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The Sunlight Foundation Blog
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Local Sunlight
Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and congressional political news. This week I have highlights from Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Nevada, Alaska and Connecticut.
(Continue reading…)
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In Broad Daylight: Stevens Saga Continues
Sen. Ted Stevens may have been convicted yesterday, but his saga continues. Which occupation saw a 13% rise in wealth over the past year? Congressman! That and more in today’s news:
Yesterday, Sen. Ted Stevens became the first sitting senator to be convicted of a felony since Sen. Harrison Williams in 1981. Despite the seven convictions for filing false statements to the government, Sen. Stevens vowed to fight on and appeal his conviction on the grounds that the prosecution was flawed, “I am innocent. This verdict is the result of the unconscionable manner in which the Justice Department lawyers conducted this trial.” Stevens’ chances in his quest for reelection appear to have dimmed as presidential candidate John McCain, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman John Ensign all rebuked the convicted Alaska statesman. Still standing by Stevens is Alaska’s lone representative in Congress, Don Young. Young’s endorsement of Stevens’ innocence was marred by Young’s praise for and comparison of another political figure to Sen. Stevens, “I think he can win. He’s the best thing for that, for the Senate. Alaskans know this. [...] I think that’s going to be, you know, a matter of opinion. I can remember Richard Nixon, you know, his years of service, what he’s done, and everybody were ridiculing him and he ended up being the greatest president in the history of our century.” With friends like these…
Over the past year, members of Congress saw their collective wealth increase by 13%, according to personal financial disclosure data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics. McClatchy reports that 2 out of 3 senators are millionaires, while 39% of the entire body of 535 members are also worth more than $1 million. As the paper points out, “Only 1 percent of all Americans are considered millionaires.”MAPLight.org released a study looking at in-state vs. out-of-state campaign contributions to members of the House of Representatives. The findings are noteworthy, “Virtually all House members, 97%, raised more than half of their funds from out-of-district (408 out of 421 members).” Check out the report and this graphic below (which is interactive at the MAPLight site):
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Sen. Stevens – One: Public Interest – Zero
U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens’ trial for corruption has gone before a jury for deliberations. Federal prosecutors accuse the long-serving lawmaker of lying on Senate forms to conceal more than $250,000 in renovations on his home in Alaska and other gifts from a former chief of an oil services company. But it appears as if Stevens’ defense lawyers have secured a key victory by convincing the judge to frame a key question in his favor.
Earlier this month, our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) wrote that every charge brought against the Senator relates to his failure to disclose gifts and debts on his Senate financial disclosure form. It’s critical to the public’s right to know “where and from whom our public servants receive gifts, loans, and payments,” as TCS wrote. “The government, in its opening statement and throughout the trial, has maintained that the public right to know is an important element in this case and that Stevens’ failure to disclose was a breach of this right.”
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In Broad Daylight: The Banks Bought Congress
Budgeting political risk helped Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and financial services companies avoid the kind of scrutiny they needed from Congress for the past several years. Millions of dollars in private travel, campaign contributions, and lobbyists-galore created a border wall that no regulation or reform could climb over. Florida Rep. Tim Mahoney’s hole gets deeper as a 2nd affair is revealed, the FBI opens and investigation, and the Democrats ditch him. There’s more in this round-up of today’s news:
Dave Jamieson at The New Republic looks into the lavish treatment members and staffers of the House Financial Services Committee received from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and financial services companies in the years preceeding the collapse of the industry. Former chairman Mike Oxley, who now works for NASDAQ and as a lobbyist, approved a half-million dollars worth of privately paid travel, much of it offered by financial services companies. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had approximately one lobbyist for each member of the 70 person committee. Campaign contributions were spread around like butter on cornbread. Of course, all of this largesse eventually lured numerous staffers and committee members into the private sector and Jamieson names names:
Former Oxley adviser Carter McDowell moved on to the American Bankers Association; Karen Lynch Calton, one-time counsel to the committee, has lobbied for the Consumer Bankers Association; Greg Zerzan, an aide to Oxley, eventually went to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association; Linda Dallas Rich, a committee adviser, headed to the New York Stock Exchange; longtime Oxley aide Clinton Jones hopped to Fannie for a spell, before returning to Congress to serve Bachus on the finance committee; and even though Baker had been a perennial foe to the GSEs, the congressman’s own former chief of staff, Duane Duncan, became a star on Fannie’s lobbying team.
Rep. Tim Mahoney is in a load more trouble after the Associated Press revealed another affair and ABC News, the team that broke this story, reported that the FBI is investigating the allegations of hush money paid to the first reported mistress. It is alleged that Mahoney hired Patricia Allen, the first reported mistress, to both his campaign and congressional staffs. After things went sour (she discovered he was having another affair) Mahoney fired her and allegedly paid her $121,000 to keep her from filing a wrongful termination lawsuit. Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for an ethics committee investigation (although those haven’t really led to anything since, I don’t know, the 1990s) and House Democrats effectively abandoned the freshman Florida congressman to fend for himself in a difficult district.The defense team in Sen. Ted Stevens’ trial for filing false statements on his personal financial disclosure forms is attempting to show that the home renovations at the center of the charges were done for VECO’s Bill Allen and not for Stevens. Stevens’ daughter, Susan Stevens Covich, testified that when she appeared at her father’s Girdwood, Alaska home to spend time while visiting Allen was present in numerous other people, often taking up all five available bedrooms leaving her to sleep on the couch. Covich said she stopped staying there after Allen’s constant presence became “creepy“. Previously, defense attorneys have shown that Stevens spends most of his time living in Washington, DC and not at the home in Girdwood. The judge presiding over the case stated that the case will likely be handed to the jury next week.
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Stevens Lashes Out in Radio Interview
TPM Muckraker captured some great audio of Sen. Ted Stevens lashing out at constituents asking questions about his current legal predicament. To me, the last question was by far the most interesting. There’s a transcript of the last Q&A after the video.
Q: I’ve been following the news lately and they were mentioning that you supported an ethics bill in 1989 that Congress had passed, it was an amended ethics and government bill that said that members of Congress needed to disclose their financial reports, anything exceeding $200, and now your defense team is saying that’s unconstitutional, and I’m just wondering if you can talk to us Alaskans about how that’s unconstitutional in 2008 but in 1989 that was satisfactory.
A: As I’ve said before, I haven’t seen that pleading, it was filed by my lawyers in Washington, they’ve been hired to do it-
Q: OK well why don’t you give us your opinion, aside from what your lawyers are saying-
A: I’m sorry I’m not going to give my opinion about what my lawyers have done that I haven’t read. So thank you very much, I don’t know who gave you that amendment, that question, but whoever gave you that question ask them.That’s a pretty good question. From what I can tell, the Government Ethics Reform Act of 1989 passed the Senate by voice vote with an amendment attached. Also interesting, Sen. Stevens was an original cosponsor of the Ethics in Government Act of 1977, the law under which he is being prosecuted.
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The Last Line of Defense
Sen. Ted Stevens has served as senator from Alaska for most of his life and nearly all of the state’s existence. Stevens greatest accomplishments have been as a patronage chief; bringing home federal dollars for Alaska and protecting and expanding the extraction industries in the state, particularly the oil industry. In many ways, Stevens is Alaska. It comes as no surprise that Stevens would run his current reelection campaign on a message that says, “Without Ted, we’re toast.”
As some have noted already, Stevens – a “patronage-distributing warlord” – may be a dying breed of politician. There are others who still exclusively practice this kind of politics, most notably Alaska’s lone representative Don Young, but few to the degree that Stevens has over the years. Stevens’ undying support for earmarking and the oil industry may have brought on investigative scrutiny and, ultimately, an indictment. But they also appear to have muddled the water in the investigation, prompting prosecutors to charge Stevens with seemingly lesser felonies – for now. (Continue reading…)
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Legal Background on Stevens Case
Michael Stern at Point of Order, one of the better blogs for legal issues in Congress, covers the legal background of the charges brought against Sen. Ted Stevens. Stevens is facing seven felony charges for deliberately filing false financial disclosure forms to the Senate Ethics Committee. Give Stern’s explanation a read; it’ll be worth it when following the Stevens trial. Steven’s trial starts on September 24.
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Stevens and Disclosure
So, the indictment is in and the charges against Sen. Ted Stevens include seven counts of making false statements on his personal financial disclosure forms from 1999-2006. Many of these false statement counts revolve around work done on Stevens’ Girdwood, AK home courtesy of the VECO oil company. Sunlight’s Bill Allison makes the case at Real Time Investigations that if the money spent on equipment, parts, and labor did not constitute a gift, but rather a loan, then Stevens would be allowed to omit them from his disclosure forms, thereby acquitting him of several false statement charges:
[F]rom my quick read of the indictment, it appears that the government is suggesting that when Stevens says he has no liabilities of more than $10,000, that means the hundreds of thousands of dollars Stevens is alleged to have received as benefits from VECO couldn’t possibly have been loans. But if (and for the record, I doubt this is likely), if Stevens was borrowing money, labor and materials to renovate a residence from VECO rather than accepting it as a gift, I’m not sure Stevens would have to report it under current personal financial disclosure rules, which say,
property which is held or maintained solely for recreational or personal purposes does not have to be reported…. (p. 131)
and
Mortgages secured by a personal residence (including secondary residences) that are not used for rental purposes do not have to be disclosed. (p. 136)
Suppose there was some understanding Stevens would repay Veco or its CEO, Bill Allen, for the home repairs, the car swap, the furniture and so on — shouldn’t the public know of those potential conflicts of interest? The indictment reminds us,
The primary purpose of the yearly Financial Disclosure Forms is to disclose, monitor and deter conflicts of interest, thereby maintaining public confidence in the integrity of the United States Senate and its Members. Because the yearly Financial Disclosure Forms require public disclosure of financial information by each Member of the United States Senate, such as income, assets, gifts, financial interests, and liabilities, the Forms provide the public at large, including the voters of a particular state, with the information necessary to allow the public to evaluate and consider official conduct by a Member of the United States Senate in light of that Member’s private finances.
Do the current disclosure requirements adequately “deter conflicts of interest, thereby maintaining public confidence in the integrity of the United States Senate and its Members,” if they exempt personal residences, mortgages, car loans and so on from public view?
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Ted Stevens Indicted (Updated)
It’s not an investigation, it’s a series of charges. Huge story. Longest serving Republican senator Ted Stevens indicted on seven counts. More soon.
Seven counts of making false statements.
Lying on his personal financial disclosure forms.
Accepted gifts and labor from VECO in the renovation of his Girdwood, Alaska home and lied about it on his personal financial disclosure forms from 1999-2006.
A key paragraph in the indictment is paragraph 17. It appears to allege a quid pro quo in the exchange of gifts, for which he is being charged for lying about. The DOJ is saying that there is no allegation of quid pro quo in the indictment.
17. It was a part of the scheme that STEVENS, while during that same time period that he was concealing his continuing receipt of things of value from ALLEN and VECO from 1999 to 2006, received and accepted solicitations for multiple official actions from ALLEN and other VECO employees, and knowing that STEVENS could and did use his official position and his office on behalf of VECO during that same time period. These solicitations for official action, some of which were made directly to STEVENS, included the following topics: (a) funding requests and other assistance with certain international VECO projects and partnerships, including those in Pakistan and Russia; (b) requests for multiple federal grants and contracts to benefit VECO, its subsidiaries, and its business partners, including grants from the National Science Foundation to a VECO subsidiary; and (c) assistance on both federal and state issues in connection with the effort to construct a natural gas pipeline from Alaska’s North Slope Region.
For some background watch this video from Josh Marshall and TPMtv (only the first half matters, the rest has to do with Larry Craig):
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Lots Sunshine in Alaska
From Jacob Wiens at POGO:
This week, the state of Alaska launched a website that tracks every state expenditure of over one thousand dollars, as reported on today’s NPR Morning Edition. This makes Alaska the tenth state government to provide such a service to its taxpayers. On a side note, Alaska also has the lowest individual tax burden of any state in the U.S.
Alaska calls its website "Checkbook Online." According to the state, this service "…is part of a national trend for governments to develop websites that allow constituents to view financial information in searchable formats. Such websites are widely considered to improve transparency into the financial operations of government."
