Legistorm: Transparency's Sidekick

Like many web sites, we try to keep tabs on how people are using our site. We are usually pleased to see mention of us, even if we don't always agree with the way our site's data is used. Accountability can be messy sometimes and that means that dull-witted analyses often appear alongside sharp insights in the public arena.

But this new age of blogging can also lead to some downright irresponsible claims about members of Congress and their staff. And whenever congressional aides are mentioned in news stories, LegiStorm is usually cited as a source, at least for salary and other public record data we have.

This past weekend, a story has been circulating on the web about a member of Congress and a staffer. We won't mention who because the story was so lacking in any indicia of truthfulness that as far as we can tell, it was made up from whole cloth.

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Over the last few days, a tempest has been brewing over an allegation made by Scripps Howard columnist Deroy Murdock that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) pays less to women than he does to men in his Senate office. All the stories have accurately cited LegiStorm as the source for the raw data.

Naturally, the allegation has lit up the conservative blogosphere and made its way onto television, including ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos".

But along the way, a few commentators have taken liberty with the facts about LegiStorm's role so we wanted to clear that up. We carry the data and are happy to be the source for anyone, liberal or conservative, who wants to do analysis of that data. That's what it's there for - to provide openess in government and spark debate. 

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The Obama campaign today released vice-presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden's tax returns for the past 10 years, and LegiStorm has them available here.

The two presidential candidates, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), released their own tax returns during the primary campaign, which can be seen here and here.

Although LegiStorm remains focused on matters related to Capitol Hill rather than the White House, we have included these tax returns to provide additional information to the Personal Financial Disclosures we already have for these candidates in their capacity as U.S. Senators.

Because of the public interest regarding the presidential candidates, we have also included more historical financial disclosure data for both the candidates and their staff.

LegiStorm's staff salary information has been become the subject of a heated congressional campaign in Indiana's 9th District. The race is pitting incumbent Democratic Rep. Baron Hill against Republican Mike Sodrel, who defeated Hill for the post in 2004.

Hill alleges Sodrel's office did not co-operate after Hill's 2006 victory, making Hill's transition back into Congress difficult. Sodrel's campaign has countered by pointing out Hill raised his staff salaries about 84 percent after his defeat in 2004.

Hill paid his staff a total of $181,943 in the third quarter of 2004. The number jumped to $334,005 in the fourth quarter despite adding only one person to the staff.

You can see all of the salaries paid by Hill here. Sodrel's staff salaries are here.

Once again, a member of Congress is in trouble for filing false financial disclosures.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) announced Monday he will repay back taxes on unreported income he received from a rental property in the Dominican Republic - income he also did not report as required on his Personal Financial Disclosures.

In Rangel's most recent financial disclosure, he lists the villa in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, as an asset worth between $250,001 and $500,000, with no rental income. However, it has recently become known the Congressman earned about $75,000 in income from the property since 1988.

Yesterday's indictment of Kevin Ring, a former legislative director to Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) and colleague of disgraced superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, is further evidence of the need for accurate financial disclosures by members of Congress and their top aides.

The 10-count indictment alleges that Ring made false statements about receiving a $135,000 kickback himself, as well as showering Doolittle and others with illegal gifts. Prosecutors say that congressional officials were filing false financial disclosures regarding these gifts because doing so would have been admitting to receiving illegal gifts.

The indictment says that Ring provided legislative and executive branch officials with gifts in exchange for official actions. They include all-expenses-paid domestic and international trael, fundraising assistance, meals, drinks, golf, sports tickets and employment opportunities to spouses, including Doolittle's wife.

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We have added a small but important feature to our site that should make it much easier to find people on LegiStorm even if you don't know the exact form of their name.

The names of all the congressional staffers on our site come primarily from official salary records. If we get other information that suggest those names are a bit off (and they sometimes are), we will correct them. But that still leaves a lot to be desired because Jonathan may be the person's name but someone searching for Jon won't find him.

Thanks to a new feature, that's changing. We now give users the capability of searching under alternate names, whether that is a nickname or a maiden name. And users can also suggest alternate names for our site.

Take as an example the veteran political strategist Cathy Gillespie, the wife of former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie. We have her official name listed as Catherine H Gillespie because that's how she was listed in salary records. But now we also list her more common name of Cathy Gillespie, and if her high school friends want to find her, we also have her listed by her maiden name of Cathy Hay. http://www.legistorm.com/person/Catherine_H_Gillespie/22016.html

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In our quest to broaden the historical reach of our data, we have added another quarter of House staff salaries and another six-month semester of Senate staff salaries. We now have House salary data from Oct. 1, 2001 forward and Senate data from April 1, 2002 forward. In fact, we now make our coverage dates more transparent on our main salaries page, http://www.legistorm.com/salaries.html.

With his indictment today, the powerful and cantankerous Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is finding that it's often not the underlying deed that proves your undoing but the coverup.

Stevens would probably have been in a heap of legal trouble for taking more than $250,000 in gifts from a contractor in the form of home renovations and household goods. But it's the failure to report these gifts on his personal financial disclosures that makes it such an easy case for federal prosecutors, who just unveiled a seven-count indictment against the senior senator for making false statements.

There's no need for prosecutors to prove a quid pro quo. All they need to show is that Stevens took the gifts, knew he was taking gifts and that he knowingly failed to report it.

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Vice President Dick Cheney might head his own fourth branch of government, as his critics have noted of his unusual legal claims to be outside the disclosure laws of the other branches of government, but some of his staff's salaries are reported with the legislative branch. Just not all of them.

So we are reminded by a piece by Dan Froomkin on today's Washington Post website, which points out that our web site has salaries for 33 Office of the Vice President staffers by virtue of its "mostly ceremonial role as president of the Senate." But "top Cheney aides such as chief of staff David S. Addington and national security adviser John Hannah, who are paid out of the vice president's executive appropriation, don't show up anywhere in the public domain."

It must be nice to avoid such kind of scrutiny.