There is currently a lot of concern about the passage of lobbying and ethics reform in the House right now. VirginiaDem has a call to action to make sure that this bill passes. There is something else that you can do to make sure that this bill includes provisions that address transparency in Congress, not just in lobbying. The Sunlight Foundation is working to get the Judiciary Committee to include a provision that would require that Members' personal financial disclosures be filed electronically and put in a database online. We need citizens to call Speaker Pelosi and Members of the Judiciary Committee to indicate their support for this measure. (Follow this link to take action.) If you don't understand why this is important keep reading.
Personal financial disclosures tell us a lot about our Members of Congress. They list the stocks that they own, the transactions they've made, the privately funded trips they take, and the outside foundations they're associated with. If you want to know the economic profile of your Member of Congress you would check their personal financial disclosure form. The only problem is obtaining these forms.
In the absence of private sites like Open Secrets you have to hop on a plane and fly to Washington to view your Member’s personal financial disclosure. Once in Washington you’d have to go to Capitol Hill, specifically the basement in the Cannon Office Building to find the Legislative Resource Center. There you would be required to give your name, address, and occupation to obtain a copy of this disclosure form and then you’d have to pay to copy it yourself.
In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Koreagate, and a myriad of smaller scandals Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act. This Act required Members (along with executive branch officials and others) to file annual personal financial disclosures. The purpose of the financial disclosure provision is to make public the personal finances of lawmakers and executive branch officials so as to dissuade these targeted government officials from engaging in personal behavior that may constitute a conflict of interest and providing public documentation so that if they are violating some rule, protocol, or law or are maintaining unseemly relationships the news media can inform their constituents.
This is what we’d call a targeted transparency measure; a targeted item (Members’ personal finances) is made transparent to promote a goal (less conflicts of interest; less corruption) with an enforcement mechanism (public flogging in the news media that could lead to investigations). The purpose of targeted transparency is usually to create a greater amount of choice by providing essential information to a consumer. In this case the consumer is the constituent or voter and the choice is whether they want this person, the Member of Congress, to continue to represent them or not. But in the current conception there is a middle man -- the news media.
By putting personal financial disclosure forms online voters can go to the Clerk of the House or the Senate website and discover whether their Member’s financial information is anything to fuss about. There’s no need to wait to find out what your newspaper’s Washington Bureau (if they even have one) has to say about your congressman’s finances. This also would prevent those often silly articles about an item in a Member’s personal financial disclosure that may or may not be controversial but the reporter is going to report about the controversy over whether it is controversial (see this recent Associated Press article or this Washington Post article).
Instead of relying on "check-box" journalism about Members of Congress you can check for yourself to see if your congressman is selling land to some unidentified Limited Liability Corporation, or if your congressman sold their stock just before the price dropped, or if they are affiliated with or own stock in controversial organizations. Or if they just happen to own stock and a summer house. Or, like some Members, have a lot of debt.
Putting personal financial disclosure forms online is just a piece of the puzzle in creating a system of user-centered (in this case constituents and voters) information so that constituents and voters can make better choices and share information to create those better choices. Better choices should lead to political representation more attuned to the needs of constituents.
Here is a list of Members to contact about online disclosure of personal financial disclosures:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): 202-225-4965
John Conyers (D-MI), Chairman: 202-225-5126
Lamar Smith (R-TX), Ranking Member: 202-225-8901
Howard Berman (D-CA): 202-225-4695
Zoe Lofgran (D-CA): 202-225-3072
Adam Schiff (D-CA): 202-225-4176
Maxine Waters (D-CA): 202-225-2201
Brad Sherman (D-CA): 202-225-5911
Dan Lungren (R-CA): 202-225-5716
Darrell Issa (R-CA): 202-225-3906
Elton Gallegly (R-CA): 202-225-5811
Robert Wexler (D-FL): 202-225-3001
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL): 202-225-7931
Ric Keller (R-FL): 202-225-2176
Tom Feeney (R-FL): 202-225-2706
Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX): 202-225-3816
Louie Gohmert (R-TX): 202-225-3035
Richard Boucher (D-VA): 202-225-3861
Bob Goodlatte (R-VA): 202-225-5431
Jerrold Nadler (D-NY): 202-225-5635
Anthony Weiner (D-NY): 202-225-6616
Mel Watt (D-NC): 202-225-1510
Howard Coble (R-NC): 202-225-3065
William Delahunt (D-MA): 202-225-3111
Tammy Baldwin (D-WI): 202-225-2906
James Sensenbrenner (R-WI): 202-225-5101
Steve Chabot (R-OH): 202-225-2216
Jim Jordan (R-OH): 202-225-2676
Steve King (R-IA): 202-225-4426
Mike Pence (R-IN): 202-225-3021
Chris Cannon (R-UT): 202-225-7751
Trent Franks (R-AZ): 202-225-4576
Steve Cohen (D-TN): 202-225-3265
Keith Ellison (D-MN): 202-225-4755
Hank Johnson (D-GA): 202-225-1605
Luis Gutierrez (D-IL): 202-225-8203
Artur Davis (D-AL): 202-225-2665
(This post is partially cross posted at the Sunlight Foundation blog.)