LegiStorm: Transparency's Sidekick

According to a report in the The Hill, it appears to be all but certain that Congress will once again vote to forego its annual pay raise. However, there have been some competing proposals about what might happen after this year.

Currently, Congress gets an automatic cost-of-living increase each year unless they vote against the raise. Both chambers voted against a raise for 2010, and members of Congress are likely to deny themselves a raise again for 2011 given the combination of a bad national economy and an election year.

However, the picture beyond 2011 isn't clear. The Hill reports that Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Harry Mitchell (D-Ariz.) have proposed freezing salaries only for 2011. Rep. Nathan Deal (R-Ga.) is proposing to cut member salaries in any year the government runs a deficit. And Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has suggested totally revamping the system, abolishing the automatic pay raises and instead establishing an independent commission to set pay, subject to a yes-or-no vote.

 The Senate is expected to follow the House of Representative's lead and post all member expenses online, the Associated Press reports.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) proposed the measure, which was approved and added to an appropriations bill allocating funds for the congressional budget. A final compromise version of the appropriations bill will need to be approved by the House and Senate before the measure will go into effect.

This follows last month's announcement by the House that it would post the House's Statement of Disbursements "at the earliest date." Originally, that was expected to be the end of August. But The Hill reported last week that the House was going to delay the release until October to plan for the expected increase in online traffic.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband lost between $100,001 and $1 million on an investment in American International Group according to her 2009 personal financial disclosure.

The revelation was the main focus of a number of news stories published after LegiStorm announced we had posted the disclosures for members of the House yesterday, two days before the schedule release.

The Washington Post, USA Today, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal were among the outlets that looked at the files on LegiStorm and wrote about what they found.

Spring is in the air and earmarks are flowing to the well-connected. The Hill newspaper illustrates that point this morning with a tale of how a New Jersey congressman has requested approximately $40 million in earmarks for clients of a lobbying firm managed by his former chief of staff.

Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), the ranking member of the House Appropriations Energy and Water Development subcommittee, has made 12 earmark requests for entities represented by Winning Strategies, the firm managed by his former chief of staff, Donna Mullins.

Three of the earmark requests, totaling $9 million, went to generous campaign donors. Winning Strategies was one of Frelinghuysen's top five campaign donors in the last election, with Mullins donating $13,600 since 2003. The Hill finds that neither Frelinghuysen nor Winning Strategies appear to be breaking any rules in their actions, but notes that the requests demonstrate the importance of the revolving door in the lobbying process. As Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense told The Hill, "People with very tight connections are able to deliver for their clients." Frelinghuysen says that his earmark requests serve the interests of his constituents. His office would not comment on the relationship between the congressman and Winning Strategies.

Reports by The Hill and the New York Post explore possible ethics violations surrounding trips to the Caribbean taken by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.).

The trips, taken in early November to the island of St. Maarten, were sponsored by the New York Carib News, a nonprofit organization that puts out a newspaper focused on Caribbean issues. Carib News indicated on disclosure forms filed with the House that it had not taken donations specifically for the trip - any such donations would be a violation of a recent House Ethics rule. But reports show corporations likely shelled out most of the cash to pay for the conference which was the stated reason for the trips.

The trip was not a one-time affair; New York Carib News has sponsored congressional travel to tropical locations for their business conference every year since at least 2000, when LegiStorm started tracking such travel. But the ethics rule in question was passed two years ago, after Democrats regained control of the House.

The House has worked itself up into hysteria over LegiStorm’s recent release of staffer personal financial disclosures. There are demands in Congress for a taxpayer-financed lawsuit against us. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/aides-private-info-exposed-2008-04-02.html.

One House staffer has even gone so far as to suggest that LegiStorm aided and abetted in the burglary of his house. This has gone too far. We have a solution for the mess of the House’s own making.

First, to be clear: read more ...

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.