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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Calls and Calendars for Congress?
Yesterday, the Associated Press reported on regular phone calls made from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to CEOs of the nation’s largest banks and big shots in the financial services industry.
While the AP story focuses on the results of the examination after they obtained the records, when it comes to transparency, the fact that the AP was able to obtain the records at all is perhaps even more important. In this case, the AP was able to obtain Geithners phone records through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and in so doing, got a “behind-the-scenes glimpse at the continued influence of three companies…”
Now imagine if members of Congress kept these same kind of records and we could ask for access to them? Or even better: your member of Congress voluntarily shared what they were doing and who they were meeting with you…
We elect them; we pay them; and in the same way our organizational calendars are often shared with our bosses, how much more would you trust your member of Congress if s/he did the same?
(Continue reading…)
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Tracking Lobbyists’ Real Influence
We’ve got some new data to munch on today that we’re excited about. Essentially, this new data helps show us that when lobbyists from a special interest – in this first case, the health care industry – meet with our representatives, many lobbyists represent much more than just the contributions attributed to them if we were to look them up.
It’s important we know lobbyists’ REAL influence on the people we elect to represent us – and before today, that’s not something we could really do.
The deal is that decision makers (i.e. senators) in the health care debate are not only receiving big bucks from members of the health and insurance industries – but also from the numerous individual lobbyists that represent the industries. All of that money “clustered” or “bundled” together is much more influential than any contribution by itself. So, when one of the lobbyists in a cluster walks into a meeting with a representative, it stands to reason that representative listens to them …how do we say… with a more fully tuned ear.
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Real-Time Data Program Wins Innovation Award
I know this is a couple days old, but it hasn’t been mentioned here yet. The District of Columbia’s real-time online data disclosure project was one of six winners of the Innovations in American Government awards given out by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation. The project was spearheaded by then-D.C. Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and current federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) Vivek Kundra. You can see the two sites singled out for praise below:
According to the Ash Institute, “this is the first initiative in the country that makes virtually all current district government operational data available to the public in its raw form rather than in static, edited reports.” Real-time data disclosure is becoming far more common in cities across the nation with San Francisco introducing DataSF.org and the New York City legislature examining open data legislation. (Vancouver, Canada has also endorsed the release of city data in raw form.)
Real-time, raw data disclosure is the cutting edge in transparency and government innovation. While the federal government has released Data.gov, a raw data site similar to D.C.’s, there are countless sets of public data compiled by the federal government that are in one or more of the following three categories: 1) Not online; 2) Not in a structured format; 3) Not compiled and disclosed in real-time. As many public data sets as possible should meet these three criteria. For some data it is unreasonable to ask for real-time disclosure. These sets should then, at least, meet the first two.
Side note: It’s great to see my city defy our Rodney Dangerfield-like existence and finally get some respect.
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What Can “You Lie” Tell Us About Real Time Disclosure?
Rob Miller, a Marine and congressional candidate in South Carolina’s 2nd district, probably didn’t expect to become an overnight star while he was watching the President give a speech to a joint session of Congress on health care reform. Then came Rep. Joe Wilson’s rebel yell, “You lie!” Miller is Wilson’s Democratic opponent in 2010 and lost a relatively close election to Wilson in 2008 (54%-46%). The money started pouring in almost immediately. Within a few hours, Miller raised over $100,000. Two days after Wilson’s outburst, Miller has raked in over $750,000 (while writing he has crept to almost $800,000), likely making him one of the better funded Democrats running for a House seat in 2010.Nearly all of this money is being raised through the site ActBlue, a fundraising portal set up to allow individuals to raise money for Democratic candidates themselves. One of the best features of the site is its transparency. The site updates as new contributions come in, showing the total on the candidate’s page — or on a fundraising group’s page (like this group raising money for Miller). All of this has been written before, but I wanted to highlight one feature of this transparency: real time disclosure.
Current campaign finance laws require only quarterly disclosures of campaign contributions. The unforseen money bomb for Rob Miller exposes a problem with the limited system of quarterly disclosures for candidates trying to increase enthusiasm for and attract small donor money to their campaigns. The transparent nature of ActBlue allows for the snowballing effect we’ve seen over the past few days. It’s a lot more rewarding for small donors to contribute when they can see the group results of their actions. Many campaigns have used transparent fundraising mechanisms at times, the Howard Dean bat and the Ron Paul money bomb are two obvious and innovative examples. By the 2008 campaign this was a pretty standard tactic of presidential candidates; both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton used this gimic many times in the Democratic primary.
But why shouldn’t this just be the norm? Campaign contributions are viewed by the law as a form of speech. If we see real time disclosure of campaign funding help increase individual desire to contribute, isn’t this a boon for speech and democratic participation? Donating to a campaign is a step above voting, in terms of participation, and can lead to further political actions like volunteering or even getting involved in local politics. Campaigns could simply forward their contributions on to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in a timely, maybe not immediate, manner and the FEC could report the contributions in real time. This could increase transparency, campaign enthusiasm and small donor power across the board.
Right now, in the Miller/Wilson example we are seeing how the transparency of real time contributions has helped one candidate over another. Since Wilson’s comment, the media has focused on his opponents rapid fundraising as they can see the numbers pour in over ActBlue. It took two days for Wilson to release a number on the amount he had raised, $200,000, in the wake of his outburst. A system where real time contributions could be viewed side-by-side may have helped increase contributions to Wilson. Who doesn’t like a little healthy competition?
This is certainly a different argument for disclosure than is usually made, which is that money plays an influencing role in politics and disclosure of contributions is required to allow the public and an enforcement body to hold candidates accountable. This is an important argument and is certainly another reason for real time disclosure of contributions, but as I’ve stated above disclosure can also play a role in invigorating political activity. Unfortunately, it is the influence argument as the backbone of campaign disclosure that begins to complicate real time disclosure.
One requirement in campaign finance disclosure is the disclosure of names and employment, a key to gleaning the influence of interests and powerful people have with our elected representatives. In Buckley v. Valeo the Supreme Court upheld the disclosure of campaign contributions due to the need to avert possible problems of corruption and influence in elections and determined a minimum threshold for disclosure. It was determined by the court that contributions of a certain value were more likely to cause undue influence or potential corruption than smaller donations. These small donors would be spared disclosure to protect their anonymity as the size of their donation could not reasonably be seen to influence a candidate. Thus we have a system where small donations — those who contributed less than $250 — do not need to be disclosed to the FEC with the attendent name, employment and other categories for each individual donor.
How would this work out in a system of real time disclosure? Should we do away with minimum disclosure threshold? There were numerous problems with small donors during the 2008 elections, fraudulent donations and more, that could lead to a reasonable need for small donor disclosure. But would this work counter to the benefits of real time disclosure (increased participation, competition and speech) by scaring off individual donors afraid of identifying themselves? I’m not sure what the answer is to that question. If you care let me know what you think about it in the comments.
From the classic perspective of influence in politics, real time disclosure is imperative to shine the light on contributions as the pour into Congress during bill markups, committee hearings and votes. Similarly, real time disclosure would aid the need for increased competition and speech in our politics. Thanks to Rob Miller and Joe Wilson and ActBlue for showing us that.
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Return on Lobbying Investment: 22,000%
There’s a reason why lobbying has boomed so much over the last decade. The potential return on investment is just too lucrative to pass up. Some things are easy to quantify, a contract, an earmark, or a direct payment for services. But other things, like tax breaks, can take a little bit more time to figure out (at least for now). For example, a University of Kansas study, to be released today, will show that firms pushing for a “tax holiday” in 2004 received a 22,000% return on their lobbying investment. I’ll write that number again: 22,000%. From the AP:
The report details efforts by hundreds of companies in 2003 and 2004 to push through a one-time tax “holiday” that lowered for a year the tax rate they paid on profits earned abroad. All told, U.S. companies saved about $100 billion in taxes, with pharmaceutical behemoths Pfizer and Merck & Co., technology giants IBM and Hewlett Packard, and health products maker Johnson & Johnson among the top beneficiaries.
The study zeros in on 93 firms that spent as much as $282.7 million lobbying on the issue during that period, and ultimately saved a total of $62.5 billion through the tax change. Researchers used publicly available lobbying disclosures filed with Congress and financial statements submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission to compare the amount each company saved with its lobbying expenditures.
“It calls into question what Congress did in 2004,” said Stephen Mazza, who conducted the study with Raquel Alexander and Susan Scholz. “It clearly is a very lucrative field for lobbyists. Congress wanted to create jobs, and what they probably did was create jobs for the lobbyists.”
This is a pretty outrageous, although entirely predictable, result, pointing to a serious problem in governance. If investment in lobbying is the number one determinant in firm growth, how can we trust policy makers to do what is best for anyone other than those with money to spare on lobbyists? As we have been explaining all week, one way to expose influence and mitigate its excesses is to require the real time disclosure of lobbying contacts, providing more detail as to whom lobbyists meet with and what they discuss.
Another way more transparency could help us all in this area–and particularly acamedia–is the disclosure of key data in a structured format. The above mentioned study used lobbying disclosure data and SEC data to show how the lobbying of the examined firms expanded their worth. We already know that the SEC now requires top firms to submit their SEC disclosures in XBRL. If lobbying disclosures, particularly if they became real time, could be posted in a similar format, this kind of study could be created on a web site, providing near real time results of lobbying return on investment.
Just to drill the point home: 22,000% return on lobbying investment. Yet another case that lobbying needs to be made more transparent.
