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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Reading the Bill: In Action
The health care debate is raging on, and a big part of it includes having versions of the bill available so people can Read the Bill. The great thing about having the bill online for everyone to see is that citizens will start looking for the substantive details of the legislation themselves and add value to the debate.
Citizens of Montana, the home state of Sen. Max Baucus, have been busy reading their senator’s proposed bill. Left in the West has been looking into the bill and comparing what people are saying about what the bill contains.
Frankly, the more I look at this thing, the more it’s obvious we need both a public option and to open the health insurance exchange to everyone. If you want a better analysis of this bill, got to Jay Rockefeller, who says this is what’s wrong with the bill:
- CHIP is put into the exchange.
- No public option.
- Already existing policies from big companies not affected by new regulations. You read that right! Almost half of the nation’s consumers will have no protection from pre-existing condition clauses or lifetime caps!
- Affordability.
See, that’s the thing. If you have crappy, employer-provided insurance, you have to keep it. As Baucus’ bill is written now, you can’t ditch it for something better in the exchange. That’s unacceptable.
Anyway. Still reading this thing.
Also in Utah, The Side Track has taken up the task of answering state Sen. Chris Buttars’ questions about the health care bill by actually reading the bill. See their answers here, here, here, and here.
For those of you who missed it, Sen. Chris Buttars has questions. …
I’ll be honest, I thought we were taking on quite a challenge. 1,000 plus pages really isn’t that large for a piece of legislation (Bush’s final budget was over 1,300 pages long… and speaking of which, did Buttars print that one out on the tax payer’s dime too?), but it is a challenge for several bloggers with many other obligations. We assumed.
We assumed wrong. In fact, it’s been embarrassingly easy, and a bit of a bore, as research challenges go.
No matter where you stand, the debate is always better when you take actual details from the bill, instead of hearsay. This is why every bill should be available for 72 hours. Call your congressman today and ask them to sign the discharge petition for H. Res 554.
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Lunchtime Link Round-Up
Some open government/transparency posts from around the web:
The Food and Drug Administration, in conjunction with their Transparency Task Force, launched a transparency blog to discuss ways to make their operations more open to the public.
The White House is asking for more help on the Open Government Directive. They are looking for people to tell them the “three most important pieces of information you think every agency should be required to disclose about its operations.” Also, they are seeking input on how the private sector could help the government mash up data.
Utah launched a new state government web site that looks very cool. Let us know in the comments what you think about this as a state government portal.
And in today’s least surprising news, contracting in Iraq is plagued by a lack of oversight and corruption.
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Local Sunlight
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 Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, and Hawaii.
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State Ethics Reforms
Several states are starting to get pressured to strengthen ethics laws after several incidents of corruption. Major ethics changes are being pursued in New York, Massachusetts, Utah, and New Jersey.
In New York, reform groups want more disclosure regarding state lawmakers personal finances. Right now lawmakers are part time and are allowed to have outside jobs. While it is required that they report the source of the outside income, the actual income is presented in ranges not specifics. Critics say that by not allowing for more scrutiny of where lawmakers are getting their money it can never be determined if they are truly working for the citizens that elect them. Lawmakers say that more disclosure of personal finances would intrude privacy and could deter people from running for office.
In New Jersey, Gov. Corzine has introduced an ethics reform package, which focus on campaign contributions and local ethics laws. The package includes measures that will be passed through executive order. In response a State Sens. Kean, Oroho and Batemen have introduced legislation that they say will fill the loopholes by requiring contribution limits by individuals, as well as, PACs.
Massachusetts has been rocked by a major bribery case involving State Senator Dianne Wilkerson (Who I happened to have interned with when I was in college.) There is a lot of debate going on as to what the next step to tighten ethics issues in the state legislature should be. The state’s lobbying laws conflict with each other about the amount a lobbyist can gift to a legislator. The Secretary of State has no subpeona power to enforce regulations and reporting requiremesnt are narrow. These loopholes let lobbyists make a lot of money in Massachuestts so the state has a lot of clean up to do.
In Utah, the state legislature is considering broad ethics reforms after several allegations of bribery. State legislators are trying to get campaign donations to be more transparent, prevent lawmakers from using campaign funds for personal purposes and possibly creating an independent commission to deal with ethics violations.
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Utah aims to create its own Youtube!
From Municipalist
As more states investigate use of YouTube as a multimedia portal (see California and Virginia), the state of Utah is working at building its own video platform. Dave Fletcher, the State of Utah’s Chief Technology Officer, says he is not only excited about Utah GovCast as it is, but about its potential. “More is happening,” he says simply. Is it ever.
“The site now provides a video search for several hundred videos as well as access to almost 30 different multimedia channels in Utah government,” Fletcher told Municipalist.
“Previously video content on Utah.gov had been uncoordinated and difficult to find,” Fletcher said. “We wanted to create a home for multimedia content that would eliminate this problem.
“We hope eventually to get everyone using a more standard format which will allow us to move to an even more visually appealing functional site in the future. We are also developing a better coordinated Utah.gov YouTube site that will be available in the near future.
“At the same time, we hoped to gain some momentum with agencies by making it easy for them as well to see what others are doing and benefit from their ideas.” Fletcher recommended these videos: Wasatch Fault Flyby, Utah Is the Answer, and Utah Golf. Fletcher pointed out that Utah also has various YouTube channels which are somewhat consolidated here.
This is very cool. I hope make the videos embeddable and downloadable. After Congress finally loosened its YouTube restrictions it is great to the states moving in a positive direction as well. Excellent work Utah. Can I suggest calling it Utahbe!
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Local Sunlight
This week I have highlights from
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New Mexico Politics with Joe Monahan talks about how since Sen. Domenici, announced his retirement the Senate Ethics Committee has decided not to go to the next stage of the investigation into his involvement in the US Attorney General scandal.
South Dakota Politics blog has been talking about the farm bill recently and more specifically the $1.1 billion in subsidies that went to 172,801 dead people between 1999 through 2005. The discussion went into depth about whether these farmers were vampires or zombies. You be the judge.
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In Arkansas, The Citizens Journal blog talks about how some Arkansas officials are being sued by two reporters for violating the state’s Freedom of Information Act by withholding information about which government computers were used to edit entries on Wikipedia. The complaint asks the officials to reveal what computers were being used to edit Wikipedia entries on Republican presidential candidates. It is an interesting case of Web 2.0 technology and how it affects transparency and FOIA.
That’s all I got this week. Thank local bloggers for shining the Sunlight.
