LegiStorm: Transparency's Sidekick

The man who has led the Republican charge against the House Ways and Means chairman over the accuracy of the powerful lawmaker's personal financial disclosures has acknowledged errors on his own disclosures.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) has been the target of an ongoing ethics investigation over errors on his financial disclosure forms. Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) has said that allowing Rangel to remain as chairman of the Ways and Means committee is "the same as allowing a confessed bank robber to serve as chairman of the Banking Committee." Carter has attacked Rangel for leaving information about income and hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets out of his financial disclosures - information that, when it was brought to light, resulted in the New York congressman having to pay nearly $10,000 in back taxes.

Now, according to Roll Call, Carter has acknowledged errors of omission in his own financial disclosures. The omissions relate to his ownership of at least $1 million in Exxon Mobil Corp. stock. Carter's disclosures reveal the ownership of the stock and a partial sale of the assets in 2006 and 2007. But his filings fail to mention his profits, as required.

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The wife of Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) received some unwanted attention yesterday from The Hill newspaper, which pointed out that he has gone to bat for a bank outside his district that his wife previously worked for.

Luckily, spousal employment is a matter of public record, and LegiStorm maintains the financial disclosures of all members of Congress and their staff. In our own review of Rep. Gutierrez's disclosures, we were interested to see that his wife Soraida has since switched jobs and now works for another financial house, Ramirez and Co. Indeed, she's a registered lobbyist for them with the State of Illinois.

Potentially even more interesting is how Ramirez describes the access they are afforded by having Soraida on their payroll. In Soraida's bio, the company describes her as an "active participant in her husband's career in public service."

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Former congressional aide Kevin Ring secured a hung jury in a corruption trial yesterday by claiming that showering gifts on members of Congress and their staff is the normal way of doing business in Washington. So how many precious gifts have been disclosed by congressional aides? Precious few, it turns out.

Our review of thousands of disclosures of congressional staff reveals only a handful of gifts that have been disclosed in recent years. Congressional rules require disclosure of all gifts greater than $50 and bans many kinds of gifts.

A common reason stated for receiving gifts has been for a wedding. When Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) staffer Richard Boykin got married in 2006, he received several gifts, including $500 from one of his boss's campaign contributors and $500 in china from long-time and well-known lobbyist Bernie Robinson (although Boykin did not disclose him as such). Gifts from lobbyists are banned by House rules.

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The House ethics committee has expanded its existing investigation of Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) to include possible improprieties related to financial disclosure amendments he filed in August, The Associated Press reported this afternoon.

Those amendments revealed several assets that had previously been undisclosed, including a previously undisclosed account valued at least $250,000 with the Congressional Federal Credit Union.

Rangel was already the subject of two separate House ethics subcommittee investigations. Among other things, Rangel has been accused of improperly maintaining multiple rent-controlled apartments in New York, failing to report rental income to the IRS and taking part in a trip to St. Maarten that may have been paid for by companies which employ lobbyists, a potential violation of House rules.

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LegiStorm has released the latest available staff salary data from the House of Representatives, covering the second quarter of 2009.

The Senate releases its salary data every six months, so there is no new salary data available from the Senate.

LegiStorm provides salary data for the House and Senate going back to October 2000. We remain the only place on the web where this information is available. You can browse or search our salary database, including the most recent data, by starting here.