Congress Fails Transparency for Official Vehicles, Websites

Recent reports highlight Congressional weakness on two matters of routine transparency: official vehicles and website design.

OpenSecrets investigated taxpayer-subsidized vehicle leases for members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Thirteen committee members leased official-use vehicles in the first quarter of 2010, at an average cost of about $2,000 per member for the quarter. The amount of lease payments and the payee name are disclosed in the House's Statement of Disbursements.

However, there is no central source of information about what kind of vehicles the members lease with taxpayer money. After all, this is the committee that passed climate legislation this year: so do they drive Hummers or hybrids? Three committee members would not release information about what kind of vehicle they leased: Reps. Parker Griffith (R-AL), Bobby Rush (D-IL), and John Sullivan (R-OK).

A separate study examined Congressional websites. The report, published by the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation, found Congress neglecting this powerful tool for transparency:

[W]ebsite design often appears to be at most a secondary priority, best practice standards do not appear to drive existing design practices, and there appears to be few attempts to learn about best practices ...

To demonstrate the depth of the challenge, the Brookings study relates this outrageous anecdote of a woefully clueless member of Congress:

The Member, having heard good things about his website from a constituent, flipped on the television, and asked the staffer in charge of the website what channel to turn to see his homepage.

Surely we can do better than this.

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