LegiStorm: Transparency's Sidekick

LegiStorm has added Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) amendments to seven years worth of personal financial disclosures.

The Associated Press reported Reid filed the amendments for his 2001-2007 reports to correct information of some real estate deals.

Reid had originally disclosed ownership of a Las Vegas property but had not shown that the title was actually held by Patrick Lane LLC, a corporation Reid had partial ownership in. The AP had reported in 2006 that the inaccurate disclosures may have violated Senate ethics rules.

read more ...

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.

The parents of Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) gave $96,000 to the family of his former lover last year, the Las Vegas Sun reported today. But the gift was not reported on the personal financial disclosure of the lover's husband, Ensign's top aide.

The disclosure comes after Ensign admitted to an extramarital affair with his campaign staffer Cynthia Hampton, the wife of his former aide Doug Hampton. According to a statement by Ensign, his parents gave $12,000 gifts to Doug, Cindy and two of their children in one check for $96,000.

"The payments were made as gifts, accepted as gifts and complied with tax rules governing gifts," the statement said.

read more ...

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.

read more ...

Roll Call has a fascinating article this morning that illuminates how it never hurts to hire a congressman's family member when trying to secure an earmark to do work your company has no expertise in.

Once again, Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.) has rewarded an embattled lobbying firm that hired his brother, Kit Murtha. The firm, KSA Consulting, secured a $3 million earmark for a Pennsylvania-based company to develop an underwater "swimmer detection" sonar system to protect ships in port. The only problem? The company, KDH Defense Systems, has no expertise in sonar and specializes in sewing armored uniforms.

 The Senate is expected to follow the House of Representative's lead and post all member expenses online, the Associated Press reports.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) proposed the measure, which was approved and added to an appropriations bill allocating funds for the congressional budget. A final compromise version of the appropriations bill will need to be approved by the House and Senate before the measure will go into effect.

This follows last month's announcement by the House that it would post the House's Statement of Disbursements "at the earliest date." Originally, that was expected to be the end of August. But The Hill reported last week that the House was going to delay the release until October to plan for the expected increase in online traffic.

read more ...

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.

read more ...

The Washington Post reports today on the how the staff of Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) tried to get federal regulators to provide bailout funds for a bank where the senator has invested the bulk of his personal wealth.  

After the intervention, regulators at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reversed their earlier decision not to provide bailout funds because the institution, Central Pacific Financial, did not qualify. The bank received a $135 million injection of federal funds as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Having been granted an extension, Inouye has not yet filed his 2009 personal financial disclosure covering last year. But his 2008 disclosure shows that at at the end of 2007 he and his wife owned between $350,000 and $700,000 worth of Central Pacific Financial stock.

read more ...