LegiStorm: Transparency's Sidekick

The guilty plea this week by an aide to Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) - an aide who doesn't appear in official records at times that he was working for Davis - may raise questions for the lawmaker since ethics rules prohibit maintaining slush funds and hiring unpaid staff except under strict circumstances.

Staffer Ernest B. Moore confessed to fraud charges for using multiple aliases to run up hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit card bills and student loans. On Capitol Hill, he went by the aliases Bernard Glenn-Moore and Bernard Moore. Moore came to the Hill in 2004, when he had a one-year senior policy fellowship with Davis's office through the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (such official fellowships are permitted under ethics rules). In 2006, he transfered to Davis's office as a legislative assistant and earned a salary for a few more months. After that, no official record ties him to Davis's office, despite public evidence that Davis knew he was claiming to represent Davis as an aide.

Politico broke the story of Moore's plea and described how he maintains a working house.gov email address, has organized events on behalf of Davis and claimed in his Williams College biography, where he has taught over the past few years, to be a continuing aide to Davis.

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LegiStorm has added the 2009 first-quarter U.S. House of Representative staff salaries onto its site, giving the first look at the staff makeup for more than 50 freshmen members of Congress.

The new data include the salaries of all House staff from Jan. 1-March 31, 2009. The expenditures are released in thick printed volumes and LegiStorm has converted the salary records from paper to digital form and uploaded them to its database.

LegiStorm has already posted the Senate salaries covering the same period, as well as personal financial disclosures for House and Senate staffers.

LegiStorm has added the latest U.S. Senate staff salaries onto its site, completing the 2008 year that saw the end of Senate careers by Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).

The new data include the salaries of all Senate staff from Oct. 1, 2008-March 31, 2009. Unlike the House, which releases its expenditure and salary data quarterly, the Senate releases its financial records every six months. The Secretary of the Senate published two thick books of expenditures earlier this month. LegiStorm has painstakingly converted the salary records from paper form into its database.

Meanwhile, the House has also released all of its expenditure records from the first quarter of 2009 and we have begun  entering that data as well. We will make another blog post when that is complete, which we estimate to be about two weeks from now.

The House ethics committee is looking into whether Reps. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) violated congressional rules when the Linda Sanchez took some of her sister's employees on her own payroll in late 2006, according to a story in Roll Call Wednesday.

Loretta Sanchez was going to be unable to meet payroll obligations within her budget due to embezzlement by an aide, so her sister Linda moved three of Loretta's employees onto her own payroll.

The aide, Caroline Valdez, pleaded guilty Monday to charges she stole between $5,000 and $10,000 in early 2006. The theft led to Linda Sanchez paying three of Loretta's employees in the final months of 2006. According to LegiStorm's salary records, the three employees appear to be Shane Skinner, Edward Steiner and Andrew Stephenson, all of whom appear on Linda Sanchez' payroll in November or December of 2006.

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The amount House members are allowed to spend on office supplies, franked mail and staff salaries may be about to take a big jump.

The House of Representatives' chief administrative officer asked lawmakers to raise the total pool for member administrative expenses by $90 million, or about 15 percent, according to Roll Call.

The Members' Representational Allowances, as they are known, range from about $1.4 million to $1.7 million for each office. The expense allowance is based on various factors, including the distance of a member's district to D.C. and the cost of office space in their home district.

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Local news media outlets across the country have taken an interest in congressional staff bonuses, using salary data provided by LegiStorm.

The stories - in places like Wisconsin, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah - follow up on a Wall Street Journal article earlier this month that reported that House members handed out the highest seasonal bonuses in years to their own employees in 2008. The scrutiny of congressional staff bonus practices comes as members of Congress have railed against CEOs who paid hefty bonuses with taxpayer bailout money. 

For example, the Salt Lake Tribune reports that former Utah Rep. Chris Cannon (R) handed out bonues equivalent to a 50 percent pay raise for some of his staffers after losing his district's Republican primary. According to the Tribune, Cannon "wanted to thank his staffers for the work they had done and entice them to stay until he left office in January. But his primary motivation was helping them get bigger salaries in their next jobs."

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The Salt Lake Tribune published a story today using LegiStorm's data to highlight the jump in pay former Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) gave his staff after losing his re-election bid in the primary last year.

The Tribune says Cannon aides generally saw bonuses or raises of around 50 percent, and they cite LegiStorm information showing one aide got a 70-percent lift in his pay as Cannon's term ended.

You can read more here about the trend of bonuses to congressional staff as revealed in LegiStorm's data.

The Wall Street Journal has reviewed the annual practice of lawmakers rewarding staff with annual bonuses - and this past year they appeared to do so in record numbers, according to the LegiStorm data that the Journal cited.

Bonuses are not unusual on Capitol Hill. But 2008 seems to have been an unusually big year for bonuses, according to the most recent House data LegiStorm analyzed. Each year, personnel compensation rises in the fourth quarter in the House of Representatives (data for the Senate is not yet available and is not as easily broken down). But in 2008, average pay per House employee spiked the most in the eight years since we have begun tracking salary data.

The Journal found that House bonuses ranged as high as $14,000. The New York Post also ran a more focused story this week about Rep. Vito Fossela's (R-N.Y.) generosity with bonuses as he served out a scandal-ridden last few months in office.

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The salaries are in. The pay figures for staff members from the House of Representatives' fourth quarter of 2008 are now available on LegiStorm, having been entered from the thick disbursement records released by the House of Representatives.

This data period is critical because it is the time when Santa Claus brings goodies to dedicated staff in the way of annual bonuses. Bonuses are not a universal perquisite on the Hill but they are a common way for members to reward staff who have merited them. This assumes that members have budgeted well and have sufficient funds available in their annual allotment, known as the Member's Representational Allowance.

The latest collection of salary data is a window into one of the fiercest fought elections in modern times. Elections can affect how congressional staffers are paid, both in legal and not-so-legal ways. For example, staff members often take leave to work on campaigns, whether their bosses' or those of others. The pay records can reflect those absences.

And sometimes, staffers receive compensation from the campaigns but volunteers on a campaign usually vastly outnumber the paid staff. Therefore, campaign work is often a volunteer or grossly underpaid activity. Occasionally, members of Congress reward aides with bonuses, even if unconsciously, for their special dedication to the campaign. Since federal law prohibits the use of tax dollars to subsidize campaigns, such a use of bonuses would be improper.

Also controversial is the payment of large bonuses by members of Congress who are departing. With no more concern about getting re-elected, members can be quite generous with taxpayer money toward their staff.

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When we first launched LegiStorm in September 2006, we presented users with less than one year of complete congressional staff salary data. Since that time, we have steadily added more recent data but also historical salary data, not to mention other data offerings.

Now we have reached a new milestone. We have entered all historical salary data from House and Senate expenditure books that the Government Printing Office still makes available. As of now, our salary data is complete from October 2000 forward, or eight full years worth.

Today's release includes an additional year of salaries from October 1, 2000 to September 30, 2001 in the Senate, as well as three quarters of House data from October 1, 2000 to June 30, 2001.

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