Browsing through the 2008 Senate Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill on the Taxpayers for Common Sense site, I noticed that one of the largest amounts ($11 million) was earmarked to the National Rural Water Association – a non-profit organization that provides training and technical assistance and gives out sub-grants to water providers in rural areas. […]

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Citing 31 U.S.C. 1352, the federal statute that bars contractors and grantees to use federal funds to lobby the government, and requires them to disclose any lobbying they’ve done in connection with winning a contract or grant (that’s the elusive SF-LLL we’ve been tracking), Sen. Tom Coburn has written to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates […]

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So I’ve been going through FedBizOpps, looking for solicitation notices that specifically mention the elusive lobbying disclosure SF-LLL, and coming across some interesting bits of federal business. This solicitation from the State Department, for example, suggests why Anu has yet to receive any correspondence logs from the agency:
The Freedom of Information Document Management System (FREEDOMS) […]

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My conversation with Department of Trasnsportation contracting officer Bob Robel (see the Moblity Technologies, Inc. post immediately below) also yielded some interesting information on standard form LLL, which contractors are supposed to file “for each payment or agreement to make payment to any lobbying entity for influencing or attempting to influence an officer or employee […]

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Here’s a little information on something we started

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The Coast Guard responded to one of the first Freedom of Information Act requests I made (described here) for an SF-LLL–the disclosures that contractors have to file when they lobby the government in connection with a contract. I asked for any SF-LLLs filed in connection with Deepwater, the multi-year contract to design a new generation […]

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There’s almost a Lewis Carroll-like quality to the following passage in the Federal Register, (54 FR 52307-8, for those keeping score at home), in which the Office of Management and Budget published its interim rule for complying with the Byrd amendment, which barred government contractors and grantees from using federal funds to lobby (it became […]

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Three paragraphs jumped out at me from the final chapter of Robert G. Kaiser’s excellent Washington Post series, Citizen K Street:
Cassidy helped change Washington by shaping the culture of congressional earmarks that became so important in the last dozen years. Earmarks directly transfer the government’s money to particular institutions and interests. He and his original […]

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The timeline for form SF-LLL that I foolishly promised the other day has grown to an alarming length. I’m posting the pre-SF-LLL history now–the events that led Congress to pass and the President to sign a bill requiring those seeking federal contracts or grants to file a disclosure form whenever they pay a lobbyist ito […]

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Today, I’m pulling together a timeline — a sort of biography of form SF-LLL that also suggests a number of questions. In the meantime, through the magic of Nexis, thought I’d pass along this bit from a Sept. 18, 1989, Washington Post editorial on the passage of the Byrd Amendment, the rule that required the […]

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