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<h1>Capitol Assets: Some legislators send millions to groups connected to their relatives</h1>
<h3>
By <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/scott-higham/2011/03/02/ABt0vmP_page.html" rel="author">Scott Higham</a>, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/kimberly-kindy/2011/03/02/ABPCV8M_page.html" rel="author">Kimberly Kindy</a> and David S. Fallis, <span class="timestamp updated processed">Published: February 7</span>
</h3>
<p>Some members of Congress send tax dollars to companies, colleges and
community groups where their spouses, children and parents work as
salaried employees, lobbyists or board members, according to an
examination of federal disclosure forms and local public records by The
Washington Post.</p>
<p>A U.S. senator from South Dakota helped add millions to a Pentagon
program his wife evaluated as a contract employee. A Washington
congressman boosted the budget of an environmental group that his son
ran as executive director. A Texas congresswoman guided millions to a
university where her husband served as a vice president.</p><p>Those
three members are among 16 who have taken actions that aided entities
connected to their immediate families. The findings stem from an
examination by The Post of all 535 members of the House and Senate,
comparing their financial disclosure forms with thousands of public
records. The examination uncovered a broad range of connections between
the public and private lives of the nation’s lawmakers.</p><p>
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/capitolassets">(View the full results of the Post investigation.)</a>
</p><p>Several of the cases have received previous media attention,
raised by local newspapers or campaign opponents, but the practice has
continued unabated, The Post found.</p><p>Lawmakers said in interviews
that the actions they took were not intended to directly benefit their
relatives or themselves. Instead, they say, the largesse was meant to
assist corporations, educational programs and community organizations
that employ, educate and help residents in their congressional
districts.</p><p>
<a href="http://live.washingtonpost.com/capitol-assets-120208.html">(Chat with the reporters today at 11 a.m. ET.)</a>
</p><p>In some cases, the lawmakers sought advice from congressional
committees assigned to examine possible conflicts on Capitol Hill. The
panels informed them that the practice of earmarking money to the
workplaces of relatives is permissible, as long as tax dollars are not
going directly to or solely benefitting their husbands, wives, sons or
daughters. Several of the lawmakers also certified to congressional
committees that neither they nor their immediate family members stood to
benefit from the earmark in question.</p><p>Members of Congress have
more leeway than executive branch officials or individuals in publicly
held companies, who operate under stricter conflict-of-interest rules
that generally prevent them from taking actions that might benefit
businesses or institutions where their relatives work. The legislators
set and enforce their own rules, giving themselves broad latitude to
take steps that can end up directly benefiting their immediate family.</p><p>“The
executive branch has far stricter ethics standards than Congress does —
and Congress has set these standards,” said Craig Holman of <a href="http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=183">Public Citizen</a>,
a nonprofit government watchdog group. “The executive branch can’t
steer contracts or work to businesses where family members work. They
can’t even own stock in industries that they oversee, unlike Congress.
It’s complete hypocrisy.”</p><p>Members engaged in behavior that
included directly funding programs run by their children, earmarking
money to entities represented by their lobbyist relatives and sending
tax dollars to colleges where their family members work or serve on
boards of trustees.</p><p>Although members of Congress declared a
two-year moratorium on earmarks last year, efforts to insert targeted
spending provisions into bills continue. Lawmakers attempted to put <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mccaskill-led-earmark-probe-finds-834-million-in-requests/2011/12/08/gIQAl0MrlO_story.html">115 of the provisions worth $834 million</a> into a House defense bill last year. The provisions were stripped from the bill after they became public late last year.</p>
<p>
<a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/M001170">Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.)</a>,
a leading critic of earmarks, said the efforts to amend the defense
bill underscore how deeply committed Congress is to retaining its
provincial spending practices. Last week, the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/minor-senate-bill-sparks-major-debate-on-ethics/2012/02/01/gIQAsW9kkQ_story.html">Senate defeated a proposal</a> co-sponsored by McCaskill and authored by <a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/T000461">Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.)</a> that would have permanently banned earmarks. But the Senate extended the moratorium another year.</p>
<p>Before
the moratorium went into effect, the ability of lawmakers to earmark
tax dollars to specific programs and geographic locations was one of
their most cherished political prerogatives. Since 2007, senators have
required themselves to certify that neither they nor their “immediate”
family members have any financial interests in the programs benefiting
from their official actions. Under House rules, however, lawmakers are
required to certify only that neither they nor their spouses hold a
financial stake in their earmarks, not other members of their immediate
families.</p><p>Congressional files are replete with copies of these
self-certifications. Most of them contain identical language, and few
disclose that lawmakers have relatives who are employed by the
organizations about to benefit from their benevolence. Officials at <a href="http://www.taxpayer.net/">Taxpayers for Common Sense</a>,
a nonprofit group that monitors congressional spending, said they could
not recall the last time a lawmaker was disciplined for using an
earmark to benefit his or her relatives.</p><p>
<strong>
<b>‘An experienced educator’</b>
</strong>
</p><p>For years,<a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/J000285"> Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.)</a>
has supported a Pentagon program called Starbase that teaches science,
math and engineering skills to children in dozens of locations around
the country.</p><p>Johnson is a member of the Senate Appropriations
Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Pentagon’s budget. In 2008,
Johnson, along with seven other senators, added $4 million to the
Starbase budget.</p><p>At the time, Johnson’s wife, Barbara, was paid an
annual salary of $80,000 as a contract employee to evaluate the
program. From 2005 to September, she worked for the Spectrum Group, a
lobbying and consulting firm in Alexandria, that has a $1 million
Pentagon contract to monitor Starbase. A social worker and educator,
Barbara Johnson was also assigned to manage its Web site.</p><p>Spectrum President Gregory L. Sharp said he hired the senator’s wife because of her history of working with children.</p><p>“She
was looking for a job,” Sharp said. “We didn’t hire her because of her
husband. We didn’t hire her for that reason. She was an experienced
educator.”</p><p>Barbara Johnson said in an interview she took the job
around the time her husband started having health problems. He later had
a brain hemorrhage in December 2006.</p><p>Shortly after hiring the
senator’s wife, Spectrum filed a lobbying registration form with the
House and Senate naming Barbara Johnson as a lobbyist for the company.
The form listed Starbase as her only client.</p><p>Sharp said the form was submitted in error.</p><p>“That was a mistake. She never lobbied the Hill,” he said. “She never lobbied her husband.”</p><p>“I was never a lobbyist,” Barbara Johnson said.</p>
<p>Perry
Plumart, a spokesman for the senator, said Johnson played no role in
his wife’s employment and had no contact with Pentagon Starbase
officials. Plumart said the senator didn’t think it was necessary to
disclose his wife’s employment in certifications filed with the
Appropriations Committee because the money he added to the program was
technically not an earmark.</p><p>The senator’s spokesman said the money
was not an earmark because it was added to an existing program, not
intended for any specific aspect of Starbase, and the request for
additional funds was not directed to Johnson’s home state of South
Dakota.</p><p>“Senator Johnson’s support of increased funding for
STARBASE was not an earmark under the definition of a congressionally
directed spending item as defined by the Senate Rules,” Plumart said in a
statement.</p><p>Directors of government watchdog groups disputed that assessment.</p><p>“That’s
an earmark,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common
Sense. “His wife supervises the thing. It’s not like he can say this
doesn’t benefit what his wife does. At some point, she has a right to
earn a living, but at some point he’s got to say, ‘The optics of this
are not very good.’ ”</p><p>An earmark expert agreed. “It’s absolutely an earmark,” said Tom Schatz, president of <a href="http://www.cagw.org/">Citizens Against Government Waste</a>,
another organization in Washington that tracks congressional spending.
“It went to a program that benefits his wife. We would consider that an
earmark because it’s an increase in the budget specifically requested by
members of Congress.”</p><p>Barbara Johnson said she sought an oral
opinion from the Senate Select Committee on Ethics to ensure that her
employment “wasn’t crossing any lines.” She said she couldn’t recall
when she sought the opinion or who she met with at the ethics committee,
but she said she was told that her employment was permitted under
Senate rules. “They said it didn’t pose any conflict,” she said.</p><p>
<strong>
<b>‘She was never my motivation’</b>
</strong>
</p><p>
<a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/P000099">Rep. Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.)</a> is a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which has jurisdiction over the budget of the <a href="http://nnsa.energy.gov/">National Nuclear Security Administration</a>.
The Energy Department agency is tasked with securing the nation’s
nuclear weapons stockpile and preventing nuclear proliferation.</p><p>During
the past six years, the congressman has directed the agency to send
millions to fund the scholarship program for at-risk high school
students headed by his daughter in Arizona. She earns $75,774 a year.</p><p>Pastor
obtained a $1 million federal grant for the Achieving a College
Education program at the Maricopa Community Colleges about four years
before his daughter, Laura, was hired as its director in 2005. Since
that time, Pastor has earmarked about $4 million from the nuclear agency
for the program, records show.</p><p>Pastor said he’s proud of the
earmarks and pointed out that he has sent money to educational programs
across his congressional district in Phoenix. Maricopa’s ACE program
provides financial support to high school students who are in danger of
not graduating, enabling them to take classes and summer camps to build
math and science skills and attend college. While the money goes to the
program, Pastor said his daughter’s salary is covered by the college.</p><p>“The
perception is that you helped your daughter, but if you evaluate the
kids who benefited from this, it was worth doing,” the congressman said.
“I believe thousands of kids have a better life today because of this
program.”</p><p>Pastor said he was searching to find ways to support the
ACE scholarship program in 2005, when one of his colleagues on the
appropriations committee said the nuclear security administration had
grants available to fund programs at historically black colleges.</p><p>Given
this, Pastor said he felt it was appropriate to earmark money from the
nuclear agency to Maricopa because the students in the program are
largely Hispanic. At the time, he said, he did not know that his
daughter was applying for a job to head the program.</p><p>“She was
never my motivation,” Pastor said. “I wasn’t aware she was applying. If I
knew, I would have contacted the chancellor and said, ‘What kind of
position does this put you and me in?’ ”</p><p>Pastor filed three
certifications between 2008 and 2010 stating that “neither I nor my
spouse has any financial interest in this project.” Had he been a
senator, Pastor would have been required to further certify that no
“immediate” family members had an interest.</p><p>Laura Pastor declined
to be interviewed. She said in a statement: “I applied for several
positions at the Maricopa Community Colleges because I wanted to return
to work in education. I was well qualified for my position, having
administered a similar type of program in Chicago before returning to
Arizona. I was chosen through a competitive process.”</p><p>Tom Gariepy, a spokesman for Maricopa, said, “She was the best person for the job.”</p><p>The
Arizona Republic reported in 2007 that Laura Pastor was not the
highest-ranked candidate for the position but had received a salary at
the top of the pay scale. The paper also discovered that an
equal-opportunity investigator had warned college officials that “we
will not be able to totally defend the hiring decision.”</p><p>After the
hiring story faded, Pastor continued to earmark money for the ACE
program, The Post found. Pastor has also secured earmarks for other
colleges, including $185,000 to Pima Community College, $1.6 million to
Arizona State University and $8.7 million to the University of Arizona.
More than a third of his college earmarks — $4.2 million to his
daughter’s program and an additional $2 million to a different program —
have gone to Maricopa.</p><p>A spokesman for the nuclear security administration said in a statement that the use of the earmarked money was appropriate.</p><p>“Congress
has authority for all earmarks and makes those decisions,” Joshua
McConaha said in the statement. “This program is not unique within NNSA
or within the federal government. <span>. . .</span> Recruiting and
retaining the next generation of scientists and engineers is a priority
for us because the types of people we need to execute our mission are
highly sought after.”</p><p>
<strong>
<b>Collegiate connections</b>
</strong>
</p><p>The Post found a pattern of members of Congress who earmarked
funds for colleges where their relatives were employed or on boards.</p><p>
<a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/J000032">Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.)</a>
has championed millions in earmarks to the University of Houston while
her husband, Elwyn C. Lee, has helped to run the school as a senior
administrator.</p><p>The congresswoman or her staff have met with other top university officials to discuss funding for school programs.</p><p>“We
greatly appreciate the Congresswoman’s support over the years and hope
that she can help us again this year with these requests,” a school
official wrote to a staff assistant for the lawmaker in May 2011,
according to internal e-mails obtained through a public records request.</p><p>Elwyn
Lee has worked at the university since 1978. Twenty years later, he had
risen to dual executive roles: vice president of student affairs for
the university and vice chancellor of student affairs for the university
system. Last March, he was named the university’s vice president for
community relations and institutional access.</p><p>Since 1994, his salary has almost doubled, to $210,491 a year.</p><p>Jackson
Lee, who took office in 1995, discloses her husband’s job on her
financial disclosure form. She has helped obtain four congressional
earmarks for the school totaling about $5.3 million since 2009,
according to the university.</p><p>In 2009, she co-sponsored two
earmarks to the university: $2.4 million for a “National Wind Energy
Center,” and $476,000 for a “Center for Clean Fuels and Power
Generation.” In 2010, she sponsored a $400,000 earmark to the university
for teacher training and professional development and co-sponsored an
additional $2 million for the wind center.</p><p>Last fiscal year,
according to her Web site, she sought $16.5 million more for the
university that was blocked by the earmark moratorium.</p><p>The
University of Houston, which has about 36,000 undergraduates, is one of
several schools Jackson Lee has supported with earmarks. She has also
directed earmarks to Texas Southern University and to University of
Texas programs in recent years, records show.</p><p>Jackson Lee’s staff
did not respond to repeated requests for interviews and comment. Her
husband said he played no role in securing the earmarks.</p><p>“None of
the Congressional earmarks secured by UH was directed to the areas under
my supervision,” Elwyn Lee said in a statement. “To reiterate, it is
not my responsibility, and it has never been my responsibility, to
secure Congressional earmarks. Therefore, there has been no conflict to
manage.”</p><p>As a member of the House education committee, <a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/A000210">Rep. Robert E. Andrews (D-N.J.)</a> has secured six earmarks worth $3.3 million for a scholarship program at Rutgers School of Law in Camden.</p>
<p>His
wife, Camille Spinello Andrews, is an associate dean of the law school
“in charge of enrollment, scholarships, and special legal programs,”
according to the school’s Web site.</p><p>More than half the earmarks
were secured prior to 2007, before the House began to require that the
spending measures be publicly disclosed. The new rules prompted Andrews
to seek an ethics opinion that year. The committee concluded there was
no conflict because his wife did not have an “ownership interest” in the
law school and the earmarks did not “affect the spouse’s salary.”</p><p>The
following year, one of Andrews’s political opponents turned the
earmarks into a campaign issue. Andrews continued to earmark money for
the law school scholarship program, filing certifications that stated
“neither I nor my spouse has any financial interest in the project.”</p><p>The
congressman said his wife has no direct oversight of the scholarship
program. He added that he is proud of the earmarks, citing them as an
example of why the moratorium should be lifted.</p><p>“These earmarks
put money into a scholarship program that required students to provide
free legal services to the poorest people in a very poor city — Camden,”
Andrews said.</p><p>Camille Spinello Andrews did not return calls or e-mails seeking comment.</p><p>The
congressman acknowledged that earmark abuses have taken place and the
latest rule changes governing earmarks have not reformed the practice.</p><p>“When
a member wants funding for a project in their district, they call or
write to an unelected official in the executive branch,” he said.
“Recently, I called [Transportation] Secretary Ray LaHood and asked for
money for a bridge in my district. I am proud that I did that, because
that bridge is needed. But the only way you know about that call is
because I just told you. I believe that all these calls and letters by
members should be made public. It’s perfectly legitimate for the public
to ask questions about earmarks, but you can’t do that if you don’t know
about them.”</p><p>From 2007 to 2009, <a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/B001250">Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah)</a>requested
earmarks worth more $1.5 million for Weber State University in Ogden.
Subsequent to those requests but before $1.25 million of them were
ultimately secured, the university hired the congressman’s son Shule
Bishop as a lobbyist. He serves as director of government relations. The
congressman said the earmarks to Weber posed no conflict because none
were requested when his son worked there and his son lobbies the state
legislature, not Congress.</p><p>“There is no connection,” Rob Bishop said.</p><p>His
spokeswoman, Melissa Subbotin, added that the congressman and his staff
interact with Weber’s Washington lobbyist, not Shule Bishop.</p><p>“The
congressman has been working on behalf of Weber State since he was
first elected, which far predates his son’s employment there,” Subbotin
noted, adding that the congressman has given earmarks to other
universities in Utah.</p><p>Shule Bishop declined to discuss the
earmarks. He referred questions to his supervisor, who said clear lines
have been drawn to keep the congressman’s son from lobbying his father.</p><p>“I
don’t know what they talk about around the dinner table when the
congressman is home on the weekends, but we haven’t put him in the
position of asking for things from his father,” said Brad Mortensen, who
oversees lobbying efforts as Weber’s vice president for university
advancement.</p><p>He said the university didn’t hire Shule Bishop because of his father’s position.</p><p>“The
reason we hired Shule was because of the relationships he has in the
state Capitol,” Mortensen said. “His father was speaker of the House in
the Capitol. He has worked around the Capitol and knows the legislature
well.”</p><p>Shule Bishop’s job title seems to reflect that he’s in
charge of all lobbying efforts, but Mortensen said the state and federal
lobbying shops at Weber are kept separate.</p><p>“Having the son of a
congressman in a government relations role at the state level, that does
create some conflicts, so we would try to make sure those discussions
were ones where Shule wasn’t the one strategizing or talking to even our
federal contract lobbyist, let alone his father’s office,” Mortensen
said.</p><p>As a result of The Post’s inquiries, Mortensen said Weber
plans to change Shule Bishop’s job title, probably to “director of state
government relations.”</p><p>
<strong>
<b>‘Best for his constituents’</b>
</strong>
</p><p>Lawmakers also used their legislative prowess to earmark money to the clients of their lobbyist relatives.</p><p>In
Chicago, the Lipinski family name carries clout. William O. Lipinski
was an influential member of Congress for 22 years, serving on the House
Transportation Committee and sending millions of tax dollars back to
his congressional district. When Lipinski decided to step down from
Congress in 2004, he persuaded Democratic Party leaders to back his son
for his seat.</p><p>Since joining Congress in 2005, <a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/L000563">Rep. Daniel Lipinski </a>has
continued his father’s tradition of funding projects in Illinois as a
member of the same committee. Along the way, the Chicago Democrat has
helped to send federal tax dollars to a client of his father’s lobbying
practice, Capricorn Communications.</p><p>Daniel Lipinski, along with
other members of the Illinois congressional delegation, secured $2.5
million in earmarks since taking office for rail projects that are
overseen by the Chicago Transit Authority. The CTA is one of William
Lipinski’s lobbying clients and has paid the former congressman
$766,330.20 in fees since 2007, according to the transit agency.
Lipinski’s earmarks for his father’s client were first reported by the
Chicago Sun-Times in 2010.</p><p>The CTA said in a statement that
William Lipinski helps the agency with congressional contacts outside of
the Illinois delegation on the House and Senate transportation
committees. Other members of the Illinois congressional delegation have
also earmarked money for CTA-related projects.</p><p>Daniel Lipinski
declined to discuss the earmark. Through a spokesman, the lawmaker said
he sees nothing improper with the arrangement and didn’t think it was
necessary to obtain an opinion about the propriety of the spending from
the House Ethics Committee.</p><p>“His father does not lobby him on
behalf of his clients on transportation or any other issues,” spokesman
Nathaniel Zimmer said. “In these, as in other areas, Congressman
Lipinski is focused on doing what is best for his constituents.”</p><p>Zimmer provided a statement on Daniel Lipinski’s behalf.</p><p>“As
the most senior Chicago-area member of the Transportation &
Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Lipinski has helped to secure funding for
numerous important local transportation projects that are widely
supported by both residents and other elected officials,” the statement
said. “That our transportation infrastructure is in serious need of
investment is beyond doubt, and every one of these projects fills a
critical need.”</p><p>Daniel Lipinski filed the required certification with the House Appropriations Committee in April 2009.</p><p>“I
certify that neither I nor my spouse has any financial interest in this
project,” the congressman wrote. Under House rules, Lipinski’s
certification did not need to extend to his father.</p><p>Between 2005 and 2010, <a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/B000911">Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.)</a>
helped secure $21.9 million in earmarks to six clients of Alcalde &
Fay, a lobbying firm that employs her daughter, The Post found. During
that time, the clients paid the firm more than $1 million in fees to
represent them before Congress, records show.</p><p>Other earmarks by
Brown have been previously reported. She was the sole sponsor of $1.79
million in earmarks to a seventh client, the Community Rehabilitation
Center. At the time, her daughter, Shantrel Brown, worked as a lead
lobbyist on behalf of the center, the Florida Times-Union reported in
2010.</p><p>The earmarks were secured to help finance “substance abuse
and mental health programs” at the center and to upgrade a Jacksonville,
Fla., strip shopping mall where the center is located, records show.
The federal lobbying reports say Shantrel Brown sought “federal funding
for substance abuse and mental health programs” from 2008 to 2010.</p><p>The
congresswoman declined requests for an interview and also declined to
respond to written questions about the earmarks. Her chief of staff,
Ronnie Simmons, also would not say whether the congresswoman sought an
ethics opinion about the propriety of the earmarks.</p><p>Shantrel Brown did not return calls or respond to e-mails seeking comment.</p><p>
<a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/N000032">Sen. Bill Nelson</a>,
a fellow Democrat from Florida, joined Brown as a co-sponsor of a
$750,000 earmark for the rehabilitation center in 2010. When he later
discovered that Brown’s daughter was a lobbyist for the center, he
decided to withdraw his support.</p><p>“We try to do our due diligence.
The center had the backing of many community leaders,” Nelson spokesman
Bryan Gulley told The Post. “But when we learned her daughter was
involved in lobbying for the center, that raised enough concerns that we
no longer supported the project.”</p><p>
<strong>
</strong>
</p><p>
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</p><p>
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</strong>
</p><p>Washington Post researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this article.</p></div>
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