Tag Archives: Lance

Man, this week is Sunshine-week-alicious! The Sunlight Foundation has long advocated for — along with FGI, library- and open govt organizations — the free public access to Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports. CRS Reports are commonly not available to the public as CRS has this arcane and outdated rule that CRS reports are privileged communication between Congress and CRS. But CRS reports ARE available randomly online and Proquest, Penny Hill Press and other commercial publishers have long published them for a fee (I’ve even heard that CRS subscribes to Proquest to get access to their own reports historically!).

But this all may change. According to the Sunlight Blog, Representatives Leonard Lance (R-NJ) and Mike Quigley (D-IL) have reintroduced the bipartisan House Resolution 110 “Public Access to Congressional Research Service Reports Resolution of 2013” (text not received by GPO yet so not publicly available on Thomas). The Resolution would direct the Clerk of the House of Representatives to provide members of the public with Internet access to certain Congressional Research Service publications. Easy-peasy right?!

More than 30 organizations — including Sunlight Foundation and FGI — have signed on to a letter supporting the resolution. Please consider contacting your Representative and ask them to support H.Res. 110!