This week I have highlights from Alabama, Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Oregon.

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This week I have highlights from Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Florida and Minnesota.

Oregon’s Earmark Blog posts a CRS report about the Executive Order restricting state agencies from considering earmarks not found in the historical texts of bills. Another example of how useful and informative CRS reports are.

S.D. Watch posted a press release from South Dakota’s Secretary of State Chris Nelson. The press release states that the secretary of state has updated their website to include a free, searchable database of corporate records.

South Texas Chisme posted about how the Harris County government is looking into closing a loophole that allows high ranking officials to not include personal financial information that could cause a conflict of interest.

In Louisiana, Between the Lines, has a post on new ethics reform legislation going through the state senate. The legislation would limit gifts and meals from lobbyists and is being opposed by many lawmakers because it was cause hardship to their legislative life.

KentuckyPolitics.org highlights the Kentucky Senate passing legislation that would require Section 527 groups to disclose their contributions.

Florida’s The Buzz, highlights how the Florida House is now wireless. “Anyone with a wireless-capable computer can pick up a signal now in committee rooms, public areas, etc. No registration is necessary, says Jill Chamberlin, spokeswoman for House Speaker Marco Rubio.” Kudos to you Florida House.

In Minnesota, MinnPost, is using Sunlight’s new Lawmaker Profiler. The Profiler allows you to find campaign contributions, earmarks, federal contracts, and lobbyist expenditures that are associated with a member of Congress. It is a great tool for any blogger or news organization who wants a new innovative way to see congressional data.

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This week I have highlights from New York, Mississippi, Kentucky, Oregon, and Missouri.

In New York, The Fighting 29^th, highlights a great local news story about trying to find information about Rep. Kuhl’s trip to Brazil. The story details the ridiculous steps the reporter had to go through to get basic information about the trip and how the procedure for trip disclosure is incredibly difficult to track.  This is why OpenSecrets.org’s travel database is so essential to find this information.

In Mississippi, Cotton Mouth highlights that on Monday the Mississippi Senate was broadcasted live over the internet for the first time ever.

In Missouri, the Turner Report announced its hall of shame which features the ten Missouri senators who received over $1,000 worth of gifts from lobbyists last year.

Oregon’s Open Government News and Issues blog highlights a CRS Report that covers Congressional Salaries and Allowances and also asks if Oregon lawmakers have an equivalent. It’s great to see CRS reports highlighted when they are available to the public.  OpenCrs.com is a great resource to find more CRS reports that can give people more information that they should know.

Kentucky’s the Rural Democrat reports that Gov Steve Beshear’s ethics reform bill has been passed the Kentucky House of Representatives. The bill includes more whistle-blower protection and changes to giving personal gifts to public servants. The bill also would be prohibit state employees from seeking employment from individuals that the state workers were directly involved with on the job.

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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 Kentucky, Tennessee, Wyoming and Hawaii.

In Kentucky, KYKrumudgeon spent some time addressing an opinion made recently from the state’s Legislative Ethics Commission. The opinion reversed a judgment made in 1995 regarding Kentucky campaign contribution laws established in 1993. The ethics law, prohibited lawmakers from asking lobbyists to contribute to their campaigns, however, in 1995 the commission said that lawmakers could ask lobbyists to contribute to political parties.

In Tennessee, BillHobbs and Tennessee Politics blog talk about how a legislative study committee decided to roll back some of the state’s sunshine laws. If the committee’s roll back is allowed then state and local boards will be allowed to hold more discussions that affect the public in private. Also Smart City Memphis points to Knox County Chancellor Daryl Fansler’s ruling on the sunshine law. The opinion is in regards to the Open Meeting Act and is an interesting explanation of why these laws are important.

In Wyoming, NewWest talks about Rep. Cubin’s poor voting record. She is at a 46% voting rate which is one of the poorest in the House. The article, the post refers to, goes into some depth over the nature of her missing votes pointing out that her husband has been very ill and has been in the hospital for almost the entire year. Rep. Cubin’s attendence brings up an important question. It is well known that members of Congress have very busy work schedules that involve a lot of travel, especially for the members from western states. How should a Congressperson balance the challenges of governance with the needs of a loved one?

Hawaii Blog discusses Rep. Jon Riki Karamatsu’s DUI arrest. What is interesting about this is Rep. Karamatsu has a blog and actually blogged about the incident. He then proceeded to acknowledge his mistake and start a discussion on how the media would have treated this incident if he wasn’t open about it. This would have been a revolutionary way for an elected official to communicate with his constituents regarding a controversy if he had let the post stay up for more than two hours. *sigh*

That’s all I got this week. Keep letting in the Sunlight!

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Our presidential nomination process (as well as our election process) creates a situation where states with early primaries become more important than the rest. This can leave people that don’t live in these ‘early’ states to feel a little disenfranchised.

That was before the Internet! Today’s Washington Post has an article about a town called Columbus, KY, a small town of about 229 people. Using the site Eventful.com’s demand feature, which allows groups of people to demand someone to come to their town, 1,870 people asked Presidential candidate John Edwards visit Columbus, KY and he did! This is a pretty incredible event. It is rare for a top tier presidential candidate to visit a small town that is not in any of the early primary states.

This is the perfect example of the power of the Internet. When people have a medium to organize they can accumulate enough numbers that give them an influential voice. Eventful.com is a great organizing tool. It is being used extensively by presidential candidates, artists, musicians, and other speakers. This tool can be expanded to ask members of Congress as well. Right now, there doesn’t seem to be much demand for members of Congress. In the past, the best way to ask a member a question was to write a letter, email, call them on the phone, and go to an event they schedule. With Eventful, it is now possible to demand your member of Congress to come to you and that is pretty powerful.

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