LegiStorm: Transparency's Sidekick

A confidential report of the House ethics committee, detailing inquiries into possible ethics violations by dozens of lawmakers and their staffers, has made its way into the Washington Post this morning. The leak represents a rare opportunity to look at the deliberations of a committee that has been accustomed to operating in total privacy.

According to the report, the committee has interviewed Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and some of the people around him in regard to the ongoing investigation into information surrounding his finances and a trip he took to St. Martin. Rangel has been under fire for failing to pay taxes on assets and income, and for leaving information out of his personal financial disclosures.

According to the report, however, he isn't the only one who may have omitted information from his disclosures. Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) has been under scrutiny since 2006 for having failed to reveal portions of his stake in real estate. According to the Post, the ethics committee report seems to indicate that the Justice Department may have taken over that investigation. Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.) may also have omitted "property, income and liabilities" from her disclosures, according to the Post.

Others named in the report include subjects of a previously-known investigation into lawmakers associated with a lobbying firm that broke up after its offices were raided by the FBI early this year. PMA Group has been the subject of a federal investigation into earmarks and "pay-to-play" activities.

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Once again, an Alaskan legislator is in hot water over allegedly receiving gifts that were not listed on his financial disclosure forms.

Court documents filed leading up to the sentencing of Bill Allen allege that Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) received as much as $200,000 over a period of 13 years, the Associated Press reported this weekend. Allen and his oil company VECO Corp. were central figures in former Alaska Sen. Ted Steven's (R) corruption trial.

The court filing says Young received as much as $15,000 a year from VECO to pay for the congressman's annual pig roast fundraiser from 1993 to 2006. It also alleges that VECO vice president Rick Smith used Allen's credit card to buy a $1,000 set of golf clubs for Young.

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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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