Tag: Ethics

The House Rules Should be Publicly Available in Advance of Their Adoption

At the start of the 115th Congress, there was a fight over whether the Office of Congressional Ethics should continue its existence. I won’t get into the merits of the disagreement here (although I’ve written about it elsewhere), but how it occurred is interesting.

The Office of Congressional Ethics is one of the many offices and agencies created by the rules of the House of Representatives, which are adopted on the first day of the new Congress. The House Rules are contained in a simple resolution, and that resolution usually is released to the public at most 24 hours before the vote, and sometimes with even less notice. At the start of the 115th Congress, the Republican Conference did not finalize the proposed rules until the night before they were to be considered by the House, and the full text didn’t leak out in full until the day of the vote.

More or less, this is the general practice of both parties, which is neither transparent nor helpful to the deliberative process. And yet, bills and joint resolutions were publicly available online for 3 days in advance of when they were voted on, just as the House rules require. What was going on? Continue reading “The House Rules Should be Publicly Available in Advance of Their Adoption” →

Effort Underway to Undermine the House’s Ethics Watchdog

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Source: MasonDan

Update at 12:52 pm on Tuesday: After an outpouring of phone calls, emails, tweets and an avalanche of news stories, House Republicans held a secret meeting just before noon and pulled the Goodlatte amendment, which would have eviscerated the Office of Congressional Ethics. While we have won for now, members are quoted as saying they’re going to revisit the issue later this year. We must remain vigilant. Continue reading “Effort Underway to Undermine the House’s Ethics Watchdog” →

Previewing the House’s Rules for the 115th

On the first legislative day of a new Congress, the House of Representatives operates virtually in a state of nature, governed only by the Constitution. The first order of business is electing a Speaker, and after the Speaker swears in the Members, they adopt the rules that govern the House. Until then, there are no committees, no officers of the House, nada. At that moment, it’s pure majority rule. The Rules of the House, adopted that day, set the tone and parameters for all that follows.

Recently, Bloomberg summarized a proposal from House Republicans on the Rules the House of Representatives for the 115th Congress should adopt, and I have copies of a draft that shows how these rules would differ from the 114th, so here’s what pops out as notable. (Warning: this is not comprehensive!)

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But first…. Continue reading “Previewing the House’s Rules for the 115th” →

House Beats Back Effort to Weaken Office of Congressional Ethics, But It Was Ugly

On Friday rank-and-file members of the House of Representatives beat back a last-minute amendment by Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM) to reduce proposed funding for the Office of Congressional Ethics by nearly 9 percent. In the end 137 representatives voted in favor of the cut and 270 opposed, with Republicans more-or-less evenly split and nearly all Democrats opposed. This came only after a voice vote where the chair declared the measure to cut funds had passed [see transcript]; only a roll call vote, which forces members to individually declare where they stand, resulted in most members voting no.

The Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) is an independent watchdog established by the House of Representatives in the wake of several scandals, including the Jack Abramoff lobbying corruption scandal and the Rep. Foley House page sexual misconduct scandal, that helped bring Democrats to power in 2007. Its purpose is to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by members of the House of Representatives and it is empowered to start investigations on its own initiative or on a tip from anyone. When OCE determines that wrongdoing may have occurred, it refers the matter to the House Ethics Committee, which is supposed to investigate. Continue reading “House Beats Back Effort to Weaken Office of Congressional Ethics, But It Was Ugly” →

House to Address Spending Improprieties and Improve Reporting

Tomorrow, the Committee on House Administration will hold a markup on a resolution that governs member spending. As Politico explains, the “sweeping changes” to how Members of Congress spend money was prompted by stories on former Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL), who reportedly misspent public money redecorating his office, filing inappropriate requests for travel reimbursements, and other misdeeds. Shock is under federal investigation.

The House formed a special task force, composed of Reps. Rodney Davis (R-IL) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), to tighten up reporting and disclosure rules. Demand Progress and representatives from other organizations were consulted by the task force as it considered recommendations.

If enacted, the resolution would:

Travel

  • Allow private/charter flights only when no commercial is alternative.
  • Prohibit private/charter flights between D.C. and anywhere else, without prior written authorization.
  • Permit private/charter flights between non-D.C. locations, but require written approval if the cost for the entire itinerary exceeds $7,500.
  • Set maximum reimbursement rates for privately-owned and privately-leased vehicles. Limit reimbursement to vehicles owned by the Member or employee.

Office

  • Require prior written approval for decorating expenses or furniture that exceeds $5,000 per item.

Reporting and Compliance

  • Instruct CAO to submit a proposal by Nov. 21 to publish House expenditure reports as digital spreadsheets, replacing the current PDF scan of tabular data. (This is a big deal for watchdogs!)
  • Instruct CAO to submit a proposal to retire “travel subsistence” as a catch-all reporting code, hopefully to be replaced with finer-grained reporting.
  • Require CAO to report on its internal controls and training regarding voucher reimbursements by Nov. 21.

We are particularly excited that the Committee will consider — and hopefully approve — the publication of House Expenditure Reports in an electronic format. Instead of publishing hundreds of pages of tables as a giant PDF, the House would now publish that information as a digital spreadsheet. (Of course, the House’s decision a few years back to publish the information online at all, even as a PDF, was a step forward.) This will allow watchdogs and others to easily review and analyze spending information.

We are still digesting the other proposals, but they are a welcome improvement. We commend the hard work of Reps. Davis and Lofgren and look forward to tomorrow’s meeting.

— Written by Daniel Schuman

How Agencies Can Improve Proactive Disclosure

Agencies should set up a process to proactively disclose information that is of interest to the public on an ongoing basis. To help prioritize, agencies should look at requests made through the Freedom of Information Act, via other request-based systems (i.e., specialized forms for a particular dataset or document), and information regularly disclosed by public affairs and congressional relations offices.

Categories of information to consider for proactive release include: commercial (business-related), current events (relevant to journalists), ethics (relevant to government watchdogs, such as lobbying, ethics waivers, etc.), agency operations, and datasets (paper versions are disclosed to the public but the underlying dataset must be FOIA’d).

On a regular basis, each agency should review its efforts to evaluate the effect of proactive disclosure and whether additional documents/datasets should be proactively disclosed.

A Few Ideas on Getting Started

1. — Review how the agency already discloses information to the public.

Agency information is made available to the public in many ways. Some examples include:

  • As responses to FOIA requests
  • As responses to specialized request forms
  • Responses to media inquiries (by email, telephonically, and press advisories and releases)
  • As letters or reports to Congress or OMB
  • Information the agency is trying to place with media
  • Information disclosed in reports (already online) that are not in machine-readable formats

There may be others ways as well. Get a sense of how the public is accessing information.

2. — Get an understanding of how each of these information request processes work and obtain a representative sample of the kinds of requests being answered.

FOIA. Obtain the FOIA logs and randomly choose a significant number of requests (say 500 or 1000). Categorize each request based on the likely purpose for which it will be used: commercial, current events, ethics, agency operations, and datasets. Within each category, figure out whether the requests overlap a common dataset or series of documents.

Responses to specialized request forms. Create a list of the specialized information request forms that an agency uses to receive requests from the public. Determine the volume of requests received, on average, each year. For each form, figure out whether the information is pulled from a particular dataset or set of documents.

Responses to media inquiries. Reach out to press office staff to see whether they keep a media log, which tracks who has called and what they’ve called about. If it is exists, review a representative sample (pick a few random days) to see whether there is any commonality to the requests. Identify and list the most frequent requests. If not, look at releases and advisories pushed out by fax or email.

Reports to Congress or OMB. Make a list of all reports to Congress or OMB. Are they already available online, but not in one central place? Are multiple years grouped together? Are they available through FOIA or published through some other means?

Information to be placed with the media. Speak with press offices to get a sense of the kind of information commonly pushed to the public. Is it available online in one central place? How is the information presented?

Information disclosed but not in machine-friendly formats. Create a list of reports available on the website. Identify whether they are only available as PDF, or are they available in other formats as well, such as csv or doc?

3. — Prioritize

Looking at the information identified above, are there kinds of information that is requested again and again? If so, is it possible to disclose the underlying dataset or series of documents that underpin these common requests? Decide based upon the number of requests and the likelihood of use by the public.

Some clues to look for:

FOIA. Is information drawn from a certain source requested again and again? If so, is it possible to make the source information available to the public? If not, is it possible to create an expedited way of requesting that information? Or to pre-process that information as if it were already the subject of a FOIA request?

Responses to specialized forms. While being sure to include items from each category of information to consider for proactive disclosure, look at the most utilized special forms and determine whether it is possible to release the underlying information all at once.

Responses to media inquiries. Are there kinds of information requested again and again from press staff? Or types of requests that can be anticipated in the news cycle? If so, work with press staff to get ahead of the curve and disclose the information that is frequently requested.

Reports to Congress or OMB. If these reports routinely become available, publish them all online in a central place on the agency website as soon as they are issued. If there are concerns about redactions under FOIA, process through FOIA immediately prior to receiving a request, so they can be released at the same time or as close as possible to when the report is issued.

Information trying to be placed with the media. Publish the information as soon as possible.

Information disclosed but not in machine-readable formats. Work with offices and technology staff to make sure information published as a PDF is also published in other (open) formats as well, such as csv and doc.

4. — Two more things

(i) Talk to external and internal stakeholders. They know where the pain points are and can advise as to what would be most useful.

(ii) Look to see if an entity is broadly republishing the information the agency has provided. For example, some non-profit organizations will request an entire dataset and make it available all at once. In turn, many thousands of people will use that information. Instead of making the organization request that data, publish it online so it is available at once to everyone.

Examples of categories of information:

{ Liked this? You may also like A FOIA No-Brainer and A Checklist for Drafters of Transparency Legislation }

— Written by Daniel Schuman