If you’re in the D.C. area, come join the fun next Monday, November 15th, as the Advisory Committee on Transparency kicks off with its first event: The Future of Earmark Transparency (2:00 p.m., 2203 Rayburn House Office Building).
The Sunlight Foundation’s Daniel Schuman moderates a discussion that includes Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense and yours truly. My WashingtonWatch.com project crowdsourced over 40,000 earmark requests last year, which we displayed on this map.
Earmarks are a hot topic right now. The new Republican Congress may make a move to ban them, but the Senate leadership may not be ready to go quite that far.
Will full-fledged earmark transparency be the compromise? It might provide a model for far more transparent processes throughout Congress.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.