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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This Week In Transparency – June 26, 2009
Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies from the week:
CNN interviewed Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, in an article on lobbyists and the need for disclosure of their interactions with congressional lawmakers and other federal officials.
Katharine Q. Seelye at The New York Times reported on the fact that, five months into his administration, President Obama has signed two dozen bills, but he has almost never waited the five days, as he promised during his election campaign. She noted how open government and other watchdog groups have criticized the president for not living up to his pledge. Seelye quotes Ellen as saying it’s less important for the president to wait before signing a bill than it is for the Congress to wait 72 hours before voting on it. “There isn’t anybody in this town who doesn’t know that commenting after a bill has been passed is meaningless.” The article also has an accompanying video.
Politico’s Victoria McGrane reported on how the Senate is considering putting all their office expenses — including staff salaries — online, as well as requiring campaign fundraising reports to be published on the Web. The mere fact that the Senate leadership has conducted a whip count is an encouraging sign for the reforms’ passage, McGrane writes. And she quotes Lisa Rosenberg, Sunlight’s , “They wouldn’t be talking about bringing it up for a vote if it wasn’t pretty solid.”
The Washington Examiner reports on Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington calling on the Obama administration to release the names of health care executives who have visited the White House. “If you are going to criticize other people for secrecy, you better have an open door,” said Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director. “They talk about transparency more than they exhibit it.”
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No Raw Data on Recovery.gov. Significant Failure
“A mixed review”…That’s the verdict the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery (CAR) has given the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) final guidance for reporting data on use of funds under the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Recovery Act. Sunlight’s own review is far less mixed. (CAR’s press release can be accessed here (PDF).)
Speaking for the coalition, Gary Bass, OMB Watch’s director and CAR’s co-chair, applauded the significant transparency steps OMB has taken in certain key respects. However, much data from the recipients of Recovery Act funds will not be collected or disclosed according the the new guidelines. “If the Recovery Act is to fulfill President Obama’s promise about taxpayers being able to go online and see how every dime is spent, then we need sub-recipients’ and sub-sub recipients’ data online, too,” Gary said. “This not only includes how the money was spent but also who benefited.” CAR believes its essential to collect data on race, class, gender, disability and other measures of equity in order to properly assess the success of the Recovery Act.
Also absent from the new instruction is a requirement to make raw data public. By not including raw data at Recovery.gov, transparency is dramatically reduced. Sunlight has argued strongly for raw data in machine readable formats as the starting point for Recovery.gov. This is a significant failure by the Administration to live up to its promise for full and complete disclosure. Significant failure.
CAR was formed to promote accountability for both federal government agencies doling out the trillions of dollars, for the states and for the companies that benefit from recovery funds. The best way to assure taxpayers that the funds are being used responsibly is to provide full transparency on stimulus spending and to make the details of the stimulus available in online, in real time.
The direction Reovery.gov is heading is not good enough.
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AccountableRecovery.org
States for a Transparent and Accountable Recovery (STAR) Coalition is a new network of groups that recently formed to work at the state and local levels to ensure that the implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 is transparent, accountable, fair and effective. The coalition functions with the belief that active civic engagement, enabled by full transparency, is the only way to achieve true accountability and that the stimulus funds are used wisely and appropriately. The STAR Coalition collaborates actively with the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery (CAR), of which Sunlight is a member. Both coalitions believe the best way to assure taxpayers that the funds are being used responsibly is to provide “radical” transparency on stimulus spending and to make the details of the stimulus available in online, in real time.
Today, the STAR Coalition launched its Web site, AccountableRecovery.org. While pretty much a simple listing of resources on the recovery package, I found their Web links page full of good information. It’s a real treasure trove of important links to federal, state, nonprofit- and media-based stimulus tracking sites. They also have a page listing recovery act Web sites for various cities. And the site’s Recovery Act Info Center page assist users in finding stimulus spending accountability profiles for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. These pages contain:
* An evaluation of the state’s Recovery Act Web site, especially with regard to disclosure of contractor information.
* Details on Recovery Act oversight policies and structures.
* A synopsis of policy debates on ARRA issues occurring in the state.
* Key data such as total ARRA funding the state is expected to receive.
* Listings of watchdog organizations, their ARRA-related publications, and other resources.
The STAR Coalition promised to expand their site as significant amounts of contractor and grantee data becomes available from the federal government.
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“They Frankly Own The Place”
That title comes from the words of Sen. Dick Durbin describing the power of the bankers and financial sector over Congress. You would think that this might be an exaggeration, or just a rhetorical bit of anti-bank populism, but if you look at the numbers, Durbin isn’t wrong. From 1997 to 2008, financial sector lobbying — represented by the finance, insurance and real estate industries — has amounted to fully 15% of all lobbying spending in Washington.
Lobbying Expenses by the Financial Sector (1997-2008) 2008 $459,312,006 2007 $419,754,990 2006 $375,133,174 2005 $371,666,173 2004 $338,123,874 2003 $324,385,802 2002 $267,586,799 2001 $235,049,868 2000 $230,368,026 1999 $213,801,725 1998 $209,659,907 1997 $177,374,000 Since 1997, the financial sector has spent a combined total of $3.6 billion on lobbying the federal government. The total lobbying expenses have increased by 260% since 1997. Over that same time financial sector corporate profits have gone through the roof, with the financial sector reporting up to 40% of corporate profits in recent years.
Over these eleven years, the industry has gotten pretty much whatever it desires. This is just a sampling of the things obtained by the financial sector: the deregulation of financial derivatives and credit default swaps, the elimination of the line between investment banks and commercial banks, the increased hardship for those filing for bankruptcy, and the total free hand for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to muddle their books and evade responsibility. And all of this has been fueled by the 3,000 or so finance sector lobbyists meeting with, calling up, and emailing congressional offices and executive branch agencies.
It is likely and that there have been tens of thousands, if not more, unreported contacts between financial sector lobbyists and government officials. These contacts have no doubt been aided by the high number of former officials who have taken the revolving door to lobby for the finance sector. According to a report by Essential Information and the Consumer Education Foundation, at least 142 former government officials lobbied on behalf of finance sector firms since 1998. These revolving door lobbyists include at least five former congressmen and dozens of top aides to congressmen, senators, and key congressional committees.
The Obama administration is taking a first step in requiring agency officials to report lobbying contacts as they relate to funds distributed from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Seeing as how the financial sector has been running wild through Washington over the past 11 years — getting whatever it pleases and blocking whatever it doesn’t — Congress, and the administration, should consider requiring the disclosure of these unseen lobbying contacts to help provide the public and officials with better information about the nature of the Washington lobbies, particularly the financial sector lobby.
Both Congress and the people would do better without a single lobby owning the place. Disclosing their lobbying contacts would be a first step in that direction.
All data obtained through the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) site OpenSecrets.org.
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Another Three Agencies Begin Posting Recovery Act Lobbying Contacts
Three more agencies began posting, or provided a place to post, communications between lobbyists and agency officials in regards to funds distributed from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Last week, there were eleven agencies posting lobbyist communications, as required under the March 20 memorandum issued by President Obama to all agencies involved with the distribution of Recovery Act funds.
The three new agencies include the Department of Eduction, the Department of Health and Human Services and the General Services Administration. Differing from all previous attempts to display lobbyist contacts, the Department of Health and Human Services provides a searchable database. Unfortunately this is poorly thought out. There are no categories, just a search bar, and, at present, there are no contacts to search. Hopefully they can make this more useful once they have actually posted lobbying contacts. The General Services Administration has two pages (hence the second link in the chart below), one for written communications and one for other communications.
Agencies Posting American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Communications With Registered Lobbyists Agency Site Army Corps of Engineers Visit site Corporation for National and Community Service Visit site Department of Commerce Visit site Department of Defense none Department of Education Visit site Department of Energy Visit site Department of Health and Human Services Visit site Department of Homeland Security none Department of Housing and Urban Development none Department of Interior Visit site Department of Justice none Department of Labor none Department of State none Department of Transportation Visit site Department of Treasury none Department of Veterans Affairs none Environmental Protection Agency Visit site Federal Communication Commission Visit site General Services Administration Visit site (2) National Aeronautics and Space Administration Visit site National Endowment for the Arts none National Science Foundation none Office of Personnel Management none Railroad Retirement Board none Small Business Administration Visit site Smithsonian Institution none Social Security Administration none US Department of Agriculture Visit site USAID none
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Three More Agencies Begin Posting Recovery Act Lobbying Contacts
Three more agencies have begun posting, or provided a place to post, communications between lobbyists and agency officials in regards to funds distributed from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Last week, there were eight agencies posting lobbyist communications, as required under the March 20 memorandum issued by President Obama to all agencies involved with the distribution of Recovery Act funds.
The new agencies posting are the Department of Commerce, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the United States Department of Agriculture. The United States Department of Agriculture has yet to post any communications, but has created a page on which to post them.
Here is an updated chart:
Agencies Posting American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Communications With Registered Lobbyists Agency Site Army Corps of Engineers Visit site Corporation for National and Community Service Visit site Department of Commerce Visit site Department of Defense none Department of Education none Department of Energy Visit site Department of Health and Human Services none Department of Homeland Security none Department of Housing and Urban Development none Department of Interior Visit site Department of Justice none Department of State none Department of Transportation Visit site Department of Treasury none Department of Veterans Affairs none Environmental Protection Agency Visit site Federal Communication Commission Visit site General Services Administration none National Aeronautics and Space Administration Visit site National Endowment for the Arts none National Science Foundation none Office of Personnel Management none Railroad Retirement Board none Small Business Administration Visit site Smithsonian Institution none Social Security Administration none US Department of Agriculture Visit site USAID none
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Agencies Begin to Post Recovery Lobbying Contacts
Some executive branch agencies are beginning to post lobbyist communications as required by the March 20th White House memorandum on the distribution of Recovery Act funds. So far, only eight out of the twenty-eight agencies listed as receiving recovery funds maintain a list of lobbyist contacts online. Some of the disclosures are far superior to others. While seeing these meetings posted online is encouraging overall, there are a few areas that could use improvement, most notably on structure, presentation, and centralization.
The agencies posting lobbyist contacts are as follows: Army Corps of Engineers (ACE), Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Transportation (DOT), Federal Communication Commission (FCC), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Small Business Administration (SBA).
Of these agencies the most commendable are the FCC and DOE. The FCC provides, perhaps, the best example as the lobbyist contact page uses an easy to read chart that collects not just lobbyist contacts, but the docket number for the proceeding on which the FCC was contacted, the summary of the lobbyist contact, and links to any filing or presentation submitted along with a lobbyist contact. This goes above and beyond the requirements outlined in the March 20th memorandum. DOE contains many links to lobbyist communications and e-mails related to recovery act programs. These disclosures are well catalogued, but not as well as the FCC’s lobbyist communications. (Continue reading…)
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Recovery Lobbying Rules: Reversing the Disclosure Burden
Last week, President Obama released an Executive Memorandum providing suggested rules for transparency and accountability surrounding the distribution of funds available from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus bill. One section of the Memorandum, which I blogged about here, provides new rules for the road for lobbyists seeking a slice of the stimulus salami. These new rules, while only set to apply for funds administered from the stimulus bill, may provide a road map for future changes to our already widely applied lobbyist disclosure rules. In a marked contrast to our current laws, the rules reverse the burden of disclosure from lobbyists and onto government employees.
The new rules require government employees to report on all contacts made to them by a registered lobbyist. All contacts made regarding specific programs, projects, or fund distribution must be made in written form and submitted to the agency or department. These written submissions will be posted online within three business days of their receipt.
Oral or in-person communications are forbidden if they relate to the specific distribution of funds for specific projects and programs. They are, however, permitted if the communication is general in nature and does not relate to “particular projects, applications, or applicants for funding.” The permitted oral and in-person communications must be supplimented by a filed written statement that includes, “(i) the date and time of the contact on policy issues; (ii) the names of the registered lobbyists and the official(s) between whom the contact took place; and (iii) a short description of the substance of the communication.” This written statement must then be posted online within three business days of receipt. The disclosed written statements, in both cases, will be posted to each individual agency or department’s recovery web site.
Lobbyist disclosure is, of course, nothing new. Our current framework for disclosure comes from the Lobbyist Disclosure Act of 1995 (LDA) and the amendments to it contained in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 (HLOGA), but the idea for lobbyists to disclose their work goes back over a century. The first application of lobbyist disclosure was in 1876 after the uproar surrounding the Credit Mobilier scandal. The passage of a resolution requiring the temporary registration of lobbyists with the Clerk of the House became the first, albeit unsuccessful, attempt at monitoring the influence industry in Washington.
In the 1930s, due to outrage at the tactics of the business community, including the fraudulent grassroots lobbying campaign ginned up by public utility holding companies to oppose a bill in Congress, Congress began selectively requiring certain lobbyists to register and disclose limited details about their activities. The first two industries required to have registered lobbyists were the public utilities, thanks to their deceitful campaign, and the merchant marine. Ten years later, Congress included the Federal Registration of Lobbying Act (FRLA) inside of the much larger Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 establishing the very first, across the board legal means for lobbyist registration and disclosure. Eventually the holes of the FRLA would be plugged by LDA in 1995, which would be improved by HLOGA in 2007. The one common thread throughout the entire 125 year history of lobbyist disclosure is that the burden of disclosure was always placed on the lobbyist. Not so with the recovery fund lobbying rules.
The new process will make government employees the focus of lobbying disclosure rules for the first time. The recovery lobbying rules in no way effect the Lobbyist Disclosure Act, in fact they rely on lobbyist registration to determine with whom government employees may meet or talk, but they do change the way lobbyist disclosure has worked. For 125 years the disclosure burden has been on private interests attempting to influence policy. Now, the government will share that burden.
In many ways, this approach is identical to the ideal case of lawmakers posting their daily schedules. This idea, pushed by Sunlight in 2006, would get lawmakers to post, each day, the full schedule of their previous day’s meetings, including who they were meeting and whether they were a registered lobbyist. Some lawmakers caught onto the idea and began posting their schedules, but none regularly noted that they were meeting with registered lobbyists. What the idea of posted schedules lacked was the authority of rule, law, or mandate, something the Memorandum covers for the new recovery rules. Hopefully, the structured nature of the new rules provides that kind of real-time, inside look into lobbying that we tried to get out of daily schedules.
Of course, the inclusion of government employees in the lobbyist disclosure regime raises a number of questions. Is there a disincentive for employees to not follow these rules? Lobbyists face serious fines and, in some instances, jail time for filing incorrectly. Would that be an appropriate disincentive for government employees or just overburdening? Is this creating more paperwork for overworked and underpaid government workers? Shouldn’t lobbyists, who usually make more money than government workers, be doing this themselves? Will moving this function of disclosure to government employees create better disclosure than that supplied by lobbyists? I’m sure you can think of many, many more questions.
If successful (we still need to see this in practice), these new rules will create a large amount of new information on lobbying and pull back the curtain on the lobbying around the distribution of stimulus funds. If applied, even in modified form, across the board to the legislative and executive they could pull the curtain back on all lobbying providing the American public with a view into government that they have been missing for far too long.
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GOP Takes a Stand for Transparency
There’s a bit of irony in this story.
House Republican leaders are calling for Democrats to post the stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, online immediately. In a letter sent to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the GOP leaders write that having the bill online would allow citizens to study its contents before Congress agrees to it and the president signs it into law. The GOP leadership is correct to, on behalf of the American people, claim the right “to see each provision of this legislation and evaluate the merit of each dollar of government spending their children and grandchildren are being required to fund.”
Too bad they haven’t always been for such transparency.
Since inception, Sunlight has been calling for exactly this sort of openness. We think all legislation should be posted on line for 72 hours before debate. We’re hoping now that alot of Republicans will sign onto this measure when it’s reintroduced in this Congress.
