As you may be aware, President-Elect Barack Obama has vacated his Senate seat and Sen. Hillary Clinton will be following his lead shortly. In the wake of their respective departures, the Governors of Illinois and New York will be tasked with replacing them in their seats. In the interest of keeping an eye on this less than democratic process, I’m going to be doing a series of posts looking at the various potential replacements through the Sunlight lens. That will involve looking at campaign contributions, earmarks, votes, personal finances, and all the other kinds of data that provide an insight into who these senatorial aspirants are. But first, let’s look at the deciders, Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois and Gov. David Paterson of New York.

Blagojevich is the two-term Democratic Governor of Illinois. If you had to say one thing about him it would be that he is unpopular - super unpopular. At present, Blagojevich’s approval rating stands at 4%. I’m not sure of the margin for error in this poll, but it’s entirely possible that Blagojevich could have a 0% approval rating. This could lead to some taint on the replacement pick, as no one wants to be seen as having anything whatsoever to do with the Governor. Fueling this super unpopularity is a wide-ranging corruption investigation into bid rigging in Blagojevich’s administration.

Blagojevich is facing multiple pressures in his search for a replacement. As President-Elect Obama was the sole African-American in the United States Senate there is pressure from some quarters for Blagojevich to appoint an African-American replacement. Looming larger than the race of the replacement is whether the replacement will serve as a placeholder (as Ted Kaufman will do in Delaware) or will run for a full-term in 2010. This consideration is seen as paramount in Blagojevich’s choice. Another point of interest is Blagojevich’s desire to run for reelection (don’t ask why someone with a 4% approval rating would seek reelection), which may cause him to seek out a loyal supporter.

This is a list of the top ten contributing industries to Blagojevich from 2002-2008. (All data comes from followthemoney.org)

Paterson took office as Governor of New York when Elliot Spitzer resigned upon revelations that he had been sleeping with a high-paid prostitute. Paterson’s first order of business, which definitely influences his decision on Sen. Clinton’s replacement, is his 2010 election race. Paterson isn’t facing the kinds of pressures that the wildly unpopular Blagojevich faces, but there are still constituencies to appease and decisions to make. The challenges that Paterson faces include finding someone who can effectively raise a ton of money in two years to run in the 2010 special election, appeasing enough groups to smooth the way for his own election, and deciding whether to choose a rival to clear the Democratic field for the 2010 Governor’s race.

Many groups are putting pressure on Paterson to choose someone from their region, race, or sex. The biggest issue at hand may be regional representation. New York regional rivalries divide on the NYC v. Long Island v. Up State axis. This Senate seat also has a history of carpetbagging. It was previously held by the Massachusetts native Robert F. Kennedy and is currently held by Chicagoan Hillary Rodham Clinton.

This is a list of the top ten contributing industries to Paterson from 1998-2008. (All data comes from followthemoney.org)

Tomorrow, I’ll start to take a look at the replacement candidates.

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Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, gave a very interesting talk (audio and slide show available) at last month’s Web 2.0 Summit in Toronto. Mark advocates creating cities that think like the Web - and says cities can learn from projects like Mozilla.

Mark’s main point: openness and participation created a better Internet…They can also create a better city. Much like how Mozilla formed a decade ago to open up the Internet, improve the Web and encourage people to participate, the same principles of openness and participation can also help make better cities.

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Several states are starting to get pressured to strengthen ethics laws after several incidents of corruption.  Major ethics changes are being pursued in New York, Massachusetts, Utah, and New Jersey.

In New York, reform groups want more disclosure regarding state lawmakers personal finances.  Right now lawmakers are part time and are allowed to have outside jobs.  While it is required that they report the source of the outside income, the actual income is presented in ranges not specifics.  Critics say that by not allowing for more scrutiny of where lawmakers are getting their money it can never be determined if they are truly working for the citizens that elect them.  Lawmakers say that more disclosure of personal finances would intrude privacy and could deter people from running for office.

In New Jersey, Gov. Corzine has introduced an ethics reform package, which focus on campaign contributions and local ethics laws.  The package includes measures that will be passed through executive order.  In response a State Sens. Kean, Oroho and Batemen have introduced legislation that they say will fill the loopholes by requiring contribution limits by individuals, as well as, PACs.

Massachusetts has been rocked by a major bribery case involving State Senator Dianne Wilkerson (Who I happened to have interned with when I was in college.)  There is a lot of debate going on as to what the next step to tighten ethics issues in the state legislature should be.  The state’s lobbying laws conflict with each other about the amount a lobbyist can gift to a legislator.  The Secretary of State has no subpeona power to enforce regulations and reporting requiremesnt are narrow.  These loopholes let lobbyists make a lot of money in Massachuestts so the state has a lot of clean up to do.

In Utah, the state legislature is considering broad ethics reforms after several allegations of bribery.  State legislators are trying to get campaign donations to be more transparent, prevent lawmakers from using campaign funds for personal purposes and possibly creating an independent commission to deal with ethics violations.

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Gavin Newsom the Mayor of San Francisco has started putting his State of the City addresses on You Tube. You can go his You Tube page, which is branded and integrated really well with the City of San Francisco’s government page, and watch the whole speech or specific topics.  Unlike Obama’s You tube broadcast the mayor of San Francisco allow users to respond with comments or a video response. This is definitely a great way to give people a chance to learn about the city on their own time and gives them a chance respond to the Mayor in a public forum. I hope the responses are monitored by Mayor Newsom’s staff and are addressed by the Mayor.  If that happens a real interactive relationship between citizens and their local government will be created.

This is of course not perfect. The videos are under a restrictive copyright and they are not downloadable.  I hope with public pressure these issues can be solved.  If citizens want more openness they should get it and the Mayor should respond to what his citizens want.

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According to POGO and TPM Muckraker, the hold on the nomination of Neil Barofsky to head the bailout oversight office has been released. Still no word on whether the senator who placed the hold was Sen. Jim Bunning. Kagro X, at Congress Matters, speculates as to whether the disclosure rules for holds forced the offending senator’s hand.

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Embattled Rep. Charles Rangel writes a letter to the New York Times taking issue with their latest investigative article into his activities. The Times responds with a rebuttal. Here’s the link.

I really enjoyed the presentation.

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The California First Amendment Coalition and MAPLight.org (a Sunlight grantee) filed suit in California courts to force the Legislative Counsel “to provide an electronic database containing information on bills and lawmakers’ voting records.” The suit comes more than a year after the groups filed a Freedom of Information request to obtain the database records from the Counsel. The Counsel’s office refused to comply with the request.

The Legislative Counsel currently only provides public access to legislative information in text files. This practice is archaic. The information may as well be simply tacked to the front door of the Legislature. This is what is meant by a text file:

Yes, that is a bill status page. The presentation here makes using the data, as MAPLight.org wishes to, impossible. The barrier to information access that the Legislative Counsel has created here is massive and unacceptable.

MAPLight.org is attempting to obtain the database records that make up the Counsel’s site to integrate this public data into their database highlighting special interest influence in legislative activities.

Here’s hoping they succeed.

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Here’s some pretty neat activity from Rep.-Elect Jared Polis of Colorado. He’s blogging the freshman orientation and has posted their entire schedule over at ColoradoPols. It’s interesting to see the group of experts that provide perspective to new members of Congress. The schedule he posts is of a Harvard sponsored orientation event. In the comments thread, in response to praise from a couple of Republican commenters (Polis is a Democrat) thanking him for posting this, Polis writes:

Thanx LB and Haners. Hopefully more elected officials will realize that real people communicate this way and that the erstwhile trolls and sockpuppets of election season disappear come election day yielding to more civil but nonetheless spirited discourse.

Amen.

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A couple weeks ago, I blogged about the “midnight regulations” the Bush Administration is inserting into federal rules such as the one approved yesterday allowing mining companies to dispose of waste into streams and valleys. ProPublica is doing a terrific job shining a light on the midnight regs. Check out their chart here. They are keeping the list updated by adding new rules they discover, including links to news reports on each rule, and tracking each rule through the rulemaking process. Here’s a link to their tip sheet to help individuals ferret out the midnight regs themselves.

OMB Watch has been following the midnight regs too, where they chart out the more controversial rules. Their Regulatory Resource Center is designed to educate citizens on how they can become involved in the regulatory process and to inform the public about the regulatory process.

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(cross posted from our Google Group)

Jon Henke wrote the following provocation, and I decided to respond to the whole list, since it’s a topic I think many here will be interested in. (I asked his permission to post in full.)
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