LegiStorm: Transparency's Sidekick

Roll Call has a fascinating article this morning that illuminates how it never hurts to hire a congressman's family member when trying to secure an earmark to do work your company has no expertise in.

Once again, Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.) has rewarded an embattled lobbying firm that hired his brother, Kit Murtha. The firm, KSA Consulting, secured a $3 million earmark for a Pennsylvania-based company to develop an underwater "swimmer detection" sonar system to protect ships in port. The only problem? The company, KDH Defense Systems, has no expertise in sonar and specializes in sewing armored uniforms.

Earmarks are getting some renewed attention, and reporters are finding fresh examples of Washington's addiction to pork.

Roll Call has a story today about millions of dollars in earmarks requested by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) for his alma mater Tougaloo College. Problem is, the college doesn't know what the earmarks are for and it's not apparent it could provide the engineering services Thompson wants to fund since it has no discernible engineering program.

The story comes on the heels of the Washington Post's look this weekend at earmarks requested by Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.). The Post highlighted the John Murtha Airport in Murtha's hometown of Johnstown, Pa., a lightly-used airport which has been kept afloat largely due to earmarks requested by Murtha.

Since we started, we at LegiStorm have had a lot of things we have wanted to tell our site users. We are a site primarily of data but the data can tell stories.

Take the story by Susan Crabtree in yesterday's The Hill newspaper, which uses our data to show that the campaign of a powerful member of Congress, Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), paid more than $2,000 for a rifle and other weapons paraphernalia. What makes it more interesting is that Murtha, a close confidant to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and appropriations subcommittee chairman, may have violated both House ethics rules and federal statute in converting them to personal use by giving them as a gift to an aide. And it took us no more than a few minutes to discover that his campaign had officially - and erroneously - claimed this gun as a campaign "advertising" expense. His office described this as a "clerical error". The chief of staff said he refunded the money to the campaign committee after The Hill asked about it.

All this was available through public records which told a compelling story. In fact, it was information from two sources that, when combined, made it so interesting.