The Center for Public Integrity

In these troubled economic times, it is perhaps not surprising that the federal government is a bit touchy on the question of just how many limousines it owns and operates. But now it turns out that even defining a limousine is a complex topic worthy of a government memo.

Just over a year ago, based on information in the annual Fleet Report issued by the General Services Administration, the Center for Public Integrity reported that the number of limousines owned by government agencies rose 73 percent from 2008 to 2010, to a total of 412. It was clear from the responses of government officials that a limo increase was not something the Obama Administration was anxious to take credit for.

In fact, at the time, a GSA spokeswoman asserted that the limo numbers in its own report were not reliable. “The categories in the fleet report are overly broad, and the term ‘limousine’ is not defined,” she said. The spokeswoman concluded that GSA “cannot say that its report accurately reflects the number of limousines.”

It’s now come to light that six weeks after the story ran, the GSA sent a memo to federal agencies with new guidance on what — exactly what — constitutes a limousine.

According to the memo, some agencies had reported vehicles that weren’t so classy — even shuttle buses — as limos, which a GSA spokesman said skewed the 2010 numbers.

A limo, the GSA memo states, “is a vehicle with a lengthened wheelbase, generally driven by a dedicated driver” with possible customization, including “privacy panels” and stretching for capacity and comfort. “Vehicles, including shuttle buses, without the aforementioned characteristics should not be reported as limousines,” the memo says.

As the California legislature gears up to vote on the state budget, Republicans are demanding  greater transparency in the process, citing a C- grade for the budgeting process from  the State Integrity Investigation. California ranked 4^th out of all 50 states overall with a grade of B-.

On Monday, Republicans called for a 48-hour public review of the budget plan, allowing time for citizens to voice their concerns to representatives before it goes to a vote. Lawmakers face a constitutional deadline to approve a budget for the new fiscal year by this Friday;  the fiscal year kicks off July 1. California Democrats control both legislative chambers, as well as the governor’s office.

“While Democrats talk about openness and accountability, all we have seen from them are smoke-filled rooms and back-room deals, shutting out taxpayers and the news media,” Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar) and Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway (R-Tulare) stated in a press release. “Budgets thrown together behind closed doors or passed in the middle of the night are one of the main reasons why California is facing chronic deficits today.”

Sabrina Lockhart, communications director for Assembly Leader Conway, said that California’s grades on the State Integrity Investigation “bolstered our opinion that more transparency is needed,” but she also noted that Republicans have sought open government legislation for years.

Among their proposals: Bills to increase legislative transparency, eliminate late-night legislative sessions and promote an open and honest budget process.

Longtime Charleston Mayor Joe Riley had run a lot of high-minded races in this coastal city known for charm and manners, so nothing really prepared him for the bare-knuckle politics he faced in a re-election bid last fall. A shadowy group popped up seemingly out of nowhere and spent an untold amount of secret money to pummel Riley’s record in support of one of his rivals.

None of the mayor’s opponents declared allegiance to the anonymous group that funded TV ads, flyers and a slick website called “The Riley Files” that read like a private investigator's report. The website came complete with images of manila folders titled “Crony Capitalism” and “Misplaced Priorities” along with photos of the mayor paper-clipped to them.

No one ever found out who was behind the group calling itself Citizens for a Better Charleston. That's because new rules in South Carolina meant the group did not have to file paperwork with the state or disclose what it was doing, how much it was spending, where its money was coming from and who was bankrolling it.

The mayor won his re-election campaign, but the victory came with a few bruises — and a lesson: in the realm of money and politics, things had changed dramatically in the Palmetto State.

In the past, an independent entity attempting to influence an election — like Citizens for a Better Charleston — would have had to file disclosure paperwork as a “committee” with the state’s ethics agency, allowing a bit of sunlight to shine on its work. 

But not anymore.

In 2010, a little-noticed ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Terry Wooten in Florence, S.C., kicked the regulatory teeth out of a key statute in the state’s campaign finance laws and opened the floodgates for untraceable political spending by many of the groups seeking to influence elections. 

A Republican state senator in South Carolina known for championing ethics reform legislation has gone down in an upset primary election here.

Mike Rose, a close follower of the State Integrity Investigation — which gave South Carolina an F — had planned to introduce a series of reform measures based on the report next year.

That won't happen.

Earlier this week, challenger Sean Bennett, 44, roundly beat Rose, of Summerville, with a grassroots campaign that raised $17,000, compared to the $60,000 that Rose, a 64-year-old former Judge Advocate General’s Corps officer, had in his coffers.

It will be the first time Bennett, a financial planner, has held elected office. He won with 60 percent of the vote. No Democrat has filed to run in the general election held in November.

The defeated Rose served in South Carolina's Senate from 1988 to 1996. After more than a decade out of office, he ran again in 2008 and has served since then.

Months ago, the state's Republican treasurer, Curtis Loftis, was eating lunch with Rose when John Crangle, who runs South Carolina’s state's chapter of Common Cause, approached the table.

“You'll never see a piece of ethics legislation without his name on it,” Crangle told Loftis, gesturing to Rose.

Crangle was the only lobbyist for South Carolina's last ethics overhaul bill, which passed in 1991.

Ethics issues in South Carolina government may have reached a new tipping point. 

The state's Republican governor, Nikki Haley, is the subject of an investigation by a legislative ethics panel that is looking into whether she illegally lobbied as a legislator.

A Florida research group released a report yesterday on how to improve the state’s ethics laws, using results from the State Integrity Investigation as a basis for reform. The Sunshine State ranked 18^th out of 50 states in the investigation, with an overall grade of C-.

Integrity Florida, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes integrity and exposes corruption in state government, has previously held presentations around the state to share the conclusions of the State Integrity Investigation’s corruption risk scorecard for the Sunshine State. The group’s new report, “Corruption Risk Report: Florida Ethics Laws,” identifies key policy changes —  such as increasing penalties for ethics violations and creating a corruption report hotline — that could help the state move towards an A grade.

“Integrity Florida is using State Integrity Investigation results as a roadmap to focus our state-level research projects and as a scorecard to measure policy results,” the report states. 

Among the reform recommendations is a multi-faceted plan to improve ethics enforcement, a category in which Florida failed on its risk scorecard, particularly by giving the ethics commission authority to self-initiate investigations.

Early last month, lawmakers in Iowa completed work on a new open records statute. Senate File 430 creates the Iowa Public Information Board, a nine-member commission charged with enforcing the state’s open records and meetings laws.

For good government advocates in the Hawkeye State, the new legislation was cause for celebration — sort of.

Indeed, there were smiles all around as Gov. Terry Branstad signed the law on May 3 in the ornate Capitol Building, surrounded by lawmakers and journalists — many of whom spent six years on the effort. And the law is undoubtedly a victory of sorts for open government in the state, where enforcement was spotty at best, divided among several local and state entities. If a citizen’s request for information was denied, the only option was to sue — a time-consuming and costly course of action. Now, the Board can investigate complaints and bring them to court on citizens’ behalf.

It all sounds good — except for the fine print. Tacked on to the bill is an amendment that exempts “tentative, preliminary, draft, speculative, or research material” from Iowa’s open records law. Translation: a document that is part of the policy making process can be held from public view. Such language was not part of Iowa’s original open records law, enacted in 1967, and its inclusion now is troubling to some. “You can use the drafts to learn things,” said Lyle Muller, executive director of the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news service. “I think they are valuable. They give you an idea of what the early ideas were that were rejected.”

The public’s trust in politics is at an all time low, as various public opinion polls show. Or is it politicians that people mistrust? How to address these issues and restore the public’s trust in their elected officials? These questions were the focus of the 2012 Leadership Forum, organized by the State Legislative Leaders Foundation and Brown University in Providence on May 10-12.

The conference brought together around 50 legislative leaders from both political parties across the country, an equal number of private sector representatives and civil society members working on government ethics and accountability. Stephen Lakis, President of the State Legislative Leaders Foundation, Teresa Paiva Weed, President of the Rhode Island Senate, Gordon Fox, Speaker of the Rhode Island House, and Angel Taveras, Mayor of Providence opened the conference.

The State Legislative Leaders Foundation invited Global Integrity and the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) to present the recently released findings of State Integrity Investigation (SII), an evaluation of effectiveness of anti-corruption mechanisms in all US states conducted by Global Integrity, CPI and Public Radio International. 

The invitation was also recognition for Global Integrity and the Center’s efforts to engage reform-minded partners in state government and civil society to push for evidence-based reforms based on the SII. After the publication of the SII findings, Global Integrity and other partner organizations have been reaching out to state-level public officials, connecting decision-makers, institutions and civil society from different states so they can exchange knowledge and collaborate around SII findings.

Paz Oquendo, a worker at the U.S. Postal Service’s Orlando sorting facility, smelled the noxious odor first. It was Feb. 4, 2011, and the foul stench was coming from one of the large mailbags hanging near the package-conveyor belts.

She ran over to Jeffrey A. Lill, the 44-year-old shift supervisor who was monitoring the sorting from a platform, and reported the smell.

“I can’t breathe,” Oquendo told Lill. 

Lill headed toward the center of the sorting floor — an area workers call “the belly” — to investigate the odor.

Then he smelled it — a strong chemical stench he couldn’t identify. It was coming from a bag wet with a brown viscous substance. Lill looked in the wet sack and saw a broken package with tubes and wires sticking out. He remembers reading the return address with surprise: Yemen. Four months earlier, two bombs from Yemen had been sent through FedEx and UPS, and the U.S. Postal Service had alerted everyone to be on the lookout for packages coming from the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula.

Fearing the package was a hazard, Lill ordered the 40 postal employees out of the belly and immediately opened the large bay doors to ventilate the facility. Lill then moved the bag to a cart and pushed it for nearly half a mile to the hazmat shed.

After the package was out of the building, Lill radioed his manager to notify her of the suspicious spill. She told him the next on-duty supervisor would finish handling the incident. 

Lill’s throat burned, and the gas had given him a headache. He called his mother in Rochester, N.Y.

“I want you know what happened at the Post Office,” Janet Vieau, 64, a real estate agent, remembered him telling her. “It might be on the news.”

But the incident never made the news. In fact, USPS did not investigate the suspicious package as a security or health threat and did not report it to the Department of Homeland Security, as is the protocol.

Iowa’s only F grade on the State Integrity Investigation was in the category of public access to information, partly due to a lack of strong enforcement measures.

But Governor Terry Branstad signed a bill last week that would create the Iowa Public Information Board, a nine-member commission that will oversee and enforce the state’s open records laws. The governor noted that the lack of enforcement was highlighted by the State Integrity Investigation and affected Iowa’s overall grade. Iowa ranked 7^th among the 50 states and earned an overall grade of C+. 

“Hopefully this will move us up from [C+] to a better grade,” Branstad said at the signing on May 3.

On the scorecard’s public access information section, Iowa received low marks on questions about whether citizens could easily resolve appeals when requests are denied and whether there is an agency that effectively monitors the laws, initiates investigations, and imposes penalties on offenders.

Branstad hailed the creation of the new board as an “important and significant step forward” for government transparency and accountability. The board, which will consist of local advocates and journalists, will not only have the authority to hear complaints and negotiate settlements, but levy fines and order corrective action if necessary. Branstad said the board could be ready to operate July 1.

The Republicans who control the House are using cuts to food aid, health care and social services like Meals on Wheels to protect the Pentagon from a wave of budget cuts come January.

The reductions, while controversial, are but a fraction of what Republicans called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan they passed in March. Totaling a little more than $300 billion over a decade, the new cuts are aimed less at tackling $1 trillion-plus government deficits and more at preventing cuts to troop levels and military modernization.

The House Budget Committee meets Monday to officially act on the measure, the product of six separate House panels. It faces a likely floor vote Thursday.

The measure kicks off Congress' return to action after a weeklong recess. The House will also vote on a spending bill funding NASA and the Justice Department and on legislation to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. The Senate, meanwhile, has a test vote slated for Tuesday on a plan backed by President Barack Obama to prevent a doubling of college loan interest rates.

Fully one-fourth of the House GOP spending cuts come from programs directly benefiting the poor, such as Medicaid, food stamps, the Social Services Block Grant, and a child tax credit claimed by working immigrants. Federal workers would have to contribute an additional 5 percent of their salaries toward their pensions, while people whose incomes rise after receiving coverage subsidies under the new health care law would lose some or all of their benefits.

The budget-cutting drive is designed to head off a looming 10 percent, $55-billion budget cut set to strike the Pentagon on Jan. 1 because of the failure of last year's deficit "supercommittee" to strike a deal. The Obama administration and lawmakers in both parties warn the reductions would harm readiness and weapons procurement, and reduce troop levels.