It’s been almost three weeks since Washington lobbyists had to turn in their new lobbyist disclosure reports titled the LD-203. The new disclosure requirement is a result of the series of ethics and transparency bills passed into law last year. “The Jack Abramoff report” is how one lawyer called the new rule in “honor” of the scandal that gave great momentum to the reform, according to Roll Call (subscription required).

Last month I speculated that there should be some interesting material in these new reports. I’m proud to point to my Sunlight colleagues Bill Allison and Anupama Narayanswamy, who are doing great analysis of the disclosures. As Anu reported last week, Mark Warner, former Virginia governor and U.S. Senate candidate, has received the most cash from lobbyist so far this year, a total of $206,000.

Other investigators are finding useful information too.

(more…)

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Sunlight’s distributed effort at creating a model transparency bill - the Transparency in Government Act of 2008 - reached its next stage today. The revised version of the bill, found at PublicMarkup.org, is now open for public comment. The bill was initially opened for public comment back in March. New sections added to the bill thanks to public suggestions include improving oversight of the executive branch and provisions articulating the best methods for accessing legislative data.

I’m sure Sunlight’s John Wonderlich, who is leading this project, will be around here later to talk about the revisions and how working on a markup of a bill in an open, distributed manner has been.

Previous links about PublicMarkup.org and the Transparency in Government Act of 2008:

• PublicMarkup.org by Ellen Miller
• PublicMarkup.org’s First Week by John Wonderlich
• PublicMarkup.org at Web 2.0 Expo by John Wonderlich
• PublicMarkup.org Progress and Plan by John Wonderlich

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The hedge fund industry is courting U.S. Rep. Richard Baker (R-La.) to head their lobbying efforts, according to a report over the weekend from The Washington Post. Baker said he has not decided to take the position as president of the Managed Funds Association (MFA), but did admit that the nearly million-dollar-a-year job did "look very interesting." He informed the House Ethics Committee Friday of his talks with MFA as members of Congress are now required to do as a result of the lobbying law passed last year. Baker is the first member to meet this new requirement.

The Louisiana Republican is a longtime member of the Financial Services Committee, formerly known as the Banking Committee, and served eight years as chair of the House subcommittee on capital markets, insurance, and government sponsored enterprises. He also serves on the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit. These posts have given Baker extensive experience dealing with legislation dear to the heart of the financial sector. And it’s no surprise that the banking and investment industry has been Baker’s biggest contributor over his congressional career. The Post commented on Baker’s "dogged, though largely unsuccessful efforts to rein in" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and initiatives to limit the reach of state attorneys general.

As The Post reported, hedge funds have exploded in growth over recent years, and their aggressiveness has drawn the interest of federal and state regulators. MAF is attempting to raise its profile in Washington, and the hiring of Baker would be viewed as a step in that direction. The industry must know that a replay of last year’s fight over the obscene tax loophole for hedge fund managers is in the offing.

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Where would we be without the Internet? The very thought of not having open, free and equal access to the information, entertainment, and the myriad of ways it makes our lives easier, makes me gasp. Without it, Sunlight certainly would not exist. And while it would not be impossible for diligent researchers to bring to light the of influences affecting Congress, with the Internet and the new technologies that have grown up with it, we – the people – would have to rely on experts to spend many more days, months, years digging through dusty boxes of old paper documents in basement offices of government buildings. And we’d have to rely on the mainstream journalists to tell us what they thought we should know. The Internet changes all that.

Connected by the ‘Net, so many more of us can unite to pool our intelligence to contribute to, share and sift through massive amounts of political information. Bonded by the common interest of making Congress more accountable, geographic and social boundaries cease to exist, and just as importantly, information is broadcast to the rest of the community without relying on traditional gatekeepers.

The interconnectivity the Web provides us makes possible the kind of instantaneous collaboration we have become so accustomed to via APIs, social networking and blogging. We are only bound by the limits of our creativity and willingness to get involved.

In that spirit, Sunlight’s team created an ode to how the Web makes government transparency possible in celebration of tomorrow’s second annual OneWebDay. Taking inspiration from Earth Day, Susan Crawford, professor at the Cardozo School of Law and on the Board of Directors of ICANN, organized OneWebDay to observe the significance of the Web and what it means to individuals, organizations and communities.

We couldn’t do the work we do without an open Web. How are you celebrating?

Special thanks to Kerry, Nisha and Lawrence for creating the awesome video!

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With one week left till the close of our Congressional Mashup Contest we are excited to report that Steve Nelson’s Second Life entry has made "Mashup of the Day" at Programmable Web. If you recall we introduced this exciting Mashup before here. Seeing Congressional information take center stage on this cutting edge website really shows how people get excited about new ways to view Congress.

Seeing Congressional information in different, visual ways can inspire people to respond and engage politically. This is why we are thrilled about all the great entries we have had so far. Keep them coming!

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Next week (March 11-17) is Sunshine Week, during which journalists, activists, and bloggers raise awareness about the importance of open government and advocate for more transparency.

To celebrate, we are hosting a contest! We will give a $2,000 prize for the best “Web 2.0 Mashup” ^(wikipedia) that displays information about Congress:

Our judges–Esther Dyson, Jimmy Wales, and Craig Newmark–will select the winning mashup based on creativity and how effectively it displays Congressional information.

We are not looking for something complicated — simplicity is often the best transparency tool. Entries should have been created in the last six months.

The deadline for entries is April 15.

Confused? Wondering what a mashup is? A mashup is a website or web application that combines content from more than one source. You’ve probably seen a mashup even if you don’t realize it. Sunlight Labs made this mashup last year, taking an excel spreadsheet of earmarks in the Labor, Health and Human Service BILL and “mashing them” onto Google maps so that people could locate earmarks designated for their zip code:

Hundreds of citizens used that mashup to learn more about earmarking in Congress.

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Yesterday the Sunlight Foundation and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society hosted the Sunlight-Berkman Conference on Political Information. Our new intern Andrew MacRae attended the Conference in Boston and wrote up this review of the day:

On January 15^th, 2007, the Sunlight Foundation in cooperation with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society held an all day workgroup entitled “Local Political Information in an Internet Era”. The session brought together bloggers and organizations, in an attempt to share data, goals and thoughts. For addition coverage see what other participants had to say, Ethan Zuckerman, Jake Shapiro, John Palfrey, Dan Gillmor, David Weinberger and more.

If you measure success in terms of question answered or problems solved, this weekend’s conference held at the Berkman center was nothing short of astounding. The impact of bloggers and citizen journalists has not only increased in the last election cycle but with all of the new tools and data sets that are increasingly available it is impossible to imagine their influence waning any time soon. While there will always be room for improvement, the progress in making public information/data transparent has been enormous in such a short period of time. Web 2.0 empowered citizens are increasingly able to stand up and answer the question, “Who are my elected officials?”, “How are they getting elected?” and “How are they governing?”

Another measure of success is in terms of new questions generated. As we went around the room at the end of the day, it was obvious that many questions involving the sharing of data within this community are being answered. Equally difficult however, are the questions: “How do we continue to fund these endeavors?” “How do we bring this information to a more demographically and ideologically diverse audience?” and “How do we provoke these citizens to not only inquire about it, but also to act upon in?

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood.” The Sunlight-Berkman conference entitled, “Local Political Information in an Internet Era", couldn’t have been on a more appropriate day.

A special thanks to the Berkman Institute for all of their collaborative efforts in making this conference a success.

 

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A CNN exit poll showed that 42 percent of voters said corruption was an extremely important issue in their choices at the polls yesterday. It led terrorism, economy and Iraq as the national issues that drove voters choices.

Can there be any doubt that more transparency is in order? When we launched the Sunlight Foundation, we found huge support among the public for greater disclosure of the inner workings of what goes on in Congress

The most popular proposals included: requiring public disclosure of all money raised for a campaign by registered lobbyists and creating an independent ethics commission to review complaints, conduct investigations, and report on unethical conduct by lawmakers and their staffs. Just behind were proposals requiring public disclosure of any attempts to secure earmarks in budget bills that directly benefit lobbyists or campaign contributors, requiring lawmakers to file reports on legislation they have introduced that would benefit their campaign contributors, requiring public disclosure of all contacts with regulatory agencies pressing for action that benefits campaign contributors, requiring lawmakers to report publicly all of their contacts with lobbyists, and prohibiting former members of Congress and senior staff from working as lobbyists in Washington for five years after they leave Congress. Every single one of these proposals got support of 59 percent or higher!

Now's the time to move forward with this. With a little bit of foresight, the Democrats will heed the calls to clean up Congress. The message couldn't be more painfully clear today that voters want change. What better place to start than making the activities of lawmakers more open.

Will greater transparency for the actions of Congress solve the problem of corruption? While there's no silver bullet for cleaning up the institution there's no question that greater transparency will keep some bad things from happening (that's the they 'do it' because they can get away with it school of corruption). It will put all members on notice that their actions will be scrutinized by the public and the media, and it will give citizens new information that they need to know who's doing what, for whom here in the Capital. The Internet makes it oh so easy. That's the beauty of the opportunity the Democrats now have. Let's see if they seize it in truly meaninful way.

This is a special moment: the combination of the concern the public has about corruption combined with the maturing of the Internet leads to all kinds of new possibilities for transparency. It's time for Congress to begin a serious conversation with the American people about it.

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Mark Tapscott’s editorial in The Examiner this morning promotes the common sense idea behind the Punch Clock Campaign, and calls for the development of a Sunshine Caucus in the next Congress that includes all advocates for more transparency for Congress. We’re all for it. In fact, we like the idea so much, that I noticed that Zephyr is already referring to those involved in Sunlight’s work as "The Sunlight Caucus."

Here’s the heart of Tapscott’s editorial: 

WASHINGTON - You have to account for your working hours to your boss, right? So why shouldn’t your representative in Congress account for his or her working hours to his or her boss, who happens to be … you? That’s the point of the Punch Clock Agreement, which asks incumbents and congressional challengers of all parties to agree to post their daily schedules on their Web sites if they are elected….

Wouldn’t it be interesting to see what happens to incumbents and challengers alike who not only agree to publish their daily schedules, but also to post their annual office budgets, campaign donors, full travel schedules and comprehensive financial disclosure documents (not the all-but-meaningless categorical declarations now required), as well as support legislation to apply the Freedom of Information Act to Congress (it doesn’t now). Call it the Sunshine Caucus.

And yes, we are committed to carrying on the Punch Clock Campaign after the election. More about those plans in another couple of weeks.

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Andrew Cuomo, who is running for Attorney General in NY, issues a press release today that sounds like it came from us:

ANDREW CUOMO PROPOSES "PROJECT SUNLIGHT" TO INCREASE GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY AND DISCLOSURE

….The Attorney General’s Public Integrity Unit would for the first time integrate and improve existing databases so that campaign finance data, lobbying information and state contracts can be viewed and easily searched by concerned citizens. With Project Sunlight, a citizen frustrated by high drug costs would be able to use her computer at home,  type "prescription drugs" in a search box, and find out if her elected officials take money from drug companies, what drug bills they voted on, and even which companies ended up with lucrative state contracts.

The more I read about what he has in mind, it sounds like a chapter out of our play book. When candidates for office starting offering this kind of access to information as a reform platform, we are clearly onto something big. As I said, imitation is the highest form of flattery.

We know that the public is hungry for this kind of information. We had over 300 participants at the press conference this morning releasing the OMB Watch and CRP databases that will reveal more than we have ever known about government spending and the personal investments and travel of lawmakers.  

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