FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 3, 2009
Contact: Gabriela Schneider 202/742-1520 ext 236
Washington, DC - Today, following the Sunlight Foundation’s calls for online disclosure of House members’ expenditures, Speaker Pelosi instructed House administrators to post House members’ expenses on the Web. These statements disclose how representatives spend their Member Representational Allowances, which are federal funds allocated to support expenses such as staff salaries, official travel and administrative supplies.
Currently, the House of Representatives collects and publishes members’ expenses, as bound paper volumes called the “Quarterly Statement of Expenditures.” This new directive from Speaker Pelosi mandates that the House post this information online for the first time.
In a blog post, the Sunlight Foundation heralded Speaker Pelosi’s announcement, calling this action a strong commitment toward increasing transparency and accountability.
“Speaker Pelosi’s move is a recognition that public information should be truly accessible to the general public, which, today means online,” said John Wonderlich, the Sunlight Foundation’s policy director. “By instructing the House administrators to place the expenditures online, Speaker Pelosi is opening lawmakers’ expenditures to unprecedented public scrutiny.”
Sunlight first called for online disclosure of the expense records in March of 2008 as part of its proposed Transparency in Government Act, posted to PublicMarkup.org. Additionally, on its blog, Sunlight reaffirmed its request in December 2008 and again last Wednesday.
The Sunlight Foundation is a non-partisan nonprofit dedicated to using the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency. Visit SunlightFoundation.com to learn more about Sunlight’s projects, including The Open Senate Project, Capitol Words and OpenCongress.
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