.

Maryland’s Annapolis Politics talks about County Executive John R. Leopold. Apparently, Mr. Leopold supported a bill to allow a developer to build a golf course. This developer just happened to hosted a fundraiser for Mr. Leopold and raised tens of thousands of dollars for his campaign four days before Mr. Leopold publicly said he supported the golf course. It makes appreciate MAPLight.org a whole lot more.

Bloggers love/hate earmarks. My travels through the blogosphere have led me to find a lot of attention given to earmarks. So in order to keep Local Sunlight by being swallowed by earmark highlights I am introducing Earmark Corner. Gather the kids around the fire and lets see some earmarking from Kentucky, North Carolina, and New Mexico.

Kentucky’s The Rural Democrat, highlights Rep. Hal Rogers $90 million in federal funds for a proposed highway. This and the drip pans Rep. Rogers is having a pork attack.

Over in North Carolina at BlueNC Drama Queen wrote about how Rep. Patrick McHenry who hates earmarks but didn’t think it was hypocritical to ask for 3.5 million in them.

New Mexico FBIHOP’s LP highlights Sen. Pete Domenici’s 25 billions “gift” to nuclear power companies in the omnibus energy bill.

That’s all I have for this week. Thanks local bloggers. Keep the Sunlight shining!

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This week I have highlights from Iowa, Michigan, Hawaii, South Dakota, and Texas.

Blog for Iowa, reports that the Iowan House of Representatives has a WordPress Blog! You can use it to get updates on what is going on in the Iowan house. The blog features audio from the House Chamber, calendar of events, and will also use content from YouTube and Facebook.

In Michigan, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood has a great post investigating a few earmarks. The post talks about why a particular earmark is necessary and whether Rep. Rogers is playing both sides of the fence by being against certain earmarks but asking for some as well.

Hawaii Blog reports that the Hawaii State Legislature is looking for a full time year round blogger. The position comes with full benefits! Today’s your last day to apply!

In South Dakota, S.D. Watch reports a little transparency reversal. Apparently the State of South Dakota is suing a judge because he will not disclose information about a meeting with defense attorneys.

In Texas, Big Houston talks about how the city of Houston is posting health inspection information online but isn’t posting all of them until some public pressure made them change their minds. So everyone visit Houston and avoid places that have health violations. I wonder if other cities do this.

Shine on Sunlighters Shine on!

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Update: Roll Call is reporting that this was an issue with the Internet company hired by dozens of congressmen to run their Web sites:

"Smith’s site started blocking blogspot domains three months ago after GovTrends re-designed it and blocked readers routed from certain sites that could pose security risks, using a “blacklist” generated by Web security company gotroot.com. The blocking snafu seems to have been put to rest, at least temporarily. GovTrends unblocked blogspot from linking to Congressional clients on Tuesday, according to the company’s vice president, Ab Emam. But Emam says they’ll be closely monitoring traffic and if spam increases or there is harm to the sites, they could start blocking again without warning."

The antithesis of this rule would be to block links from other sites on the Web. That’s what Rep. Adrian Smith is doing. Smith is currently blocking all incoming links to his Web site from the .blogspot domain. This is apparently because an anti-Smith blog, Smith Watch, has been heavily criticizing him and attacking his record in Congress. The blogger at Smith Watch was having trouble linking to Smith’s site and asked the tech folks at Blogger to weigh in; this is part of their response:

The problem isn’t with your link. It’s with THEIR server. It’s rejecting (giving a 404) when the link comes from blogspot. … He’s blocking requests when it comes from bloggers.

Ok, to explain. Whenever you click on a link, the browser sends off a request to the server…yadda yadda…included in that is the referrer of the page you came from. His Official Government Website, that WE pay for (well I’m guessing on that part), is throwing up a 404 when the referrer heading comes from blogspot.com. I tested from one of my test blogs and it doesn’t work either, also uploaded a test page to googlepages (a different domain) and it works. So it really is blogspot they are blocking via the referrer.

… Congressman Adrian Smith is afraid of Bloggers!

I think the key here is that, yes, we do pay for these official government Web sites and Rep. Adrian Smith thinks that he can decide who can link to and discuss his role as an elected representative of the people of the third district of Nebraska. This is a truly terrible example of a congressman miserably failing in his use of the Web and appears to be an attempt to silence an online voice by nullifying their ability to link. As anybody who’s read anything about the Web (David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous springs to mind) will tell you, links are the glue that hold the Web together and allow communication across platforms and channels. Without links there is no Web. I’ll leave it to the reader to determine what this says about Congressman Smith.

Hat tip: Eric Nebraska at Daily Kos.

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