Planet oGosh! Open Government Open Source Hacking

Work has slowed but continues at the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases.

For a full picture of activity over the past two weeks, visit http://tinyurl.com/statedbs14d. Here are some highlights:

DATABASES ADDED

HEALTHCARE PRACTIONER DATABASES (Lynn McClelland)

Arkansas State Board of Massage Therapists - Search by name; name may be in any order.

ALASKA (Daniel Cornwall)

Alaska & Polar Periodical Index - Index to journals, magazines and newsletters relating to Alaska and the Earth's polar regions. Coverage goes back decades. Results show availability in University of Alaska Fairbanks Rassmuson Library, but many articles are available elsewhere or through interlibrary loan.

MICHIGAN (Michael McDonnell)

Groundwater Information Database - This resource was mandated by Public Act 148 of 2003, which requires that a groundwater inventory and map be generated for the state. It is a joint effort of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, Michigan State University's Institute of Water Research and the United States Geological Survey.

WYOMING (Karen Kitchens)

Child Care Facilities/Contacts Locator -Locate Child Care Facilities, Child Care Finder Offices, Child Care Licensing Offices, Child Care Licensers, Child Care Supervisors and Department of Family Services Offices within Wyoming.

This is the seventh story in an exclusive series about the funding behind politically active tax-exempt organizations that don't disclose their donors. You can read the other stories in the series here.

A secretive, well-funded group whose name gives the misleading impression that it is solely concerned about health care gave more than $44 million in 2010 to other tax-exempt groups, many of which spent millions on TV ads attacking Democrats running for the House and Senate and have begun spending for the same purpose this year.

None of the groups -- including eight of the most politically active nonprofits in 2010 -- disclose their donors, and the role of the Center to Protect Patients' Rights (CPPR) in funding them has not previously been reported.

Based in Arizona, CPPR provided large grants to a cluster of well-known conservative organizations that operate under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, which classifies them as "social welfare" groups and allows them to keep their funding sources from public view. Politics is not supposed to be their primary purpose, although critics say many of the organizations have stretched the rules too far.

American Future Fund received the largest grant from CPPR, a total of $11.7 million for "general support." That amount exceeded the nearly $10 million the group told the Federal Election Commission it spent supporting or opposing Democratic candidates in ads in the midterm elections ("independent expenditures") or broadcasting slightly less explicit appeals close to election day ("electioneering communications"). In fact, the gift was more than half of the $23.3 million the group raised all year.
Layers of Anonymity

The donors to the Center to Protect Patient Rights are almost entirely unknown. Such tax-exempt organizations must detail the groups to whom they gave grants, but not the sources of their own funds. A small grant of $200,000 came to CPPR from American Action Network, yet another 501(c)(4), according to the Form 990 tax return that American Action filed with the Internal Revenue Service this week.

And if its donors are unknown, so is much else about CPPR. According to its own 2010 tax return, which was filed last November, it is run by Sean Noble, who is listed as its director, president and executive director. Noble describes himself on his Twitter account as a "PR/Political consultant, conservative strategist/operative, former GOP Hill chief of staff, blogger, proud father, fighting for liberty." Noble was chief-of-staff to former Republican Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona, for whom he worked for 13 years, and since then has worked as a political consultant and in public relations.

Noble took no salary from CPPR, but his firm, Noble Associates, was paid $340,000 by the group for "management services." Noble was also paid $10,000 to lobby for the group.

He is currently managing partner of DC London Inc., a political consulting firm that offers robo-calling and other services. CPPR's other director and secretary is Courtney Koshar, an anesthesiologist in the Phoenix area.

The organization's mission, as listed on the tax form, is "Building a coalition of like-minded organizations and individuals, and educating the public on issues related to health care with an emphasis on patients rights. Engaging in issue advocacy and activities to influence legislation related to health care."

Noble did not return our calls seeking comment.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that CPPR's name is almost exactly the same as that of another group, the Coalition to Protect Patients' Rights, a group that organized lobbying efforts against health care overhaul proposals being debated in Congress in 2009. And CPPR gave the Coalition $205,000 in 2010. Further, the records for both groups were listed as being stored at the same Glendale, Ariz., address by a woman who describes herself as an employee of DCI Group, a lobbying firm practiced in manufacturing "grassroots" campaigns for the tobacco industry and others that has handled public relations for the Coalition.

But the Coalition's spokesman, physician and lawyer, Donald Palmisano, told OpenSecrets Blog he'd never heard of the other group, as did a publicist with DCI Group.

The second-largest grant from CPPR, $5.6 million, went to Americans for Limited Government, also for "general support," as were all the CPPR gifts. That amounted to more than half the group's $9 million budget for 2010. The creation of libertarian real estate mogul Howard Rich, Americans for Limited Government distributes money to its own large network of 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) organizations. One such group, Colorado at Its Best, in turn funded a group called Clean Government Colorado in 2008, which backed a ballot initiative that critics said would limit the ability of public employees' unions to make political contributions. In 2010, ALG funded a group called Alaskans for Open Government, which in turn provided money to another group backing an "anti-corruption" ballot initiative. The Alaska group eventually ran into trouble over failing to disclose its own sources of funding.

Americans for Job Security received $4.8 million from CPPR. That group, which is a 501(c)(6) business association under the tax code, spent about $9 million in the 2010 elections expressly attacking Democrats and running electioneering ads, according to Center for Responsive Politics figures. It has a history of running attacks on Democrats dating back to the late 1990s.

Other beneficiaries of CPPR funding included anti-tax maven Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, which received $4.2 million and spent about that amount on independent expenditures in 2010, almost all against Democrats; Americans for Prosperity, which has strong ties to Charles and David Koch and which received close to $2 million from CPPR and spent a little less than that on negative issue ads mentioning candidates close to the election; and Club for Growth, which received $690,000 from CPPR and spent more than $8 million on independent expenditures against Democrats in 2010, as well as against some Republicans in primary contests.

All these groups may have spent more -- and in some cases definitely did so -- on political ads that escaped reporting requirements. For instance, according to its 990 form, American Future spent a total of $21.4 million in 2010, of which $14.7 went to "media services," indicating possible spending on ads that was greater than the $10 million it reported to the Federal Election Commission.

This table shows all the recipients of CPPR grants in 2010:

table.tableizer-table {border: 1px solid #CCC; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;} .tableizer-table td {padding: 4px; margin: 3px; border: 1px solid #ccc;} .tableizer-table th { background-color: #104E8B; color: #FFF; font-weight: bold; padding: 4px; text-align:center;}

Non-Profit	2010 CPPR Grant
American Future Fund	$11,685,000
60 Plus Assn	$8,990,000
Americans for Limited Government	$5,585,000
Americans for Job Security	$4,828,000
Americans for Tax Reform	$4,189,000
Revere America	$2,300,000
Americans for Prosperity	$1,924,000
US Health Freedom Coalition	$1,430,000
Susan B Anthony	$1,025,000
Club for Growth	$690,000
Americans United for Life Action	$559,000
The Institute for Liberty	$457,000
American Energy Alliance	$250,000
Coalition to Protect Patient Rights	$205,000
Freedom Vote	$200,000
Protect Your Vote	$100,000
Hispanic Leadership Fund	$47,000
Americans United for Life	$45,000
Tea Party Patriots	$30,000
Common Sense Issues Coalition	$25,000
Common Sense Issues	$10,000
Concerned Women 4 America	$4,500

Staff Writer Russ Choma contributed to this post.

As I wrote yesterday, each day seems to bring a small step forward on improving public access to legislative information, with two notable developments today.

First, Rep. Honda gave a tantalizing hint of progress on bulk access to legislative data at this morning's subcommittee markup of the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill (sorry no video). He said that "there is exhaustive discussion on bulk data downloads in the [sub]committee report." It's not clear exactly what this means -- the subcommittee report won't be made available to the public until the full committee markup, which is tentatively scheduled in two weeks -- but it's an indication that public attention has joined with bipartisan support from appropriators, overseers, and leadership to make progress on making legislative information available to the American people.

From what I've heard, the pushback is coming largely from the support agencies, although the nature of those concerns are not clear. With the Law Library of Congress taking the lead on THOMAS in recent years, including making some small but useful changes to the site, there is hope that they will grow into their role as facilitators of online transparency. All along, the public interest community has been asking for bulk access to THOMAS data and the creation of an advisory committee on THOMAS.

Second, the objections raised by legislative support agencies are not particularly weighty, at least according to a 2008 memo from the Library of Congress to the Committee on House Administration regarding the availability of THOMAS data. As far as I'm aware, this is the first time it's been made accessible to the public. What's notable is how the Library of Congress was technologically positioned to deliver on legislative data transparency four years ago, but apparently did not move forward. At a minimum, it should alleviate concerns about the difficulty of technological implementation.

According to the memo, the Library expected to finish developing an XML database containing bill metadata such as bill summaries, status of bills, and information on co-sponsors four years ago (in May 2008.) What's revealing about this is that much of the information about legislation has been available in a structured database for nearly half a decade -- and in the kind of format that developers need.

Moreover, the Library reports that "the resources will be available to copy the database daily into an Anonymous File Transfer Protocol [FTP] site so it is accessible to the public" by the time the LIS 2.0 database is completed. This would allow the data to be made available in bulk. (There are better ways to do so, but this is an acceptable solution.)

Also at the time of the memo, March 2008, full text of bills and committee reports were available on GPO Access, but not in XML. From what we can tell, nearly all bills are now available in XML, although it is unclear whether committee reports are prepared in XML. All of this could also be made available in bulk using the technology described in the memo.

The memo raises one major policy implication concerning who owns the data, contemplating that it belongs to the House, Senate, Congressional Research Service, and Government Printing Office. In the literal sense, that's backwards: the information is owned by the American people and held in trust by Congress and its legislative agencies. These entities do serve as repositories of the information, however, and deserve consideration as to the technological means by which it is made available. However, that's with the understanding that these entities should strive to meet the public's need for the information and expansively follow the policies set by Congress in favor of transparency.

We'll continue to keep a close eye on how all this develops.

Library of Congress letter to Committee on House Administration on THOMAS

NEWS ROUNDUP

Government

• Revolt emerges against earmark ban: The GOP backlash against their own earmark ban is continuing to build momentum. A group of Republican members of Congress is working on a strategy to lift the ban in the next Congress. (The Hill)
• Super Shift hits Congress: The focus of most independent expenditures shifted from the Republican presidential contest to Congressional races, specifically Republican primaries, in the first half of May. (Politico)
• Super PAC runs afoul of House rules: The Veterans for a Strong America Action Group super PAC is attacking North Dakota Senate Candidate Rick Berg in support of his GOP primary opponent. But their ads, which utilize footage of Berg speaking on the House Floor, may have broken House rules against using footage of proceedings for political purposes. (National Journal)

State and Local

• Online lobbying reports for Delaware: Delaware's Legislature approved new reporting requirements for lobbyists, including a provision that would require the state's Public Integrity Commission to post lobbying reports online. (Lobby Comply)
• Grand Canyon state corruption: An Arizona State Representative and former Tempe City Councilmember was indicted on charges that he accepted numerous tickets to sporting and charity events in exchange for facilitating meetings between a company and local officials. (Courthouse News)

International

• Ex-Chinese officials urge financial disclosure: Three retired Chinese Communist Party officials called for current leaders to disclose their family wealth in advance of an expected succession of power. The public calls for disclosure come in the wake of a massive scandal that resulted in the fall of politician Bo Xilai. (Yahoo/Reuters)
• Lobbying reports on the way? The British Government is moving to "introduce a register of lobbyists" in response to a string of recent scandals. Critics responded to the proposal by demanding that it reports also include information on the content of discussions between lobbyists and officials. (BBC)

RELEVANT BILLS INTRODUCED

• None.

HAPPENING TODAY 5/18

• Legislative Branch Appropriations. House Appropriations. 11:00 am. HT-2, Capitol. Legislative Branch Subcommittee Markup.

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey wrote this post.

Do you want to track transparency news? You can add our feed to your Google Reader, or view it on our Netvibes page. You can also get 2Day in #OpenGov sent directly to your reader!

This week's Tools for Transparency post is part of a two-part mini-series by guest blogger Justin Grimes. Justin (@justgrimes) is a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland's College of Information Studies, a research assistant at the Information Policy and Access Center (iPAC), and a member of the Human Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL). His research areas focus on information policy and information access. In general he geeks out at hacking transportation data and loves talking about all things data.

Visualizing the TransparencyCamp Community

I attended TransparencyCamp 2012 earlier this month and, like every other year that I have attended, there were lots of people and good conversations. This year I was particularly amazed at the sheer number and diversity of those in attendance. This got me thinking about the people drawn to this event and the relationships between them. I wondered, “wouldn’t it be neat to see what this community looks like?” So I decided to gather some Twitter data and do a little social network analysis on the #tcamp12 community.

Here are the results...

Click to see the full image at a a higher resolution.

What you are looking at is a graphical visualization of the community that tweeted with the hashtag #tcamp12 during TransparencyCamp 2012.

This graph was made using NodeXL and contains all Twitter users who sent tweets with the TCamp hashtag from April 28th to May 1st, 2012. In this graph you can basically see “who’s talking to whom" -- meaning the “circles” are Twitter users and the “lines” signify a mention from one user to another user. In this graph there are 367 nodes (“Twitter users”) with 1107 unique edges (“mentions”).

The graph is laid out using a Fruchterman-Reingold algorithm. Twitter users are grouped by color automagically by the Clauset-Newman-Moore clustering algorithm. Twitter users are sized by "betweenness centrality" -- a useful metric for evaluating nodes in a network besides just popularity (i.e. number of direct connections you have with other people). In technical terms, betweenness of centrality measures a “node’s centrality in the network equal to the number of shortest paths from all other vertices to all others that pass through that node”. In layman’s terms, this helps us identify the people (or "nodes") who bridge different networks or communities within a network or community. In essence, the higher the value of "betweenness", the more important you are to maintaining connections between groups. You are “the broker” between communities and have influence as such. Start removing nodes that have a high betweenness of centrality score and groups become disconnected and isolated.

The average betweenness centrality for the #TCamp12 community is 834.807. Keep this number in mind as you review the table below.

Top 10 #TCamp12 users ranked by betweenness of centrality:

@tcampdc              23502.981
@sunfoundation  16236.783
@craigfifer             15258.757
@tsagov                 14022.989
@citizentools        13420.000
@elle_mccann       12504.825
@digiphile              11569.597
@_anna_shaw       10835.748
@javaun                  8020.142
@joelogon              7213.984

Overall graph metrics:

Vertices: 367
Unique Edges: 1107
Self-Loops: 164

Maximum Geodesic Distance (Diameter): 8
Average Geodesic Distance: 3.540974
Graph Density: 0.007020443
Modularity: 0.447527

Below is another visualization of the same data but this time clustered groups are organized in boxes and the layout is done by using Harel-Koren Fast Multiscale algorithm. This graph is a little better in terms of clarity because it highlights different subnetworks.

Click to see the full image at a a higher resolution.

DIY NodeXL

So how can you do this type of analysis to help understand your community members or the ways in which they interact? Easy! and I’m going to show you how to get started. To do this I will explain the basics of social network analysis and then, I will then walk you through the process of collecting, analyzing, and visualizing social network data using a tool called NodeXL.

So what is social network analysis (SNA)?

Social network analysis (SNA) is the methodological study of social networks. Social networks are social structures made up entities (i.e. individual people, organizations, etc) and their dyadic ties (i.e. relationship, connection, etc). In technical terms we call these entities “nodes” or “vertices” and we call these ties “edges” or “links” or “connections”. A social network graph visualizes the network of nodes and edges.

Besides being just generally interesting, social network analysis is one way of helping us make sense of the world around us. Networks are everywhere. Social network analysis is a good way to understand social structures in our society and can be particularly useful towards mapping and measuring the relationship between people.

To perform social network analysis you’ll need software to help you perform the analysis (and a question). There are lots of amazing software tools for performing social network analysis to choose from: NodeXL, Gelphi, Pajek, etc. For beginners, I always recommend using NodeXL. NodeXL itself is an open source plugin for Microsoft Excel. It is free, easy to use, requires no programming experience, little prior SNA knowledge, and has wonderful documentation and a solid community supporting it. One of the nicer features of NodeXL is that it can automagically import data straight from social network sites such as Twitter and Flickr. The only serious drawback or criticism I have for NodeXL is that it Windows only and requires Microsoft Office. [Disclaimer - although NodeXL was largely developed at Microsoft, I’m affiliated with the HCIL, which has several members who have contributed to this project; I was not one of them].

As I said earlier, you need two things to do social network analysis: software and a question. NodeXL will be our software. Our question for this example will be what does network of Twitter users at TransparencyCamp 2012 look like? To answer this question I’m going to analyze Twitter activity of Transparency Camp 2012 by capturing all tweets that contain the hashtag #tcamp12.

To get the answer to this question, stay tuned until next week when we'll share Justin's step-by-step NodeXL guide. In the meantime, if you have Windows and want to start playing with social network data on your own, click here to download the #TCamp12 data file Justin used to complete the analysis above.

Public access to legislative information could get a boost this Friday at a House subcommittee hearing. The Legislative Branch Appropriations subcommittee will be marking up Congress' budget for FY 2013, which will present the opportunity to require that the data behind THOMAS be made available to the public in a better format.

Why does this matter? Simply speaking, our democracy is founded upon an informed public acting through its elected officials to make policy. THOMAS makes this possible, but its limitations make it difficult.

Developers and programmers have worked to overcome THOMAS's limitations, creating websites like OpenCongress and GovTrack.us that together have nearly twice as many visitors as THOMAS, mobile device apps like Sunlight's "Congress" Android app that's been downloaded 400,000 times, as well as integrating the data into news coverage (like at the New York Times) and special purpose sites like WashingtonWatch.com.

Unfortunately, weaknesses in how THOMAS makes the data available limits what can be accomplished by even the most talented developer. No one expects THOMAS to do everything, but it suffers from basic problems. Its web page addresses break after 15 minutes, it doesn't provide redlines of bills, you can't get alerts when legislation is moving, and it does a poor job of integrating relevant legislative data. There's a laundry list of improvements here. In addition, there are other tasks that shouldn't be done by THOMAS, but should exist... whether as simple as connecting relevant CRS reports to legislation or as dynamic as adding an interactive social media layer.

These are examples of the benefits of opening up the data that drives THOMAS. Beneath the 1990s web interface is an up-to-date database of bills, bill status information, legislative summaries, and much more. Releasing the data in a developer-friendly format (i.e. structured data made available in bulk) would empower innovators to improve upon the services THOMAS provides, and to go in entirely new directions, all at no cost to the public.

When the THOMAS website went live on January 5, 1995, it was the result of a bipartisan effort to grant "citizens across the country and around the world ... access, via the Internet, to congressional information." THOMAS significantly improved how legislative information was made available online -- it provided additional materials in a centralized location, and did not charge the public for access -- with a pledge that over time "enhancement[s] will be made to THOMAS to upgrade its features."

While citizens around the world gained access to some congressional information, enhancements to THOMAS's capabilities have been limited in scope. Its limitations kindled a desire in users to be able to build their own tools to make use of legislative data. These efforts have been severely hampered because THOMAS doesn't give the public access to its underlying database, instead releasing its information piecemeal through thousands of webpages.

This challenge was partially overcome by technologists like Josh Tauburer, who in 2004 launched GovTrack.us, which he describes in his great new book Open Government Data as "one of the first websites world-wide to offer comprehensive parliamentary tracking for free and with the intention to be used by everyday citizens." But there's a catch. The unstructured way the THOMAS data was released required him to find some way to gather and organize the data.

He turned to screen scraping, which involves "programmatically loading up web pages, looking at their HTML source, and extracting information using simple pattern matching." Jim Harper at Washington Watch, which tracks bills and government spending, also uses screen scraping. They've run into similar problems: screen scrapers don't catch all the data, they're a pain to build, they easily break, and can suffer from a time lag. All of this could easily be fixed by publicly releasing the structured database behind THOMAS.

In fact, releasing the database -- often referred to as providing "bulk access to data" -- is a longstanding open data principle that has been called for by many people over the years.

In May 2007, a coalition of organizations and experts released the Open House Report, which recommended (among other things) the creation of a "Legislation Database."

"Congress should make available to the public a well-supported database of all bill status and summary information currently accessible through the Library of Congress. This database, as well as its supporting files, should be in a structured, non-proprietary format such as XML. "

This recommendation was embraced by Representative Mike Honda, then Chairman of the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee. In November of 2007, a committee staffer asked the Library of Congress "to report back on solutions to provide raw legislative data to the public, as well as the resources required to accomplish this." No such report has been released by the Library to the public.

Around the same time, legislative language was inserted into an explanatory statement accompanying the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-8) that declared "There is support for enhancing public access to legislative documents, bill status, summary information, and other legislative data through more direct methods such as bulk data downloads and other means of no-charge digital access to legislative databases."

This direct endorsement of bulk access to legislative data did not yield measurable results from the Library of Congress, which is responsible for the THOMAS database. Not did the myriad of meetings, phone calls, and letters from congressional staff to the Library.

Over time, there has been a shift of responsibility for THOMAS to the Law Library from other parts of the Library of Congress, as announced in their January 5, 2010 holiday newsletter. Although the newsletter raised hoped that the "analysis of the system's functionality and content based on user feedback" would lead to improvements in access to the underlying data, no movement on this issue was forthcoming. Even so, the public and members of Congress have continued to press forward on the issue.

For example, in May 2010, I had the opportunity to testify on behalf of Sunlight before the House Legislative Appropriations subcommittee. We called on Congress to:

Grant the public access to legislative documents, bill status and summary information, and other legislative data no later than 120 days after the start of FY 2012. We also ask for the immediate creation of an advisory committee, composed of relevant legislative agency employees and members of the public, that will meet regularly to address the public's need for access to this information, and the means by which it is provided.

In September 2010, Rep. Foster introduced legislation to improve public access to THOMAS. The bill would have provided bulk access to bill summary and other THOMAS data, created an advisory committee to make recommendations on improving THOMAS, and urged the Library to work towards providing bulk access to the full text of the legislation. The session ended before there was an opportunity for action.

Even though the 112th Congress brought a change in leadership in the House, bipartisan interest in making this information available to the public continued. Indeed, over the years appropriators, overseers, and leadership have pushed the ball forward. In June of 2011, the Committee on House Administration held a hearing  on making congressional documents available electronically as a transparency and cost-savings measure. One of the panelists, Cornell's Tom Bruce, advocated that the House focus on providing legislative data in bulk and in a timely fashion.

In December, Reps. Cantor and Hoyer co-hosted a Congressional Hackathon, which brought together nearly 300 developers and policy wonks to discuss how to use technology to make the legislative branch more open. Out of that meeting came three action items, the first of which was "providing legislative data in a bulk format to enable third-party developers to create more dynamic interfaces for legislative information."

By the middle of the month, the Committee on House Administration set forth standards for the electronic posting of House and committee documents and data. In January, the House launched a groundbreaking transparency portal. It provides a one stop website where the public can access all House bills, amendments, resolutions for floor consideration, and conference reports in XML, as well as information on floor proceedings and more. Information will ultimately be published online in real time and archived for perpetuity. So far, only documents considered by the full House are available online, but it's expected that Committee documents will be available by the beginning of 2013.

The House transparency portal is a tremendous breakthrough, but it does have significant limitations. Because it came online in 2012, it doesn't capture the historical information contained in the THOMAS database. As a House resource, it doesn't have Senate records. And it doesn't contain bill summaries, related bills, and other information prepared by the Library of Congress and GPO that are made available through THOMAS. Therese limitations can be overcome in time, and they clearly points the way to the future, especially if the Library of Congress doesn't act.

On February 2, the House held a full day Legislative Data and Transparency Conference, which brought together nearly all of the key players in making congressional information available to the public. On behalf of Sunlight, I delivered a talk on benchmarks for measuring success for legislative data transparency, which clearly included a call for THOMAS data to be made available in bulk. Surprisingly, the Library of Congress' representative, when directly asked about THOMAS, indicated the issue wasn't even on the radar. Three days later, the Sunlight Foundation submitted comments to the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Committee on the importance of making legislative data available to the public, as did Josh Tauburer and Open Congress.

By April, a coalition of 30 organizations wrote a letter to legislators asking Congress to provide bulk access to THOMAS and create an advisory body. Part of the letter reads as follows:

We estimate that for every person that goes directly to the THOMAS website, at least two people visit a third-party website. But even these sites must rely on legislative information generated and maintained by Congress, which is only available through the difficult-to-use THOMAS website. There will always be a need for a congressionally-mandated website, but Congress should ensure that the innovative and transformative uses of legislative information by third parties is grounded upon accurate and timely data. And that means providing bulk access to everyone.

So here we are in May. The three best legislative opportunities to require bulk access to THOMAS this legislative year, in increasing order of difficulty, are in the Leg Branch Approps Subcommittee mark-up on Friday, the full committee mark-up, and in the final vote on the House floor. (The Senate also provides an opportunity, but the House traditionally has led on these issues.)

It's time to fulfill the promise of citizen access to legislative information. Congress should require bulk access to THOMAS legislative data no later than 120 days of passage of the appropriations bill, and create an advisory committee that regularly meetings to look at public access to legislative information and is composed of people inside and outside of government. It would make information that's already required to be publicly available much more useful to everyone, and impose (at best) a minimal cost.

THOMAS was created by Congress to make legislative information freely available to the public, but the Library has not kept up with best practices. Congress should break the logjam and keep the promise of making free legislative information available to everyone in a way that encourages the public to make the most of it.

This week the House is debating the reauthorization of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, and there seems to be little danger of a relapse of the relative bipartisanship that occurred at the end of April, when the Senate approved its version of the bill.

By the time of that vote, 15 Republicans joined the entire Democratic caucus in passing the legislation in the House, which is not to say that the two sides were singing in harmony from the start. And the climate is worse over on the other side of the Capitol.

Even before things got tense, 44 organizations had disclosed lobbying on the bill as of March 31 -- including, somewhat unexpectedly, eight Native American tribes or groups working on their behalf and several immigration groups.

The native Americans want to close what they call a jurisdictional gap that occurs when a non-Indian man assaults an Indian woman on reservation land. Tribal police have no authority in those circumstances under current law, and statistics show in a dramatic way that the feds rarely go forward with prosecutions. The Senate bill, as it was passed, would allow tribal authorities to intervene in such cases as long as the alleged transgressions are misdemeanors, rather than felonies. But House language could leave tribal women worse off than they are under existing law, according to lobbyists for the tribes.

Most of the immigration groups supported Senate language that would preserve certain rights of undocumented women to call police, without fear of deportation, if they are abused.

The House bill, under a package of amendments that its sponsor was expected to  introduce tonight, would make it harder for women to secure "U" visas, which were designed to encourage victims of serious crimes to come forward despite being undocumented.

"The House bill rolls back existing protections," said Greg Chen, top lobbyist for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Lobbyists on the other side maintain that the current system lends itself to fraud, although there's little statistical evidence to support that.

A vote in the House is expected on Wednesday.

Researcher Sarah Bryner contributed to this report.

When Wall Street giant JPMorgan Chase announced this week that it had lost an estimated $2 billion (now upped to $3 billion) on risky trades, Republican and Democratic members of Congress rushed to make their political cases: Either this was something that more regulation couldn't have prevented, or this was exactly what stronger government rules could have thwarted.

None of them, however, mentioned whether they had a financial stake in JPMorgan Chase. table.tableizer-table {border: 1px solid #CCC; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;} .tableizer-table td {padding: 4px; margin: 3px; border: 1px solid #ccc;} .tableizer-table th { background-color: #104E8B; color: #FFF; font-weight: bold; padding: 4px;}

Representatives	Minimum	Maximum
Rep. Leonard Lance (R)	$250,001	$500,000
Rep. Jim Renacci (R)	$213,937	$213,937
Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr (R)	$100,001	$250,000
Rep. Peter Welch (D)	$100,001	$250,000
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D)	$50,001	$100,000
Rep. Mike Conaway (R)	$50,001	$100,000
Rep. John Boehner (R)	$30,002	$100,000
Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R)	$30,002	$100,000
Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R)	$17,003	$80,000
Rep. Connie Mack (R)	$17,003	$80,000
Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R)	$15,001	$50,000
Rep. Kurt Schrader (D)	$15,001	$50,000
Rep. David McKinley (R)	$15,001	$50,000
Rep. Rick Berg (R)	$5,472	$5,472
Rep. Tom Price (R)	$3,690	$3,690
Rep. Vernon Buchanan (R)	$2,002	$30,000
Rep. Michael McCaul (R)	$2,002	$30,000
Rep. Xavier Becerra (D)	$2,002	$30,000
Rep. Fred Upton (R)	$2,002	$30,000
Rep. Ben Chandler (D)	$1,001	$15,000
Rep. Charles W. Boustany Jr (R)	$1,001	$15,000
Rep. Brad Miller (D)	$1,001	$15,000
Rep. Gary Peters (D)	$1,001	$15,000
Rep. Nan Hayworth (R)	$1,001	$15,000
Rep. Dan Benishek (R)	$1,001	$15,000

Quick call-to-action – today, Friday May 18th at 9:30 am 11am ET (changed, per Daniel Schuman’s photo – ed.), the Legislative Branch Subcommittee is holding a markup of a major appropriations bill. This is a crucial window of opportunity to compel the out-of-touch gatekeeepers at the Library of Congress and the members of Congress who oversee them to make public data open to the public in full. Background on OC Blog: our campaign is to #FreeTHOMAS now. 

Click here to email your senators and representative in favor of open government data today. We’ve seeded the Message Builder with some suggested talking points; feel free to add your personal testimony about why you think our nation’s massively important legislative data ought to be, you know, open to the public it affects (and which paid for it). 

In coalition with our #opengov allies at the Sunlight Foundation, GovTrack and others, we’ll keep pushing on a number of fronts to liberate public data:

• Everyone reading this – please write your members of Congress above to raise the issue of legislative transparency. Spread the word w/ our #FreeTHOMAS hashtag. 

• If your rep. is on the Legislative Approps. Subcommittee, please visit our whip count page and record that you have contacted them. The 8 reps. on the subcommittee are: Rep. Sanford Bishop [D, GA-2], Rep. Ken Calvert [R, CA-44], Rep. Ander Crenshaw [R, FL-4], Rep. Jo Ann Emerson [R, MO-8], Rep. Michael Honda [D, CA-15], Rep. Steven LaTourette [R, OH-14], Rep. David Price [D, NC-4], and Rep. Dennis Rehberg [R, MT-0]. Contacting these members is particularly important, but, again, this is a national issue so we’re asking everyone to contact their senators and rep. about this. 

• Employees & directors at the Library of Congress – there has been pitifully little progress or communication since our good-faith meeting this past February in the Capitol. We demand access to public legislative data in timely, machine-readable formats – and most of all, in bulk. It’s preposterously past-time. We need it for OpenCongress; the entire #opengov, #opendata ecosystem needs it; media & journalists & bloggers could use it; it’s a sound fundamental principle of accountability & access to information. 

There are zero compelling arguments against OpenGovData for THOMAS. It’s technically straightforward (and as you know, you have our help & collaboration). The only thing blocking it, as far as what the LoC can control, is institutional inertia & bureacratic foot-dragging. Totally weird & preposterous that the LoC is so intransigent on this common-sense #opengov #opendata issue (with virtually no arguments against it other than organizational unresponsiveness & lack of will). Conference attendees, we call you to pressure the LoC to start moving in this direction: bulk access first, legislative XML second, open API third, libre data by default fourth (or first).

Hundreds of thousands of OC visitors want real-time bill & vote & issue data every month, as do our 300,000 MyOC registered users (who could use it for deeper research & social sharing), and the millions more people searching for basic information about Congress around the open Web. We’ve provided more than enough compelling testimony, academic research, and peer-reviewed evidence of public demand & use case propositions & value generated (incl. economic benefits), and over three months later, you’ve refused to take action. See, for example, testimony from GovTrack (GovTrack users want better transparency from Congress, we co-sign Josh’s points) and Daniel Schuman, Sunlight Policy Counsel. This lack of access & lack of momentum towards access is unacceptable to the OC community. It’s mid-2012, we still don’t have #opengovdata, so we don’t have #opengov in America. 

Questions, feedback? Email me: david at opencongress, or davidmooreppf on AIM or Skype, and see our #FreeTHOMAS community wiki whip count page for more background. 

NEWS ROUNDUP

Government

• Hatch Act 2.0: Witnesses urged lawmakers to address technology and social media issues when considering reforms to the Hatch Act. The law, passed in 1939, governs political activity by federal, state, and local government officials. (Government Executive)
• Former lawmakers avoid lobbyist registration: At least 30 lawmakers who left Capitol Hill after the 111th Congress currently work at law firms, lobby shops, trade groups, and think tanks that lobby. However, only 10 of them registered as lobbyists. (The Hill)

State and Local

• Utah looks to clean up legislature: Utahns for Ethical Government, a nonpartisan citizen group, is fighting to put a proposed ethics initiative in front of voters. The Utah legislature has resisted attempts to reform its internal ethics rules. (State Integrity)
• IT corruption in Michigan: Three IT officials in Wayne County, Michigan have been charged in corruption probes this year. The charges include extortion, theft, and accepting illegal payments. (Government Technology)

International

• Ghana waiting on right to information: A right to information bill has been languishing in the Ghanaian parliament since early in 2010. (Global Voices)
• Brazilian transparency - effective immediately: Two landmark pieces of legislation were passed in Brazil last October. Yesterday the new freedom of information law and truth commission went into effect. (Observing Brazil)
• Crowd-sourcing conflicts of interest: Chilean transparency group Fundacion Ciudadano Inteligente launched a new website that allows citizens to track and map potential corporate ties and conflicts of interest that might influence lawmakers. (Tech President)

RELEVANT BILLS INTRODUCED

• H.R. 5727. The Rebuild America Act...The minutes of a meeting, or portion thereof, exempt from disclosure pursuant to subparagraph (b) shall be exempt from disclosure under section 552(b) of title 5, United States Code. Referred to the House Committees on Ways and Means, Education and the Workforce, Energy and Commerce, Agriculture, Transportation and Infrastructure, Financial Services, Science, Space, and Technology, Small Business, the Judiciary, Rules, Oversight and Government Reform, and House Administration.
• S. 2835. A bill to amend the higher education act of 1965 to require institutions of higher education to post certain IRS returns on their websites. Referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, and Labor.

HAPPENING TODAY 5/17

• Homeland Security Department Ethical Standards. House Homeland Security. 9:30 am. 311 CHOB. Oversight, Investigations, and Management Subcommittee hearing.
• Digital Diplomacy: A New Era of Advancing Policy. CEIP. 9:00-10:30 am. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036.
• Does Electronic Reporting of Emissions Information Generate Environmental Benefits? Resources for the Future. 12:00-1:30 pm. 1616 P Street NW, Washington, DC 20036.
• Webinar: All Points of the Compass - Global Legal Collections, Research, and Reference Services at the Law Library of Congress. FedLink/LoC. 2:00-3:00 pm.

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey wrote this post.

Do you want to track transparency news? You can add our feed to your Google Reader, or view it on our Netvibes page. You can also get 2Day in #OpenGov sent directly to your reader!

Yesterday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted, in essence, to sanction the practice of secret “pay-to-play” in the awarding of government contracts. With only Senator Tester recording his opposition, the committee voted out a bill that would ban federal agencies from collecting or disclosing any information about the political expenditures of federal contractors.

Turning logic on its head, the Keeping Politics Out of Federal Contracting Act of 2011 embodies the theory that maintaining the secrecy of dark money political contributions made by those seeking huge federal contracts somehow protects the integrity of the contracting process. I guess the lessons of Justice Brandeis that sunlight is the best disinfectant were lost on supporters of the bill.

Too add to the absurdity of the vote, the bill is a response to a phantom. The bill blocks disclosure that would result from an Executive Order mandating transparency by federal contractors. An Executive Order that was never issued. Ever fearful of disclosure, the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Independent Business and their ilk flexed their muscles to preempt any transparency of dark money that has resulted from the Citizens United case.

This bill would be funny if it weren’t so scary, but sanctioning secrecy in our democracy is no laughing matter. If this bill makes its way to the Senate floor, we hope Senators see that rather than keeping politics out of the federal contracting process, this bill will keep corruption in it.

The Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) has a report on the House bill that would cut NSF funding for political science and eliminate the American Community Survey:

• House Passes CJS Spending Bill: Amendments Eliminate NSF Political Science Program and American Community Survey, Washington Update Volume 31, Issue 9, COSSA (May 14, 2012).

When: Tuesday July 17 from 8-10pm

Why: Enjoy a gourmet antipasti display, mini-desserts, and one complimentary beer or wine,
plus the company of old friends and new faces!

Sponsored by Elsevier and WTCox

We hope to see you there!  And don’t forget to arrive early for food and drink!

Each attendee will receive one free drink ticket good for one beer or wine.

Reception open to all current Government Information, Solo, and Transportation Division members.

There are at least two ways to look at this story from National Journal's technology newsletter.

• Data, Data Everywhere, By Adam Mazmanian, Tech Daily Dose (May 16, 2012).

It's not clear why access to 600 gazillion terabytes (or thereabouts) of free, machine-readable data covering traffic accidents, copper smelting, phytoplankton cell counts and other fascinating, everyday topics have only inspired, at last count, 85 mobile apps.

One is that government hasn't found the right incentives to attract development of applications that make use of the wealth of government data in datasets that are more easily available than ever. This explanation is probably what drove the administration to host a "data pep rally... designed to stimulate interest in translating raw data into simple, navigable apps that consumers can use on mobile devices" today.

Another is that the whole idea of relying on the private sector to make information freely useable and useful (see, for example, The Federal Government Must Reimagine Its Role As An Information Provider) is not sufficient. This free-market approach to government information suggests limiting the role of governments to that of providing raw data to developers. This approach assumes that the market will turn that raw data into useful information products.

There is, I believe, reason to be concerned about the free-market approach to government information.

One reason is that, by reducing the role of government we will not gain better or more complete access to information; we will diminish and reduce our access to information. We can see that already with the Census Bureau's cancellation of the Statistical Abstract (see The demise of the Statistical Abstract and other critical Census titles.) With this model, the government stops producing useful information packages and the private sector does its best to fill the gap and charges a lot of money to do so. That has a lot of bad side effects, though. For one thing, it puts a cost barrier between the information and users. For another, to use the Statistical Abstract example, it is not even clear that the private sector can do more than imitate the product the government produced. (See all the tables in the StatAb that contain "unpublished" data from government agencies. For example, in section 2, "Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Divorces," I count 12 tables with unpublished data; in section 4, "Education," I count 32 tables with unpublished data. [counts from the 2012 Statistical Abstract].)

But there is another alternative. We could recognize that the government does have an important role in packaging raw data into meaningful packages of statistical tables, reports, views, and end-user-ready information. This makes sense for two reasons: First, it builds on the idea that information gathered and created by the government is public information and should be easily, freely, publicly usable by the public. That means that the government, which knows this information that it gathered and created best, should create the first package or product or view of that information. This is still, mostly, the default way governments behave for lots of government information. They use everything from press releases of current economic statistics, to amazingly useful reports like the Special Studies (P-23) series from the Census Bureau, to complex web sites like that at the The Bureau of Labor Statistics. Second, it makes sense because these government-produced information products will be better than any "pep rally" to attract others (private sector, public sector, and individual users) to dig into the raw data, to analyze the data, and to develop apps.

I recently made a mistake that turned into an object lesson on the limits of technology but also – and more importantly – on the limits of government openness. Earlier this year, in trying to figure out how many House staffers had gone on to become lobbyists over a two-year period, I naively relied on the ability of computers to match names. We have some sophisticated matching software, but it is not perfect. As a result, my recent post, “Almost 400 House staffers registered to lobby in last two years” improperly identified a number of staffers as lobbyists because they had the same name or almost the same as a registered lobbyist when, in fact, these were two different people.

The good folks at Legistorm noticed this for us, and so we decided to do an internal Sunlight audit, and our capable intern Breanna Edwards, under the supervision of our reporting team, provided it, using the Center for Responsive Politics’ Revolving Door website, LinkedIn, and official lobbying reports.

Of the 377 House staffers we originally identified as having gone on to lobby, Breanna was able to be certain or almost certain that 219 (58%) were indeed matches. She also identified 21 (6%) as almost certainly false positives (that is, the name match was correct, but it was clearly a case of two people with the same name). The remaining 137 matches our computers identified (36%) could not be confirmed definitively either way, at least just based on those three sources.

Breanna explains the challenges:

We decided to go about this project in a simple and straightforward way, using three tools: the Center for Responsive Politics' “Revolving Door”, LinkedIn and lobbying reports. I put all of the names through these three tools in almost all instances to be thoroughly sure of my results, though sometimes two out of the three tools, or at the very least one of the tools did not necessarily yield any results.

Center for Responsive Politics' Revolving Door is a neat tool that records which federal employees have become lobbyists, consultants and strategists, usually providing information on where they worked, the positions they have held for their employers and how long they were there. It's a really easy tool to use. One simply has to enter in the subject’s name into the given field and see if there is a record. If they did have a detailed record, that made my job easier. However, this database isn't completely foolproof. Sometimes the information Sunlight had did not match what CRP had, sometimes they only had parts of the information I was given, sometimes they didn't have any information on the subject at all. If the Center for Responsive Politics' information didn't exactly match what I had, or if there was something in the information that I was unclear about, my next step was to double-check LinkedIn.

The great thing about LinkedIn is that people self-advertise a lot there (of course, that is how it was meant to be used) and so there was little doubt that the individuals I was looking for would definitely put most, if not all of their employment history on there.  The trouble of course, is actually finding them and being sure that it was exactly the same person. I found some individuals with ease and, as expected, they gave the information I needed which was a green light. Among other individuals there were multiple people to choose from, all with some part of the employment history I was looking for, but none with the exact sequence I was looking for. I either took that to mean that we were looking at completely different people, or, if it was so blurred I could not tell, marked it as uncertain. In other cases, I just simply could not find the individual. That was when I turned to the lobbying reports.

 Though they sometimes gave some great results, the lobbying reports were the absolute last resort, Only people who make a certain salary are even listed on lobbying reports, which severely limits the number of individuals who even turned up in the search. Another issue: Even when these individuals were listed, a good number of them either did not know how to fill out the form correctly or chose not to fill it out correctly. So while I did manage to procure a few confirmations using this method, the reports really did not help that much.

The main problem was names. The funny thing about names is that there are only so many of them. There are few unique names, as names are not identification numbers. The fact that many individuals with the same or similar names seem to have worked in the same or extremely similar offices did not help our effort. It was nearly impossible to distinguish these people. Other times they simply did not appear, but of course, just because they were not in any databases, didn't mean that the information we had was false. All these factors made us unable to confirm  some of our findings.

 

The takeaway lesson ought to be clear: it’s much more difficult than it should be to match congressional staff names with lobbyist names. To do this kind of research, we are at the mercy of what individuals choose to report, especially when they have relatively common names.

This makes it very difficult to have a good understanding of how the revolving door works. There are good reasons the public might want to know which lobbyists have insider connections, and who they are using those connections to help. There are also good reasons the public might want to know which offices have former staff working for various outside groups that are trying to influence legislation.

 

A simple solution Here is a simple proposal to improve transparency and disclosure around the revolving door:

1. Lobbyist registration forms list the names of lobbyists working on a particular issue.  In order to be able to determine whether they have spun through the revolving door, each lobbyist should be identified by a publicly accessible unique identification number.

2. Upon registering, each lobbyist should also be required to list every position that he or she has held as a federal, state, or city employee. Currently, registrants are required to list all “covered” legislative and executive branch positions their lobbyists have held for the last 20  years only when the registrant begins representing a new client, but not on subsequent forms.

Doing this would create a simple, searchable, and centralized way to identify which lobbyists formerly served in government, and which didn’t. There is no reason why it should be as difficult as it currently is to verify whether individual public employees have gone on to become lobbyists.

Of course, there is much more to do on the issue of lobbying reform. We support the Lobbyist Disclosure Enhancement Act, introduced by Rep. Mike Quigley as well as the Real-Time Online Lobbying Disclosure Act. For a full list of our lobbying reform proposals, click here.

   

NEWS ROUNDUP

Campaign Finance

• McCain back on campaign finance train? Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is reportedly working with Democrats on an effort to require outside groups to disclose information on the donors that have helped them spend massive amounts on this years elections. (The Hill)
• Dems try to embrace super PACs: Senate Democrats are embracing super PACs and courting wealthy donors. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and his top lieutenants have been working to raise money for Majority PAC, which could help them hold on to their slim majority in the Senate. (Politico)
• All politics is no longer local: Money from out-of-state donors is dominating congressional races around the country. This might be connected to a nationalization of campaigns and a surge in donations from people at the extremes of the ideological spectrum (NPR)

Government

• Earmarks aside, powerful still steer funding: The congressional ban on earmarks hasn't stopped the most powerful lawmakers in Congress from advancing projects that would help their states. (Politico)
• Speaker.gov/UPGRADE: House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) unveiled the overhauled speaker.gov yesterday. The new website prominently features an active blog and encourages social network sharing and comments. It also relies on the open-source Drupal content management system. (Tech President)

State and Local

• Blogging about lawmaking: More than 50 state lawmakers regularly blog and more are expected to start. Blogging serves as an inexpensive way for lawmakers to engage their constituents. (Pew States)
• Georgia has high potential for corruption: Georgia's ethics laws were updated in 2010 following a scandal. But, according to the State Integrity Investigation, it has the highest potential for corruption of any state. (Common Blog)

International

RELEVANT BILLS INTRODUCED

• None.

HAPPENING TODAY 5/16

• FCC Oversight. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation. 2:30 pm. 253 RSOB. Full Committee Hearing.
• Hatch Act: Options for Reform. House Oversight and Government Reform. 9:30 am. 2247 RHOB. Federal Workforce, US Postal Service, and Labor Policy Subcommittee hearing.
• Tax Exempt Organizations Oversight. House Ways and Means. 10:00 am. 1100 LHOB. Oversight Subcommittee Hearing.
• Knowledge and Innovation: Understanding Public Access to Research. Brookings. 2:00-3:30 pm. Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036.

SCHEDULED FOR TOMORROW 5/17

• Homeland Security Department Ethical Standards. House Homeland Security. 9:30 am. 311 CHOB. Oversight, Investigations, and Management Subcommittee hearing.
• Digital Diplomacy: A New Era of Advancing Policy. CEIP. Thurs. 9:00-10:30 am. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036.
• Does Electronic Reporting of Emissions Information Generate Environmental Benefits? Resources for the Future. Thurs. 12:00-1:30 pm. 1616 P Street NW, Washington, DC 20036.
• Webinar: All Points of the Compass - Global Legal Collections, Research, and Reference Services at the Law Library of Congress. FedLink/LoC. 2:00-3:00 pm.

Do you want to track transparency news? You can add our feed to your Google Reader, or view it on our Netvibes page. You can also get 2Day in #OpenGov sent directly to your reader!

Tensions between China and the United States have been high lately, particularly since the blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng fled to the U.S. embassy -- a drama that current U.S. Ambassador to China Gary F. Locke played a prominent role in defusing.

"Of course Gary Locke’s personal assets have been disclosed. And what about the assets of those imperial officials [of ours]?"

“Oh, editors and comrades of Beijing Daily, how are you? How tough things are for you. It’s just that the residence of the Ambassador and the cars he rides in are about the image of America. No matter how we try to refine the idea of whether or not Gary Locke is corrupt, there’s the looming issue of our leaders living in Zhongnanhai. And how much more resplendent are those official residences? Why don’t you have a look."

If the early campaign-season barrage of negative advertising is any indicator, the 2012 election is going to be a decidedly uncivil one. According to the Wesleyan Media Project, 70% of advertising in the current presidential campaign has been negative – as compared to just 9% at this stage four years ago.

But just how well do these negative ads work? Historically, political science research has had a hard time uncovering much evidence for their effectiveness. But recent research is more and more finding that they do indeed move voters.

A recent survey by Arizona State professors Kim L. Fridkin and Patrick J. Kenney finds that the more “uncivil” advertisements voters see about a candidate, the more negatively they evaluate that candidate, as long as the ads are also seen as relevant.

Additionally, the researchers find that some voters are more sensitive to attack ads than others, and that attack ads are generally more effective in deflating challengers than incumbents. Their article, “Variability in Citizens’ Reactions to Different Types of Negative Campaigns,” was published last year in the American Journal of Political Science and makes for some fascinating reading.

To assess the impact of negative advertising, the scholars surveyed 1,045 citizens across 21 different 2006 Senate races both before and after the election.

They also had a team of researchers code the ads in those races on two dimensions: civility and relevance. They found that overall, 47% of the ads were “uncivil” and 12% were “irrelevant.” They defined civility as “an explicit use of harsh, shrill, or pejorative adjectives.” (e.g. “After all these years, can’t he offer more than smears and distortions?”) Relevance described whether the ads focused on the candidate’s record (e.g., “The Senator voted to give tax breaks for companies that move overseas”) or not (e.g. “My opponent parties with Playboy playmates”).

In general, the more voters were exposed to ads that were both uncivil and relevant, the more their evaluation of the candidates declined.

“What is impressive,” Fridkin and Kenney write, “is that the relevance and civility of advertising exert a strong impact on candidate evaluations, even controlling for party and ideological proximity.”

The researchers also found that negative press coverage independently reduced the favorability for incumbents, though not as clearly for challengers (presumably because challengers don’t get as much press coverage).

Unsurprisingly, the majority of respondents said they do not like negative ads. Overall, 82% of respondents either agreed somewhat (35%) or strongly (47%) that “some negative advertisements are so nasty that I stop paying attention.”

But some were less bothered by attack ads than others. In particular, the researchers found that the following traits were all independently associated with a higher tolerance for negative political advertisements:

• strong partisanship (both parties)
• following campaigns closely
• conservative political beliefs
• being a man
• being young
• a lack of political sophistication (i.e. inability to adequately place both parties on an ideological scale)

Interestingly, the voters who dislike the ads the most are also the most likely to be swayed by them, while those less bothered are also less likely to be affected. Those who have more tolerance are also less likely to see the ads as irrelevant and uncivil in the first place.

One encouraging sign, however, is that the research did find some support for a backlash effect. “When incumbents stray away from relevant messages and produce and disseminate irrelevant and uncivil messages,” Fridkin and Kenny wrote, “citizens react by lowering their evaluations of these incumbents.” In other words, voters get mad when incumbents unleash irrelevant attacks. So enough may be enough. But then again, they don’t punish challengers as harshly, according to the research.

Then again, with super PACs now around to run negative ads, candidates can worry less about the backlash. Research by Deborah Jordan Brooks and Michael Murov of Dartmouth (which I wrote about last week) finds that attack ads are much more effective when done by independent groups, precisely because they shield candidates from the backlash

If Fridkin and Kenny are correct, then there is one antidote to the effectiveness of attack ads: a bunch of highly partisan, active voters without much political sophistication, especially young conservative males. These individuals appear to have built up a resistance to attack ads. But then again, imagine an electorate filled with them.

Yesterday, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals demonstrated that it gets the need for greater transparency of money in politics. In a victory for transparency advocates, the court denied a motion to stay a lower court ruling that requires comprehensive disclosure of “electioneering communications.” In non-lawyer language, that means that nonprofit groups like the Chamber of Commerce, Crossroads GPS and Priorities USA that want to run political ads right before an election will have to disclose their donors.

The case is Van Hollen v. FEC and the issue is whether the FEC properly narrowed its own disclosure rules, leaving donors in the dark about who is funding campaign ads. Under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, (also known as the McCain-Feingold law) certain disclosure requirements applied to organizations making “electioneering communications”—ads that refer to a candidate and run within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general. Under the law, the group running the ad must identify any person, corporation or labor union that contributed $1000 to the organization. (It should be noted that the old rule also permits the group to set up a separate segregated bank account to make electioneering communications. If it does that, only donors to that account need to be disclosed. This is not unlike provisions in the DISCLOSE Act.)

The FEC gutted the old rule, limiting disclosure to only those contributions made “for the purpose of furthering electioneering communications.” In other words, the Commission created a gaping disclosure loophole that meant donors behind some of the nastiest political ads that flood the airwaves would remain secret. Van Hollen sued, and the lower court agreed with him that the original rule should remain in place. By that time, however, two other groups joined the case as “intervenors” and urged the court to “stay”—or hold off—enforcing the decision that would require immediate disclosure.

The panel of D.C. Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court and refused to grant the stay, recognizing the importance of disclosure. The lower court judge based her decision in part on the Supreme Court’s observation that, “the disclosure requirements serve an important public function because they ‘provide the electorate with information about the sources of election-related spending’ and help citizens ‘make informed choices in the political marketplace.’ (Citations omitted) The result of the ruling is that the original, broad disclosure requirement is in effect and groups should be on notice that they are required to disclose their donors if they plan to run electioneering communications.

But, don’t expect to see a database of donors pop up on the FEC’s website tomorrow. Groups will try to avoid disclosure and have already begun to craft ads they think won’t trigger disclosure requirements. (Think ads that say “Congress” instead of “Congressman Smith.”) The groups will also ask the FEC to provide “Advisory Opinions” (AOs) as to whether disclosure rules apply in particular circumstances. How the FEC responds to these requests for AOs may signal how serious the commission is about enforcing the new, old rule. The FEC, with its even split between Democrats and Republicans may well deadlock rather than move forward on disclosure and enforcement.

The judicial system is likely not done with the case either. It is possible that the decision denying the stay will be appealed, in which case we would hope the judicial system continues to favor disclosure over secrecy. Yesterday's decision gives us reason to believe that the judicial branch will continue to trend toward greater transparency.

NEWS ROUNDUP

Government

• Running against corruption: Three candidates in upcoming congressional primaries are basing their campaigns on fighting corruption and money in politics. (Republic Report)
• The Road less transparent: Some observers are concerned that travel limitations imposed by the OMB could lead to less transparency by limiting agency interaction with the public. (Federal Computer Week)

State and Local

• Live Free and consider open source: New Hampshire's CIO expects the state to reap benefits of a law, signed in February, that requires state agencies to consider open source options and adopt open data standards. (Gov Tech)
• Lone Star Security Secrets: A state judge in Texas ruled that the state's Department of Public Safety does not have to release travel records of Governor Rick Perry's security team. The judge reversed his own 2008 decision, in which he ruled that the information was eligible for release under the Texas Public Information Act. (Courthouse News)

International

• Fight corruption, feed the hungry: Hunger and corruption are closely linked. India harvests enough food to feed its population, but corruption has kept the country from installing adequate infrastructure to distribute it efficiently. (Transparency International)
• Blogging against corruption in Kyrgyzstan: One of Kyrgyzstan's most popular bloggers dedicates himself to exposing rampant corruption all three branches of government, the public safety sector, universities, and the Kyrgyz monetary system. (Global Voices)

RELEVANT BILLS INTRODUCED

• H.R. 5651. The Food and Drug Administration Reform Act of 2012. Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
• H.R. 5709. To Amend the Public Health Service Act to provide for the public disclosure of charges for certain hospital and ambulatory surgical center treatment episodes. Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
• H.R. 5730. To amend title XVII of the Social Security Act to make publicly available on the official Medicare Internet site medicare payment rates for frequently reimbursed hospital inpatient procedures, hospital outpatient procedures, and physicians' services. Referred to the House Committees on Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce.

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Ron Paul's announcement Monday effectively ending his presidential bid brought the end of a quiet campaign that nevertheless raised more money -- $36.7 million as of March 31-- than that of any Republican candidate other than Mitt Romney.
A few outside spending groups supported Paul, but the largest, a super PAC called Endorse Liberty, spent just $3.8 million. All of that went to support Paul, not to attack other candidates. In contrast, Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney super PAC, has spent $46.5 million (more than Paul's campaign and all pro-Paul outside spending put together) -- $39.7 million of that on attacks against other candidates. 

A Connecticut bill has been making the rounds in transparency circles recently: HB 5556, a toothy, bipartisan approach to corporate and union campaign financial disclosure, introduced as the state’s response to Citizens United. It quickly passed the CT House 94 - 57 and the Senate 20 - 15 on May 8th, and now all eyes are on Governor Dan Malloy to see whether he’ll veto the bill or sign it into law this week. Although Malloy authored the original text, the bill has been significantly beefed up since it left his office and entered the Government Administration and Elections Committee -- so much so that Malloy’s office has been resistant to showing their support.

But they should get over themselves. It’s refreshing to see a state legislature take such a dedicated approach to campaign finance disclosure reform, especially in an election year. Here’s a round-up of some of the bolder transparency-related measures CT legislators are trying to pass with HB 5556:

• Super PACs and other 501(c)s engaged in campaign-related activity would have to...
• Report all donations over $1000 and publish the names and addresses of these donors on the organization’s website.
• Report any transfer of funds marked for political activity, including the full name and addresses of all individuals involved in making the donation and transfer -- even when the receiving end is another organization. (Translation: Say goodbye to shadowy front groups and intermediaries...)
• Corporations, unions, and other legally organized bodies would have to have their boards pre-authorize each and every campaign-related disbursement over $4000 through a vote. Votes of individual members and the resulting expenditures would then need to be published on the organization’s website within 48 hours of voting.
• All political ads would be required to not only list the top five donors at the end of the ad (strengthening current “Stand by Your Ad” provisions), but to also include a URL pointing to a website where people can see all the organization’s donors -- including the names and addresses of every donor who gave more than $1000.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of HB 5556’s provisions, but these requirements speak to the boldness of Connecticut’s approach. In fact, many of the measures listed above are kin to those in the DISCLOSE Act, a Sunlight-supported federal campaign finance bill currently languishing in Congress.

HB 5556 isn’t a perfect bill (note the strange rider about military voting and the potential "chilling" of grassroots/citizen lobbying near election day), but as far as its approach to transparency measures are concerned, it should be commended and seriously considered as a (constitutional) solution to a problem faced by states everywhere, at time when reform is needed most.

It's election season. For politicians, that means two things: campaigning and fundraising. But for most Americans, it only means one: ads, ads, ads.

And in this, the first presidential election since Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission -- wherein the U.S. Supreme Court overturned decades-long prohibitions on the ability of corporations, unions and other groups to pour millions into independent expenditures -- hundreds of super PACs are dominating the airwaves.

But are they really? Yes and no.

As of this writing, only 81 of the 535 super PACs that have received the Federal Election Commission's blessing to raise cash and run ads have actually spent any money during the 2012 election cycle, according to Center for Responsive Politics research. And the number of super PACs that spend significant amounts is even smaller. As of May 10, the 10 biggest super PACs of the election cycle accounted for nearly 89 percent of all such spending.

But there's only one true pace-setter this cycle: Restore Our Future. The pro-Mitt Romney super PAC has been called the GOP presidential "death star" for its proven ability to weaken Romney's opponents during the Republican primaries.


It's precisely Restore's ability to waste opponents that is the topic of this week's PolitiQuizz. We want you to dig deep into Restore's expenditures and tell us:

According to OpenSecrets.org, precisely how much did Restore Our Future spend attacking (i.e. advertisements "against) Republican candidates this election cycle?

The first person to give us the full number (no rounding!) in the comments section of this blog entry will be awarded a free copy of The Blue Pages: Second Edition, the money-in-politics book for which the Center for Responsive Politics provided data and analysis.

As always, the answer can be found somewhere in the annals of OpenSecrets.org.

PolitiQuizz was on hiatus last week, but our post from late April still needs resolving. Here's what we asked:

Which senator received the most money from the education industry in 2010? How much money did that member receive?

The answer is former Sen. Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who received $410,568 from individuals and PACs affiliated with the education industry during the 2010 election cycle (that figure has since been updated and risen to $410,818). Didn't help him enough, though.

Congratulations to the winner, "marksgary", who was first to provide the correct politician and dollar figure. Please email us at press@crp.org so we can send you the spoils.

To everyone else, good luck this week!