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Members of Congress tripled their outside income between 2006 and 2010, as lawmakers earned a total of nearly $30 million last year outside of their official salaries.

The numbers come from an analysis by the Wall Street Journal, which used LegiStorm's database of personal financial disclosures to compare filings. The forms require lawmakers to disclose outside income along with other information.

According to the Journal, members of Congress earned at least $27.5 million last year.  Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) topped the list with at least $6.3 million earned from Subway and UPS franchises. At the other end of the spectrum was former Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) who reported earning $280 from the sale of chestnuts. In 2006, outside income for senators and representatives totaled at least $7.8 million.

One was Michael Collins, chief of staff to Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who serves as senior chief deputy whip for the Democrats and is an iconic leader of the civil rights movement. The ethics committee did not announce what it was investigating but LegiStorm's analysis of his financial disclosures suggests several areas of weakness in his filings:

- Collins failed to report at least $66,000 in consulting income from Rep. Lewis's campaign and leadership PAC since the calendar year 2006, which is the earliest year for which LegiStorm has his financial disclosure. Of the $81,000 that the campaigns report that he received in flat sum consulting payments, Collins reported only $15,000 of that in any of his annual disclosures.

- In 2009, Collins received payments slighly in excess of the House's limit on outside income. The campaigns reported paying him $27,000, while the income limit was $26,550.

The Missouri Republican Party attacked Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) for appearing to keep his campaign manager on the official House payroll. According to the Jefferson City News-Tribune, the state GOP e-mailed a release linking to LegiStorm's data showing that Jason Rauch, now managing Skelton's campaign, earned more than $28,000 as a Legislative Assistant through the first six months of 2010.

However, Skelton's office said Rauch was placed on unpaid leave June 28 to work on the campaign.

It is not unusual for congressional staffers to go on leave without pay status to work on their boss's campaign and to avoid running afoul of ethics restrictions on campaign work and outside income. But even if Rauch had remained on Skelton's official payroll while working on the campaign, it would not violate House ethics rules as long as he did not do any campaign work using official resources or time, and continued to fulfill his official House duties.

Dick Meltzer took nearly a $1 million-a-year pay cut to leave his job as a lobbyist and work for Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Bill Hughes earned $320,000 in 14 months between Senate jobs. Kathy Damato earned $192,000 working for Sen. Chris Dodd's (D-Conn.) campaign - about $30,000 more than she could have made working for his official office.

These are just a few details that from the 2010 congressional staff personal financial disclosures, in which new staffers are required to list income from prior jobs and current staffers must  detail any outside income. 

The notes on the disclosures tell interesting stories, but they're not easy to find. All the financial disclosures are filled out by hand and filed as hard copy paper documents. In order to bring the information to our users, LegiStorm has reviewed each filing individually and manually enter the relevant data into our database. We've now completed a review of more than 2,500 personal financial disclosures filed by congressional staff in 2010 to find notable tidbits.

Before he became a politician, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) made at least $1 million a year salary as a comedian and author, according to his financial disclosure he filed when he first ran for the U.S. Senate. But Franken's first full financial disclosure as a sitting senator doesn't provide any insight into how much money he continues to take in royalties from television, film and book products.

The personal financial disclosure forms require all members of Congress to disclose any outside income. Franken appears to have gotten around that requirement because his income comes to a corporation, Alan Franken Inc., of which he is listed as president and joint owner.

The disclosure lists Alan Franken Inc. as "a multi media Professional Services Corporation including but not limited to writing, acting, producing and personal appearances in all film/video/digital/TV formats and all print media." Franken's stake in this corporation is listed between $500,000 and $1 million, and he does not report receiving any income from it in 2008.

Due to his Hall of Fame status, Bunning can command fees signing autographs for baseball memorabilia collectors. As a Senator, his outside income is limited due to ethics rules, but he can put these fees into his charitable foundation.

However, as his personal financial disclosures available on LegiStorm show, most of the foundation's payouts have gone to Bunning himself. In 2001, Bunning received $15,000 in salary from his foundation. Every year since then, he's reported earning $20,000 in salary. Overall, the Herald-Leader reports that since Bunning's foundation was created, it has raised $504,000 and Bunning has been paid $180,000 in salary. The foundation's charitable donations have totaled $136,435 - with the largest donations going to churches Bunning attends.

The foundation was approved by the Senate Ethics Committee and the IRS when it was created, but several people raised questions in the Herald-Leader's story about the proportion of money that has gone to Bunning's salary as well as the board setup. Rick Robinson - a lobbyist who is one of three members of the foundation's board (along with Bunning's wife and a family friend of the Bunnings) - told the paper the foundation is trying to build a large enough cash reserve so it could give donations using only interest generated by investments. However, he could offer no plan to do so.