This Tuesday, there will be hearing on budgets for the Library of Congress, the Government Printing Office, the Government Accountability Office, and the Congressional Budget Office. It’s too bad that the public won’t have a real opportunity to learn about these important agencies, as the meeting is not expected to be webcast by the committee,Read… Read more »
After footage of a tense city council meeting in West Branch, Iowa was posted on YouTube, City Administrator Matt Mucker suggested a rule that would have required the public to secure mayoral permission to record meetings. This measure would would have violated the state’s open meetings law. After this breach of the law was pointedRead… Read more »
In continuing with the “Google Reader is Still Relevant” meme (read Parts I and II here) I wanted to make a quick note on how I’m seeing extended value in Google Reader after integrating it with IFTTT. Google Reader has morphed from a somewhat useful curation channel to an incredibly useful one. On its own,Read… Read more »
In case you missed it, last night some-time South Carolina Presidential candidate and super PAC founder Stephen Colbert gave a great rundown of the new campaign finance landscape in our elections. Colbert and his team of very sharp writers have smartly illustrated just how out of control our campaign finance system is. In short, it’sRead… Read more »
Sunlight couldn’t be in better company in the following video shot by the Omidyar Network, a significant funder of our work. The interviews done at a recent event in Menlo Park, California includes leaders from the Wikimedia Foundation, BRAC, the African Leadership Academy, Ushahidi, DonorsChoose.org, Landesa and IGNIA. What truly amazing partners they are. WeRead… Read more »
The first round of SuperPAC annual filings came in yesterday, and we at Sunlight have been digging through them since. Our reporting team has been blogging the reports as we digest them. Below are five takeaway points, based on a Sunlight Foundation analysis of FEC filings for nine super PACs that raised at least $500,000Read… Read more »
Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey wrote this post. Here is Wednesday’s look at transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events. News Roundup: Campaign Finance Barack Obama has relied heavily on bundlers to pull in huge donations for his reelection campaign. Notable new bundlers in the most recent FEC filingsRead… Read more »
In 2009 the Washington Times reported that an investigation conducted by researchers at the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity had found 440 nonexistent districts listed on Recovery.gov. Combined, the districts were marked as receiving $6.4 billion and creating almost 30,000 jobs. The article provides specific examples, such as the following: “Recovery.gov shows 12Read… Read more »
Tomorrow is a big day for transparency, with the House of Representatives convening a full-day conference on public access to legislative information. (The agenda is online here.) I understand that there are efforts afoot to livestream the proceedings, although I don’t have all the details. But there is a hashtag — #LDTC — so expectRead… Read more »
The deadline for presidential super PACs like Restore Our Future and Winning Our Future–supporting, respectively, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich–and other committees to file their disclosures with the Federal Election Commission is 11:59 P.M. Sunlight’s Reporting Group will be combing through the filings, looking to see who’s writing six- and seven-figure checks to the superRead… Read more »