LegiStorm: Transparency's Sidekick

A pro-Israel lobbying group has found a loophole in the rules limiting the ability of lobbying groups to pay for congressional travel - a loophole large enough that they are one of the leading sponsors of such travel.

The American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF) paid for more than 50 lawmakers and staff of both parties to travel to Israel in August, according to the trip disclosures in LegiStorm's database. Travelers included House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.).

AIEF is the fundraising arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, an influential lobbying group. Despite tough rules forbidding congressional travel paid for by lobbyists, AIPAC gets around the ban by having its nonprofit arm pay for the trips.

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Foreign governments typically can't pay for lawmakers to fly overseas - it's against the law in most circumstances. But one member of Congress, Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), recently discovered another way to visit a luxury resort in a Caribbean country apparently courtesy of the government there.

Clarke disclosed that she was visiting Antigua and Barbuda and paid by the New York-based PM Group, otherwise known as the Portfolio Marketing Group, to attend the renaming ceremony for the country's highest peak to be Mount Obama. But in the forms filled out as part of the new House requirements for privately financed travel, the PM Group disclosed a representative  of the Antigua and Barbuda government as a person to contact about the trip. Perhaps not surprisingly, the PM Group's web site shows Antigua and Barbuda to be a client.

So did the government of Antigua and Barbuda actually sponsor the trip?

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Want to find out how much money a highly successful lobbyist can make in Washington from a position of unparalleled influence?

Check out the financial disclosure of David Krone, the senior adviser Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) hired back in December. His lobbying income last year? More than $5 million in salary, severance and living reimbursements.

Based on financial disclosures of other lobbyists-turned-staffers, Krone's take-home amount is an extreme outlier. Typical lobbyists make generous six-figure, not seven-figure, salaries.

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Sifting through personal financial disclosures of congressional staffers, we stumbled upon one disclosure of gifts from an aide's girlfriend. That romantic gesture led us down a path of inquiry that raises questions about whether the new travel rules are followed scrupulously or have major loopholes.

This all started with our routine review  of the financial disclosure of Jay Hulings, a legislative counsel for Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.). He revealed that his girlfriend, Elysia Petru, a former Miss San Antonio, had given him $675 in gifts in 2008. The gifts included a trip to Seattle and a video game console.

Our interest at first was merely amusement that a staffer might have to disclose gifts from a significant other. But our interest was piqued when we learned that Petru appears to work alongside Helen Milby, a heavy Democratic fundraiser, and that the two of them were organizers of a July 2008 fact-finding trip to Portland and Seattle - and more specifically to the campus of Microsoft,  maker of the Xbox video game console - by congressional staff.

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Senators may have reputations to some as being inexhaustible windbags but they sure like to write too.

Personal financial disclosures released today reveal numerous Senators with book contracts or royalties.

1. - Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) - The son of a noted politician has a publishing agreement with Emmis Books to write a book on fatherhood, with all proceeds to be donated to charity. 
2. - Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) - Boxer has two book publishing agreements from 2004 and 2007 with Chronicle Books LLC of San Francisco.
3. - Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) - Brown has an agreement from 2000 with New Press to donate all royalties to charities that he makes from a book about trade policy, as well an agreement to receive 10% royalties from Kent State University Press for a book called "Congress from the Inside." 
4. - Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) - Brownback has an agreement to receive $75,000 in advance from W Publishing Group for a manuscript title "From Power to Purpose."
5. - Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) - The Senate's oldest member received $10,000 in book income from Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents.
6. - Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) - DeMint listed $5,000 in royalty from Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, and a $42,500 book advance from B&H Publishers.
7. - Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) - The North Dakota senator has a $120,000 advance agreement from the William Morris Agency for the title, "Reckless! How Debt, Deregulation and Dark Money Nearly Bankrupted America."
8. - Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) - The wealthy senator donated $22,544 in book royalties to charity.
9. - Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) - The Minnesota senator had royalties of $319 from Waveland Press.
10. - Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) - Kennedy was the clear winner in the royalty race, pulling down $2 million for his autobiography.
11. - Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) - The former vice presidential nominee has two book deals in the works.
12. - Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) - The former presidential candidate's report puzzlingly suggests he earned royalties of only $20,539, which he donated to charity. Other books are underway. McCain splits royalties with his co-author Mark Salter, and the report lists no royalites from three of his five books in print.
13. - Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) - Menendez has one book contract with a $50,000 advance, to be split with his co-author. A second with Sterling Lord Literistic gives his co-author the entire $50,000 advance, plus 100% of any additional proceeds up to $50,000, with a 50-50% author/co-author split after that.
14. - Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) - She has an agreement for two books that also promises 50% of the royalties.
15. - Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) - The Senate majority leader earned $135,903 in book royalties, which he donated to charity.
16. - Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) - Schumer has an agreement to publish a book and reported receiving an advance in an earlier report.
17. - Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) - The former Republican reported $20,000 in royalties.

But senators didn't receive royalties only from writing books. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) continued to supplement his Senate income with royalties from writing songs, having 19 separate royalty agreements involving his tunes. His total haul was $8,369. That makes him far more lucky than the lobbying firm, Greenberg Traurig, that represented him in an unspecified number of those transactions. His agreement with them is to pay a relatively stingy 5% representation fee.

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When Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) bowed out as President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Commerce Department, he cited political differences as his reasons for the move, insisting "nothing about the vetting process played any role in this decision." Two weeks later, though, the Associated Press broke a story that might have become an integral part of the vetting process: that Gregg had secured earmarks to fund the redevelopment of a defunct Air Force base in his home state even as he and his brother, Cyrus Gregg, were investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in real estate in the area. "I am absolutely sure that in every way I've complied with the ethics rules of the Senate both literally and in their spirit relative to any investment that I've made anywhere," Gregg told the AP.

Not mentioned in that story is something that we stumbled across in reviewing the handful of Senate personal financial disclosures released so far this year: a day before the AP's story saw print, Sen. Gregg filed an amendment to his financial disclosure pertaining to 2001, revealing further unpublicized ties linking the senator and his brother in business affairs that have received indirect assistance from federal money.

The amendment corrects Sen. Gregg's earlier filing which made no mention of his ownership stake in Photran LLC, a crystal manufacturing company co-founded by his brother, Cyrus Gregg. The amendment indicated that Sen. Gregg's stake was more than $100,000. Gregg's failure to mention Photran in the filing covering 2001 appears to have been an oversight, since he did disclose the tie the following year.

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We have long been frustrated by an inability to highlight the interesting items we stumble across in our raw records. While we have served as a valuable data source for news organizations since our founding, we have shied away from original reporting. Instead, we have been a bit too focused in on providing our existing top-quality data and developing new information sets that shed light on how Congress works.

However, today we are launching an occasional blog feature called "Storm Tips" in which we will begin to reveal a bit more about what we find in our data. Some of what we find is whimsical, some of it appears passingly strange, and some of it contains a whiff of scandal. But whatever their nature, these "Storm Tips" should serve as starting points for reporters and writers to do a bit of digging to tell a more complete story.

Our first "Storm Tips" items comes today from our staffer Stephen Snowder, who writes about Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) and what his personal financial disclosures newly reveal about his controversial ties to his brother.