Do two representatives make a trend? Today, Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) posted her personal financial disclosure form on her member Web site. (See it here.) This makes her the second known member of Congress to post their financial disclosure form to their Web site. Last month, Bill blogged about Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) being the first known member to post these documents to their site. As I've explained before, citizens can only get personal financial disclosure forms, the documents that tell you how much your congressman is worth and what assets they own, directly from Congress by travelling to Washington, DC and picking up the hard copies from the Legislative Resource Center (located in the basement of Cannon Office Building). Gillibrand and Issa are doing a much needed service by being personally responsible for the public disclosure of these vital documents.

The Sunlight Foundation supports a provision in the pending bill, the Honest Leadership and Open Government of 2007, that requires the Clerk of the House to put all member's personal financial disclosure forms online. Instead of waiting for the House and Senate to go through a conference committee and the Clerk to figure out how to set up a system to get the documents online your member of Congress could spend 10 minutes to upload their own personal financial disclosure form to their Web site. Hopefully two does make a trend and more congressmen will follow suit. What's your congressman waiting for?