John Hart

Knoxville, MD

John Hart, CEO of Open the Books, is a veteran of Capitol Hill and the public policy world. He served as the late U.S. Representative and Senator Tom Coburn’s long time Communications Director and co-author.

As a leader in Coburn’s office, Hart worked with Coburn to help pass landmark transparency legislation that put all federal spending online. He made earmarks like the “Bridge to Nowhere” famous and helped secure an earmark moratorium that held for a decade. Hart also helped Coburn achieve the only true year-to-year federal spending reductions (2012-2013) since the end of the Korean War.

Hart was in the room when Open the Books was still a kernel of an idea – serving as an advisor at the genesis of Open the Books all the way through its fifteen years of growth. He fundamentally understands how transparency can transform the way we govern ourselves. His decades of experience behind the curtain gives us an incredible opportunity to advance the transparency revolution and get facts and figures into national conversations that matter most. 

Hart co-authored two books with Coburn: Breach of Trust (2003) and The Debt Bomb (2012). He also runs a 62-acre farm in MD with his wife, Kimberly, and four children.