Congressional financial disclosures were a hot topic in the news this week.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) is the latest lawmaker to land in hot water regarding his disclosures. The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee is under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics for possible insider trading, the Washington Post reported. The investigators are reportedly focusing on trades in the financial services industry Bachus reported on his financial disclosures which coincide with policy announcements that affected those companies.

Earlier this week, it was Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) whose financial disclosures were in the spotlight. Buchanan is the subject of an investigation for failing to disclose several positions he held with various companies between 2007 and 2010. This week, the Office of Congressional Ethics released a report with details on the investigation and recommending the House Ethics Committee further investigate. 

A Senate committee passed legislation today prohibiting insider trading by lawmakers, and the legislation includes provisions to increase transparency regarding senators and Senate staff stock holdings.

The bill would require all senators' personal financial disclosure forms to be available online, according to The Wall Street Journal. The bill also applies to Senate staff. Currently, the forms are only available by going to the Office of Public Records in a Senate office building. LegiStorm makes the forms available online by printing hard copies of all disclosures, then scanning and uploading the forms to our website.

The House currently makes member disclosures available online. Both the House and Senate require senior staff to fill out disclosures as well, which are only available through the public records rooms. LegiStorm is now the only online source for staffer financial disclosures.

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.

LegiStorm has added the 2011 personal financial disclosures of Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), the final members to file.

According to the clerk's office, Hanna filed his disclosure on Sept. 8, and Gosar filed on Sept. 12, well past the extended deadline of Aug. 15.

Most financial disclosure forms were due in mid-May for members of Congress and senior staff, but individuals could request extensions of up to 90 days. Twenty senators and 75 represenatives requested extensions in May, with about half of those filing by mid-July.

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) has filed her 2011 personal financial disclosure, dropping the number of members of Congress who have yet to file down to two.

Freshmen Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.) are the only lawmakers who do not have filings available through the House or Senate public records offices. All other members of the House of Representatives and Senate have filed their 2011 annual disclosures.

Most financial disclosure forms were due in mid-May for members of Congress and senior staff, but individuals could request extensions of up to 90 days. Twenty senators and 75 represenatives requested extensions in May, with about half of those filing by mid-July.

All but three members of Congress have filed their 2011 personal financial disclosures.

Reps. Yvette Clark (D-N.Y.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.)  are the only lawmakers who do not have filings available through the House or Senate public records offices. 

All 100 Senators have filed, with 10 of them doing so on or near the final extension deadline of Aug. 15.

Half of the members of Congress who received extensions to file their personal financial disclosures at the May deadline have since filed, leaving nearly 50 lawmakers who have yet to file.

Of the eight of the 20 senators and 40 of 75 representatives who requested extentions have since filed the annual disclosures, which detail each members' assets, liabilities, and other financial information such as outside income. A full list of members who filed after requesting an extension, as well as a list of those members who have yet to file, can be found at the bottom of this post.

The disclosures were due May 16 and were released today by the House of Representatives and the Senate. Members were able to request an initial 30-day extension, and are able to request additional extensions up to 90 days past the original deadline.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) has filed an amended financial disclosure detailing previously undisclosed payments from his campaign to his wife.

Johnson's campaign paid his wife, Mereda Davis Johnson, $30,000 from 2008-2010 according to the amendment, which was filed on July 1 but only became available on the House's disclosure website late this week.

The Committee to Re-Elect Hank Johnson campaign had disclosed the payments in FEC filings, usually as "consulting" or "salary," but Johnson had not disclosed the payments on his personal financial disclosure. Filers are required to disclose all sourcesof their spouses' income. The lawmaker listed the exact amount of campaign payments to his wife as $9,250 in 2008, $12,000 in 2009, and $8,750 in 2010.

LegiStorm has completed uploading all the 2011 personal financial disclosures by congressional staffers which were filed by the mid-May deadline. We previously made the complete set of disclosures by members of Congress available on our site.

Although the filings were required to be turned in on May 16, the House disclosures were not made available until a month later. The staff filings are only available as paper copies which must be printed in the public records room of the House and Senate. LegiStorm printed many thousands of pages of disclosures and then scanned them into our system before manually matching each disclosure with the correct staffer in our database. We now have more than 3,200 staff disclosures, including amendments and extension letters, from 2011 in our system. 

In the coming weeks, we will manually review these disclosures for interesting items and highlight them on our site. We will also continue to monitor the records for disclosures filed after the deadline, by people who received extensions to file, amend their filings, leave their congressional employment or are newly hired.

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.