Congressional earmarks sometimes used to fund projects near lawmakers' propertiesSourceCongressional earmarks sometimes used to fund projects near lawmakers' properties By David S. Fallis, Scott Higham and Kimberly Kindy, Published: February 6 A U.S. senator from Alabama directed more than $100 million in federal earmarks to renovate downtown Tuscaloosa near his own commercial office building. A congressman from Georgia secured $6.3 million in taxpayer funds to replenish the beach about 900 feet from his island vacation cottage. A representative from Michigan earmarked $486,000 to add a bike lane to a bridge within walking distance of her home. Thirty-three members of Congress have directed more than $300 million in earmarks and other spending provisions to dozens of public projects that are next to or within about two miles of the lawmakers’ own property, according to a Washington Post investigation. Under the ethics rules Congress has written for itself, this is both legal and undisclosed. The Post analyzed public records on the holdings of all 535 members and compared them with earmarks members had sought for pet projects, most of them since 2008. The process uncovered appropriations for work in close proximity to commercial and residential real estate owned by the lawmakers or their family members. The review also found 16 lawmakers who sent tax dollars to companies, colleges or community programs where their spouses, children or parents work as salaried employees or serve on boards. In recent weeks, lawmakers have acknowledged the public’s growing concern that they appeared to be using their positions to enrich themselves. In response, the Senate last week passed legislation that would require lawmakers to disclose mortgages for their residences. The bill, known as the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (Stock) Act, would also require lawmakers and executive branch officials to disclose securities trades of more than $1,000 every 30 days. At the same time, the Senate defeated an amendment, 59-40, that would have permanently outlawed earmarks. The House is scheduled to vote on the Stock Act on Thursday. Earmarks have long been controversial, with the focus on spending that unduly favors campaign donors or constituents. The Post’s review is the first systematic effort to examine the alignment of earmarks with lawmakers’ private interests. Earmarks are a fraction of the federal budget, and the numbers uncovered by The Post are relatively small in the scheme of the overall Congress, but the behavior by lawmakers from both parties points to a larger issue at a time when confidence in Capitol Hill is at an all-time low. The congressional financial disclosure system obscures certain relationships. Lawmakers are not required to disclose the addresses of their personal residences or the employment of their children and parents. The lawmakers are also allowed to put properties in holding companies without disclosing the properties’ locations. Current versions of the Stock Act would not change that. To provide a fuller portrait of congressional connections, The Post compared the financial disclosure forms with the public record to track spending on projects near legislators’ properties or on programs employing their relatives. In interviews, lawmakers said their earmarks were needs brought to them by the city and state officials they represent to help pay for safer roads, nicer neighborhoods or improved local economies. They characterized questions about the nearby locations of their own holdings as irrelevant, insisting there is no conflict. Any potential personal benefit — financial or otherwise — is nonexistent, minimal or secondary to the needs of the public, they said. Mere proximity to a lawmaker’s property does not establish that an earmark was unwarranted. In some cases, the public benefit of the spending was large, improving life for thousands. In others, the benefit appeared narrower. In some cases, the work was within a mile or two of the properties; in others, it was directly in front of the lawmaker’s land. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) secured a $900,000 earmark that was used to resurface about two dozen roads in Mississippi in 2010. One of those was LC Turner Circle, a quarter-mile residential loop in the small town of Bolton, where Thompson and his daughter own two homes. Thompson said it was one of numerous paving earmarks he secured for his district. “I didn’t say, ‘Do the street that I live on,’ ” Thompson said. “The earmark went to the county. It had no designation on it whatsoever, and that was it.” Bolton Mayor Lawrence Butler said city leaders chose to repave the street, where about 48 families live, because “it had gone to the dogs.” Butler described Thompson as a close friend but said the lawmaker “didn’t have anything to do with where the asphalt went.” By design, ethics rules governing Congress are intended to preserve the freedom of members to direct federal spending in their districts, a process known as earmarking. Such spending has long been cloaked in secrecy and only in recent years has been subjected to more transparency. Although Congress has imposed numerous conflict-of-interest rules on federal agencies and private businesses, the rules it has set for itself are far more permissive. Lawmakers are required to certify that they do not have a financial stake in the actions they take. In the cases The Post examined, not one lawmaker mentioned that he or she owned property that was near the earmarked project or had a relative who was employed by the company or institution that received the earmark. The reason: Nothing in congressional rules requires them to do so, and the rules do not address proximity. Congress’s interpretation of what constitutes a conflict is narrowly construed: If lawmakers or their immediate families are not the sole beneficiaries, there is considered to be no conflict. The chambers of Congress have different standards. In the Senate, members must certify that neither they nor their “immediate” family members have a financial interest. But in the House, only lawmakers and their spouses are covered, not children or parents. The economic impact of earmarks on lawmakers’ properties was often difficult to determine. Many of the earmarks documented by The Post went to projects still underway. Public works projects can have the immeasurable benefit of stabilizing land values in the volatile market of recent years. Lawmakers insist the earmarks are in the public’s interest, not theirs. “His personal benefit was no different than that of tens of thousands of his constituents,” said Lisa Wright, press secretary for Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Md). The lawmaker since 2005 has helped secure about $4.5 million to upgrade a Frederick County interchange at Interstate 270 and Buckeystown Pike. From there, Buckeystown Pike leads south and west to Bartlett’s home, his 104-acre farm and rental properties that earn the lawmaker up to $150,000 a year. That interchange project, now in design, is part of an ongoing push by Maryland officials to improve links between I-270 and Interstate 70 and relieve massive backups on the highway and along Buckeystown Pike, Wright said. “He was being an advocate for what was presented to him as the highest priority,” Wright said. “Coincidentally, this was around two miles from his farm.” Private business, public money Some lawmakers pursued earmarks near properties that they or their family members were preparing for commercial development. In the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, Rep. Rubén Hinojosa (D) sought an earmark in 2008 to widen a 1.5-mile stretch of road next to property his family was developing. After taking office in 1997, Hinojosa remained as a one-fifth stock owner and consultant to his family’s longtime food processing plant, H&H Foods, in Mercedes. The lawmaker also co-owned, through a separate family partnership with three brothers, 3.7 acres of vacant land between the plant and Mile 1 East along U.S. 83. In December 2006, his business, Hinojosa Enterprises, asked the city of Mercedes for permission to subdivide the property into three lots. In 2007, officials in the town of 15,000 asked Hinojosa to secure congressional funding to widen that stretch of Mile 1 East, a two-lane road that city officials said had grown clogged with traffic to a nearby outlet mall. In March 2008, Hinojosa formally requested that Congress earmark funds to widen the road, certifying that neither he nor his wife had “any financial interest in this project.” By that fall, the city approved Hinojosa Enterprises’s application to subdivide, and the family partnership sold the corner lot on Mile 1 East to a convenience store developer. In early 2009, Congress approved Hinojosa’s earmark request, giving the city $665,000 for the road. The money will pay for initial engineering and design work on the road project, which is expected to cost up to $3 million and require local funding to complete. “This road expansion project will be a definite improvement to the flow of traffic,” Hinojosa said in a news release. He did not mention his personal business interests nearby. The food company, located about 600 feet from Mile 1 East, closed in 2010 after a series of setbacks that pushed the firm into bankruptcy. That failure forced the lawmaker to also file for bankruptcy because he had guaranteed a company loan and was held liable for millions. In an interview, Hinojosa said he saw no conflict in securing an earmark for work next to his property or the plant, which is now owned by a bank. He noted that his partnership sold the property before Congress approved his earmark. A spokeswoman said that Hinojosa Enterprises did not discuss the road expansion with the convenience store developer. City Manager Richard Garcia said it is the only earmark Mercedes has received from Hinojosa. “It helps everybody,” Hinojosa said. “The only way it made sense to handle this tremendous population growth and avoid problems for the school buses that go through that intersection was to widen it.” ‘It never crossed my mind’ Lawmakers create earmarks by inserting provisions into legislation, steering or adding federal funds for projects and programs not requested by the executive branch. Earmark decisions are made behind closed doors in committee rooms and rarely debated on the floor of the House or Senate. The more powerful the member, the more likely he or she is able to get an earmark through. The practice has long been a lightning rod for criticism. Then-Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) caused a scandal in 2006 when it was revealed that he had inserted a $207 million earmark to build a highway near property he owned in Illinois. Yet earmarking shot to new levels in the past decade as hundreds of lawmakers stuffed bills with pet projects. In 2010, the number of earmarks hit a new high: 11,320 worth $32 billion. As earmarking increased, reporters and watchdog groups, including Taxpayers for Common Sense and Citizens Against Government Waste, publicized dubious earmarks. The public backlash eventually prompted Congress to make changes, beginning in 2007. For the first time, lawmakers were required to put their name next to earmarks they sought. Last year, as criticism and scrutiny mounted, Congress imposed a two-year moratorium on new earmarks. The Senate last week extended the ban another year. Some contend the moratorium has just driven the practice underground. Six months into the moratorium, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) identified more than 100 special spending provisions in a House defense bill that she said were clearly earmarks. McCaskill’s efforts prompted lawmakers to strip the provisions from the final bill, but her attempts to turn the moratorium into a permanent ban have found little support on Capitol Hill. So far, only 12 lawmakers have signed onto her bill. Congress polices its own conflicts through House and Senate ethics committees. Under the 2007 reforms, members were required to certify that they had no financial interest in the earmarks they sought. Under Senate rules, a lawmaker is considered to have a financial interest only when the “principal purpose” of the spending is to benefit a “limited class” — themselves, their spouses or their immediate family. In other words, the spending is permitted unless lawmakers are guiding money to build such things as private roads or driveways, or directly funding their relatives’ salaries. Instead of cracking down on the practice, the change codified a lax and permissive culture, government watchdog groups say. In March 2007, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) and Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), leaders of the House Ethics Committee at the time, defined a financial interest as “a direct and foreseeable effect” on a lawmaker’s assets. “Remote, inconsequential or speculative interests” do not count, they wrote in an advisory opinion to members. A few months later, the committee weighed in on the case of Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who was seeking an earmark to build a bus terminal and park-and-ride center near seven commercial properties he owned in Corona, Calif. Five of them were within one mile of the project; one was less than three blocks away. The committee found no conflict for Calvert. “It appears that any increase in the value of your properties resulting from the earmark would be incremental and indirect,” Tubbs Jones and Hastings wrote, “and would be experienced as a member of a class of landholders in the vicinity of the Transit Center.” Two years later, Hastings himself sought an earmark for a project near property he was selling to his brother. In 2009, he secured $750,000 toward the planning of a new bridge that will replace an outdated railroad underpass in Pasco, Wash. As Congress required, Hastings certified that he and his wife had “no financial interest” in the earmark. Hastings noted on his Web site that the project would “improve the safety of motorists and pedestrians, while improving freight mobility and response times for emergency services.” He said nothing, however, about its proximity to Columbia Basin Paper & Supply, the janitorial supply company that Hastings owned and ran until he was elected. His brother now operates the company. County records show Hastings and his wife still own the land and a 7,000-square-foot building. The overpass, as planned, will start about three blocks away. Hastings does not list the business property on his financial disclosure form. His press secretary said debts owed by immediate family members — spouses, parents, children or siblings — do not have to be reported. “After winning election in 1994, the Congressman acted to remove himself from the business as he took office and made an agreement with his brother for him to purchase it over time,” wrote Erin Daly, Hastings’s press secretary. City officials said replacing the underpass is one of their top priorities. In an interview, Hastings said the location of his property had no bearing on his support for the project. “It never crossed my mind,” he said. “Every business in Pasco will benefit by that.” Off the coast of Georgia, Tybee Island depends on earmarks to maintain the shorelines that pull tourist dollars into the community. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee, was in a position to secure the funding to protect the beaches of the three-square-mile barrier island. He co-sponsored a $6.3 million earmark for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to replenish the beach in 2008. “This is better than we hoped for,” Kingston said in a news release his office issued at the time. What the statement didn’t say is that Kingston owns a cottage on Tybee Island that sits about 900 feet from the beach. It’s a modest vacation home that he has rented out in the past. It’s worth about $142,900, and its value has been falling because of the downturn in the real estate market. Real estate agents familiar with Tybee Island say property values would plummet further without beach replenishment projects. Kingston, who has represented the 1st District of Georgia for nearly 20 years, said the beach project doesn’t help his Tybee Island property, which sits a little more than a block from the ocean. “It’s absurd to suggest that this benefits me,” Kingston said. “The beach doesn’t improve the real estate of a house, unless it’s on the beach. . . . The only thing that changes in value is the beachfront property. It does have an economic impact on the beach and the community.” In Maryland, Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger helped obtain a $187,000 earmark in 2008 toward replenishing the Ocean City shoreline — more than 90 miles from his home district of Baltimore County. The funds helped pay for a shoreline survey. Ruppersberger and his wife own two condominiums on the Ocean City beach. The Democrat reports on his financial disclosure form that one of them generates up to $15,000 in rental income. Ruppersberger said the request for the beach funding originally came from the Maryland governor’s office to the House Appropriations Committee, on which he served at the time. He said beach replenishment is critical to the state’s tourism industry and characterized questions about the proximity of his condominiums as “ridiculous.” He certified that he had no financial interest in the earmark and said he saw no conflict in his actions, noting that his properties have lost value in recent years. “That’s a stretch to say that thing’s going to benefit me,” Ruppersberger said. Bringing funds home Some lawmakers guided earmarks to projects not far from their personal residences. In Harrison Township, Mich., Rep. Candice S. Miller’s home is on the banks of the Clinton River, about 900 feet downstream of the Bridgeview Bridge. The Republican lawmaker said when she learned local officials were going to replace the aging bridge, she decided to make sure the new one had a bike lane. “I told the road commission, ‘I am going to try to get an earmark for the bike path,’ ” Miller said, recalling that she said, “If we don’t put a bike path on there while you guys are reconstructing the bridge, it will never happen.” A member of the House Transportation Committee, Miller in 2006 was able to secure a $486,000 earmark that helped add a 14-foot-wide bike lane to the new bridge. That lane is a critical link in the many miles of bike paths that Miller has championed over the years. When the bridge had its grand reopening in 2009, Miller walked over from her home. “People earmark for all kinds of things,” she said. “I’m pretty proud of this; I think I did what my people wanted. Should I have told them, ‘We can never have this bike path complete because I happen to live by one section of it’? They would have thrown me out of office.” Rep. John W. Olver (D-Mass.) joined the House Appropriations Committee in 1993. During the past six years, he has secured nearly $100 million in earmarks for an array of projects across his western Massachusetts district, ranging from bus terminals to scenic byways. These days, Olver’s earmark acumen can be seen in Amherst, a bucolic town where contractors have been realigning a stretch of road leading to a new intersection under construction near Hampshire College. The project, funded in part by $5.1 million worth of earmarks, begins at Country Corners Road along Route 116 — 209 feet from the border of the congressman’s 15-acre home and several adjoining parcels of property he owns with his wife. The project will improve a stretch of Route 116 from near Olver’s property to the intersection, which will be replaced with two traffic circles. That intersection has bedeviled motorists with traffic tie-ups and car crashes. E-mails obtained by The Post show that Olver’s staff kept in close touch with state and local transportation planners, requesting status updates. The congressman also met with top state transportation officials to discuss that project and others. “I have to provide this update to the Congressman by Friday,” Natalie M. Blais, an economic development specialist for Olver in his district, wrote in September 2008 to a Massachusetts transportation official. “Any information you could provide before then would be REALLY helpful!” Blais said in a recent interview that she sent that and other e-mails to obtain updates on the Amherst project and many other transportation projects in the congressional district to ensure that they stayed on track and were completed on time. “We treat all of these projects the same way,” she said. Olver said in an interview that local officials requested the project and he played no role in its design. He rejected any suggestion that the road improvements will boost the value of his property in a region where there is little room for development and much of the open land has been preserved. “I am concerned about appearances. But I had no monetary interest whatsoever in this project,” Olver said. “I had nothing to do with the design. I was never notified of any of the hearings. I had no involvement whatsoever.” Olver does not disclose his property on his annual financial reports because he’s not required to under House rules. The proximity of his property to the project also is not disclosed on a certification he filed with the House stating that neither he nor his wife have a financial stake in the earmarks. When asked why he didn’t choose to include that information on his certification, even though he’s not technically required to do so, Olver said: “Maybe I should have disclosed that, I don’t know. I try to live my life by the rules as they are set.” In Kentucky, Rep. Harold Rogers (R) has been called the “Prince of Pork” for his success in guiding federal money to his Appalachian home district. The longtime member and current chairman of the House Appropriations Committee helped secure about $250 million in earmarks from 2008 through 2010 — but when the House imposed the moratorium, Rogers embraced it. The country, he said, needed to “turn back from the edge of fiscal ruin.” Prior to the moratorium, Rogers earmarked funds for the revitalization of downtown Somerset, his home town. That project continues today: More than $7 million in Rogers’s earmarks have gone toward it. Part of the project involves overhauling a strip of North Main Street around the corner from Citizens National Bank. Rogers is director emeritus of the bank and owns $1 million to $5 million interest in the bank’s holding company. On the edge of downtown, millions of Rogers’s earmarks for the revitalization in 2007 also improved a half-mile strip of College Street. Sixty houses, a high school and city hall sit on the road. A city official said that street was a priority because of pedestrian safety. Student drivers were speeding up and down the road. Contractors narrowed parts of the street to slow traffic, buried overhead utilities, rebuilt sidewalks, paved streets and installed new driveway aprons, curbs and decorative lamps. One of the residences on that street is a neat two-story, yellow home with a gabled roof and a flagpole in the front yard. It’s Rogers’s residence. “Congressman Rogers sees no conflict of interest in helping local community leaders achieve their goals for growth — at large or in this case in particular,” said Michael R. Higdon, chief of staff for Rogers.
Researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this article.
Capitol Assets: Some legislators send millions to groups connected to their relatives By Scott Higham, Kimberly Kindy and David S. Fallis, Published: February 7 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. “The executive branch has far stricter ethics standards than Congress does — and Congress has set these standards,” said Craig Holman of Public Citizen, 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.” 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. 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 115 of the provisions worth $834 million into a House defense bill last year. The provisions were stripped from the bill after they became public late last year. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), 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 Senate defeated a proposal co-sponsored by McCaskill and authored by Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) that would have permanently banned earmarks. But the Senate extended the moratorium another year. 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. 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 Taxpayers for Common Sense, 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. ‘An experienced educator’ For years, Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) has supported a Pentagon program called Starbase that teaches science, math and engineering skills to children in dozens of locations around the country. 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. 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. Spectrum President Gregory L. Sharp said he hired the senator’s wife because of her history of working with children. “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.” 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. 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. Sharp said the form was submitted in error. “That was a mistake. She never lobbied the Hill,” he said. “She never lobbied her husband.” “I was never a lobbyist,” Barbara Johnson said. 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. 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. “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. Directors of government watchdog groups disputed that assessment. “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.’ ” An earmark expert agreed. “It’s absolutely an earmark,” said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, 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.” 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. ‘She was never my motivation’ Rep. Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.) is a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which has jurisdiction over the budget of the National Nuclear Security Administration. The Energy Department agency is tasked with securing the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile and preventing nuclear proliferation. 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. 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. 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. “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.” 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. 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. “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?’ ” 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. 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.” Tom Gariepy, a spokesman for Maricopa, said, “She was the best person for the job.” 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.” 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. A spokesman for the nuclear security administration said in a statement that the use of the earmarked money was appropriate. “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. . . . 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.” Collegiate connections The Post found a pattern of members of Congress who earmarked funds for colleges where their relatives were employed or on boards. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) 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. The congresswoman or her staff have met with other top university officials to discuss funding for school programs. “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. 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. Since 1994, his salary has almost doubled, to $210,491 a year. 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. 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. Last fiscal year, according to her Web site, she sought $16.5 million more for the university that was blocked by the earmark moratorium. 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. 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. “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.” As a member of the House education committee, Rep. Robert E. Andrews (D-N.J.) has secured six earmarks worth $3.3 million for a scholarship program at Rutgers School of Law in Camden. 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. 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.” 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.” 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. “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. Camille Spinello Andrews did not return calls or e-mails seeking comment. The congressman acknowledged that earmark abuses have taken place and the latest rule changes governing earmarks have not reformed the practice. “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.” From 2007 to 2009, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah)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. “There is no connection,” Rob Bishop said. His spokeswoman, Melissa Subbotin, added that the congressman and his staff interact with Weber’s Washington lobbyist, not Shule Bishop. “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. 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. “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. He said the university didn’t hire Shule Bishop because of his father’s position. “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.” 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. “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. 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.” ‘Best for his constituents’ Lawmakers also used their legislative prowess to earmark money to the clients of their lobbyist relatives. 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. Since joining Congress in 2005, Rep. Daniel Lipinski 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. 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. 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. 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. “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.” Zimmer provided a statement on Daniel Lipinski’s behalf. “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.” Daniel Lipinski filed the required certification with the House Appropriations Committee in April 2009. “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. Between 2005 and 2010, Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) 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. 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. 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. 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. Shantrel Brown did not return calls or respond to e-mails seeking comment. Sen. Bill Nelson, 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. “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.” Washington Post researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this article. |