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Home > The Secrecy File > Archives > 2008 > January > 14
Monday, January 14, 2008
Shining the light on federal government
After successfully pressing for the first changes in the Freedom of Information Act in over a decade, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, now moves to his next open government project: shining the light on federal spending.
As he did with FOIA, Cornyn is borrowing a page from his home state of Texas.
Tomorrow Cornyn and Texas Comptroller Susan Combs will be in Austin to highlight their efforts to bring greater transparency to state and federal government.
Cornyn plans to introduce legislation when the Senate resumes business this month that sheds light on government spending. The so-called Federal Spending and Taxpayer Accessibility Act of 2008 is based on what Combs has done as comptroller in Texas.
Cornyn’s bill would expand a searchable database of federal grants and contracts. When fully up and running, taxpayers will be able to use the internet to search how much the federal government is spending on everything from staff salaries to travel expenses, according to Cornyn’s aides.
Cornyn and Combs appear tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. at the Center for American History at the University of Texas-Austin.
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ACLU: Secret Service is flouting the law in discrimination suit
The American Civil Liberties Union says the U.S. Secret Service is “flouting” a federal judge’s order by delaying discovery in a civil lawsuit filed by African American U.S. Secret Service agents alleging discrimination.
The plaintiffs are still seeking documents and testimony from the service nearly eight years after they alleged in federal court here that they were routinely bypassed for promotion by white agents who scored lower on promotional exams and forced to work in a “racially hostile environment.”
U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson is now considering sanctioning the government a fourth time and has suggested that she may sanction two of the prosecutors—for violating the rules of civil procedure-one for presenting “uncredible” testimony.
Dennis Parker, director of the ACLU’s racial justice program, said it very rare for a government agency to be sanctioned three times in addition to facing 22 adverse rulings in a case.
“That’s more than I have ever heard of,” Parker said. “It’s particularly disturbing for the government to be doing that. They are charged with upholding the law, not acting above the law. For them to openly flout the judge’s order is disturbing.”
The allegations in the case are “extremely disturbing,” Parker said. But what is equally disturbing is that the case has been pending for eight years without getting to the merits because the service has failed to turn over evidence ordered by the judge, he said.