The Washington State Redistricting Commission has released a plan for a new map of congressional districts for the state. It must be approved by the Commission by January 1, 2012.

For full news coverage read:

“New Washington map creates competitive district” by Aaron Blake in the Washington Post.

“Radical changes in U.S. House district boundaries” by Joel Connelly in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

“Deal reached on new Washington congressional districts” by Mike Baker in the Seattle Times.

A rule issued Tuesday, December 27th by Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler requires candidates who plan on being in Colorado’s 2012 primary election to begin filing biweekly campaign-finance reports January 30th. This rule was issued with a statement saying that the Secretary of State hopes that the issue will be taken up by the General Assembly when they convene.

After the primary date was moved earlier this year from August to June by the General Assembly, Gessler altered the filing deadlines, initially adopting rules that would require biweekly reporting to begin next September and until then, reports to be filed either quarterly or monthly.

State lawmakers argued that Gessler didn’t have the authority to change the reporting schedule, and this month the Legal Services Committee voted to not include this rule on the grounds that Gessler had overstepped prompting this issuance of the new rule.

The rule issued Tuesday says candidates are not required to file retroactive reports covering July through December 2011.

To learn more, read this article by Sara Burnett.

A new Facebook application called Fanitics, expected to be functioning at the start of the new year, will allow users to compete against others with their fantasy political teams in a similar way as they would compete in fantasy sports games.

Fanatic’s creator, Todd Bouldin explained,

“It’s a lot like fantasy football. You create a league and friends populate it with teams. Your team is populated with politicians who gain points based on a variety of metrics from fundraising, media mentions and public appearances.”

Once you create your team, you can switch out politicians as you wish. Your team can include presidential candidates, governors, and House and Senate members whose actions are all tracked by the game.

Although, the game will probably be utilized more by political buffs early on, this game offers a great learning experience and tool to keep up on local politicians to all participants.

To learn more, read this article.

Ohio Ethics Commission Chair Ben Rose has asked Governor John Kasich not to reappoint him to the Commission in 2012.

Rose, who was first appointed to the Commission in 2006, has been elected Chair during each of his last three years.

In making his request, Rose cited desires to become involved in endeavors where a conflict of interest may have been previously raised due to his Commission membership and to spend more time with his family as reasons for his decision.

Rose, whose term expires January 1, 2012, has indicated a willingness to remain on the Commission for a reasonable period of time after the expiration of his appointment until a successor is appointed, if permitted.

California State Senator Leland Yee has formally announced plans to introduce legislation to raise the lobbyist registration fees upon commencement of the 2012 legislative session.

The money raised by the increased fees would be used to finance maintenance and upgrades to CAL-ACCESS, the state transparency database for lobbying and campaign finance filings. CAL-ACCESS has been down since the end of November.

Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia delivered writs of election today setting February 7, 2012 as the date for special elections to fill vacancies in House District 60 and House District 107.

The election for House District 60 will occur in portions of Clayton, DeKalb and Fulton Counties.

The election for House District 107 will occur in portions of Gwinnett and Walton Counties. The runoff election, if needed, will be March 6, 2012.

• The rise of the digital age has transformed the meaning of open government – Open Government: A New Window on the World
• As demands for transparency and amount of data grow for government agencies, budgets shrink – What’s in Store for Government IT in 2012?
• How much is a Twitter follower worth? Man sued for $340,000 for company’s 17,000 Twitter followers – Lawsuit May Determine Who Owns a Twitter Account

Federal:

FEC Quashes New Disclosure Rules

Super PACs: The bad cops of 2012

From the States and Municipalities:

Alaska

Pebble Opponent Fined for Flying Candidates to Villages

Arizona

Arizona Prosecutor Won’t Charge Politicians Who Took Free Tickets, Trips from Fiesta Bowl

California

California Lobbyists Write Checks to Legislators Running for Congress

Colorado

Gessler, Lawmakers Clash on Campaign Finance Deadlines

Connecticut

Draft Report Renews Fears about Watchdogs’ Autonomy

District of Columbia

D.C. Council Overhauls Ethics Laws

Illinois

Donor to Madison County Judge Says Contribution Looks Bad, But Isn’t

Kentucky

Ex-Lobbyist Jack Abramoff to Speak at Kentucky Legislative Ethics Session

Maryland

Baltimore County Council Scales Back, Passes Ethics Reform Bill

Utah

Utah Lawmaker Resigning Due to Fundraising Ban

Washington

Firm Agrees to Big Fine over Tactics in Political Campaign

Wisconsin

State Elections Board Should Be Replaced, Assembly GOP Leader Says

State and Federal Communications produces a weekly summary of national news, offering more than 80 articles per week focused on ethics, lobbying, and campaign finance.

News You Can Use is a news service provided at no charge only to clients of our online Executive Source Guides, or ALERTS™ consulting clients.

Every year since 1984, PNC Bank has launched a version of “The True Cost of Christmas”, the bank’s annual Christmas Price Index. The 2011 report takes the viewer through a Winter Wonderland with interactive train stations that allow the viewer to find the different gifts of the “12 Days of Christmas.”

If you stop at the Inflation Station, the price of every gift since 1998 is provided, as well as the change in price that occurred from last year. The prices range from $58 for eight maids-a-milking to $6,294.03 for nine ladies dancing.

The Christmas Price Index hit a record $24,263 this year, but that isn’t even the “true cost of Christmas.” The true cost of Christmas includes a total of 364 gifts spread out over 12 days as described in the Christmas carol, which this year would cost you $101,119.84 – of course a gift to your true love is definitely worth that, right?

The Atlantic created a graph of the development of the true cost of Christmas, and it shows that excluding a steep decline in 1994, the “true price of Christmas” has been steadily rising and reaching record highs nearly every year. How much will you have to pay for your true love in 5 years?!

Even though I doubt many people are going to spend that amount of money to recreate the “12 days of Christmas” for someone, it is fun to see how a Christmas Carol that has been around for hundreds of years applies to the 21st century.

Happy Holidays everyone!

We have many things for which we are thankful at State and Federal Communications. Before the day gets away from us, we would like to thank you for following Lobby Comply Blog.

We have had a great year and look forward to giving our very best service to our clients in 2012. Health and happiness to you and your families.

From all of us at State and Federal Communications, we wish you Happy Holidays!

If things are running slowly in your office this afternoon, don’t miss out on this fun photo slideshow from the National Conference of State Legislatures: “Holidays at state capitols around the country”

Here is their description on the NCSL website: “Legislative staffers from across the nation shared their capitol Christmas decorations with NCSL. You can view the entire slideshow in full screen mode on NCSL’s Flickr homepage.”

Photo of holiday ornament by Kris De Curtis on Wikipedia.

Below is a video released by NASA that shows the pattern of snowfall across the globe every month for a 10 year period beginning in February of 2000 and ending last month.

The observations were collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.

To learn more, read this article by Samantha Murphy from Mashable.

Many people enjoy killing time by getting on YouTube and watching the latest viral videos for a quick laugh. Andrew Kaczynski, on the other hand, enjoys digging into C-SPAN’s online archives and posting his favorite videos onto his YouTube channel, AKaczynski1, many of them which are embarrassing and problematic for current Republican presidential hopefuls, such as Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

This week’s Highlighted Site Of The Week features the YouTube channel of Andrew Kaczynski. This 22 year-old college student has made recent headlines by posting videos he discovered like this video of a lecure Mitt Romney gave about John Kerry and the art of flip-flopping that could easily be used to describe himself today.

As the Republican presidential hopefuls campaign to become their party’s presidential candidate, a forgotten video can create an embarrassing and difficult obstacle to overcome.

Andrew Kaczynski currently has 141 videos posted on his channel. That is a lot of forgotten footage that would likely never have been noticed if not for his unique hobby. While Kaczynski describes himself as a moderate Republican, he admits he is more concerned with scoring page views than gaining political points for his party of choice. This provides more enjoyment for the rest of us!

This article provides more information about Kaczynski.

Happy Holiday!

Photo of Newt Gingrich by Gage Skidmore on Wikipedia.

Photo of Mitt Romney by c.berlet/publiceye.org on Wikipedia.

For full news coverage of the group’s statement, read “Trade group says Abramoff shouldn’t teach ethics” by Catalina Camia in USA Today.

According to the article: “To have a state-run, government ethics commission give this ex-con a paid platform sends the public the wrong message about the Kentucky Legislature,” Howard Marlowe, president of the American League of Lobbyists, said in a statement. “I doubt that many of the lawmakers will want to have their picture taken with this crook.”

Here is the League’s press release on Scribd.