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The New York Times today cites LegiStorm data in a story with more revelations about the ties between Allen Stanford, who has been charged with fraud by the SEC, and lawmakers.

In addition to the trip Stanford Financial Group sponsored for Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Stanford has been linked to the Inter-American Economic Council, which has sponsored 85 congressional trips since 2003, for a total of $307,122.

According to the Times:

Soon after billionaire Allen Stanford was charged by the SEC with fraud yesterday, several news outlets used LegiStorm's data to see if any lawmakers were tied to the latest scandal.

The clearest piece of evidence uncovered was a 2004 trip to Antigua and sponsored by Stanford Financial Group Co. for Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). Cornyn took the four-day trip in Nov. 2004 and filed the necessary trip form, listing costs for himself and a companion (not disclosed but reported to be his wife) valued at $7,441.

The purpose of the trip was listed by Cornyn as "Financial services industry fact-finding mission hosted by constituent company with substantial operations on site" - Stanford Financial Group had a bank arm headquartered in Antigua and also had offices in Houston.

Over the past few days LegiStorm underwent a server upgrade that caused a few technical issues. While the majority of our users should not have been affected, we know a handful of you ran into site errors.

We apologize for any inconvenience as we sorted out our technical problems. We believe the glitches have been fixed and we expect our new infrastructure will improve the experience for our users as we move forward.

As always, we invite you to contact us if you have any problems or any suggestions.

The Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal won't die.

Yesterday, it was reported that Kevin Koonce, a former staffer to Commerce Secretary nominee Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), is the person referred to in court documents as "Staffer F." The documents detail charges relating to a lobbyist providing Staffer F gifts in exchange for preferable legislative treatment. Koonce has not been formally charged with any wrongdoing.

The report follows two other news items relating to Abramoff in recent days. Last week, lobbyist Todd Boulanger, a former congressional aide and Abramoff associate, pled guilty to illegally providing congressional staffers gifts in return for favorable treatment for his clients.

When we first launched LegiStorm in September 2006, we presented users with less than one year of complete congressional staff salary data. Since that time, we have steadily added more recent data but also historical salary data, not to mention other data offerings.

Now we have reached a new milestone. We have entered all historical salary data from House and Senate expenditure books that the Government Printing Office still makes available. As of now, our salary data is complete from October 2000 forward, or eight full years worth.

Today's release includes an additional year of salaries from October 1, 2000 to September 30, 2001 in the Senate, as well as three quarters of House data from October 1, 2000 to June 30, 2001.