So, the House Ethics Committee is planning on reviewing the 2007 travel rules and one area they hope to fix is the overwhelming load of paperwork submitted to the committee every year. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be thinking very hard about how to fix the problem.

Under the current travel rules, each Member or aide preparing to travel on a sponsored trip must submit a multipage “approval request” to the ethics committee, which includes a certification from the trip sponsor that the excursion is permissible under House rules.

After the trip, each individual must file a post-travel disclosure with the Clerk of the House.

Bonner and Lofgren told Roll Call in a May interview that the process requires each individual on the same trip to submit essentially identical forms for review, suggesting it wastes staff time and House resources.

“We’ve commented privately about how we hope to get a better handle on getting out some of the needless bureaucracy,” Bonner said in May. “You’ve got 15 people going on the same trip, and we have to do 15 different letters.”

Lofgren added: “There’s got to be some way — whole forests are falling in front of us — to streamline and still have the transparency so the public can see it and the accountability.”

... (sigh)

For some reason these people haven't thought about creating an electronic form for filers to fill out on a computer. Lobbying disclosure is required to be filed electronically, why not these travel reports. It will cut down on paperwork, make it easier to review the materials and will save the trees.

Privately paid travel may have fallen over the past year, and more precisely since 2005, but some lawmakers are still taking lavish trips to exotic locales. And some of them might be breaking the new ethics rules that Majority Leader Steny Hoyer stated there would be a “zero tolerance” policy. The New York Post has an exposé on a privately paid trip (not everyone stopped taking them) to the Caribbean island of St. Maarten taken by six members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The Post accuses the lawmakers of accepting travel from an entity that employs a lobbyist, going on a trip that included lobbyists, and failing to properly file their disclosures.

Officially the trip was sponsored by the Carib News Foundation for a conference in St. Maarten. The Foundation, however, accepts contributions from corporate sponsors, some just for the Foundation’s operations and others specifically for the conference. These corporate sponsors included Citigroup, AT&T, Verizon, Pfizer, Macy's, and American Airlines. Since, ethics rules forbid the acceptance of travel from an entity that employs a lobbyist, and all of these companies employ lobbyists, the question is whether a sponsor of the Carib News Foundation and their conference needs to be listed as a sponsor of the trip. This is the primary question at the center of possible ethics violations.

According to the Post, the Foundation, in filling out the proper disclosure forms, checked the box, "I represent that the trip sponsor(s) has not accepted from any other source funds earmarked directly or indirectly to finance any aspect of the trip." This statement is not properly backed up by statements made by Carib News Foundation CEO Karl Rodney and representatives of the corporate sponsors:

[I]n his opening remarks in St. Maarten, Rodney, who has organized 13 annual conferences, thanked all of the corporate sponsors by name.

He expressed gratitude to AT&T for its sponsorship at all prior conferences and singled out Citigroup as being the biggest conference sponsor this year.

"And so we want to say thanks to Citi," said Rodney. "It's a great team to have working, and great partners."

Citigroup Vice President Michael Flanigan, who attended the St. Maarten event and is listed as a member of the conference planning committee, didn't try to hide his company's association with the event during a speech he gave to attendees.

"This year was significant for Citi," Flanigan said, speaking to a half-full room. "For the first time we are the lead sponsor of this premier event."

The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct states that:

...when a nonprofit organization pays for travel with donations that were earmarked, either formally or informally, for the trip, each such donor is deemed a “private source” for the trip and (1) must be publicly disclosed as a trip sponsor on the applicable travel forms and (2) must itself be required to satisfy the above standards on proper sources of travel expenses.

It appears, through the indirect admission of Rodney and corporate representatives, that corporate funds were used to finance the conference. The question remains as to whether the conference counts as part of “the trip.” Rodney states that the Foundation funds 50% of the conference, and it is possible that all the funds earmarked for the lawmaker trips came from the Foundation’s coffers. The Committee has further rules relating to the involvement of corporate sponsors:

[I]n order for a Member or staff person to receive Committee approval to accept officially-connected travel from a private source, the source must certify to the Committee that it has not accepted from any other source funds earmarked directly or indirectly to finance any aspect of the trip

“[A]ny aspect of the trip” certainly sounds as though the conference would count as part of the trip. Looking at the definitions in another disputed matter of ethics violations in the Post story puts doubt into what could define a “trip” or “aspect of [a] trip”.

The Post also points out that the presence of lobbyists at the conference may violate the rules banning lawmakers from accepting travel in which lobbyists accompany them. The use of simple language is where legal loopholes are born. And this is no exception:

In addition to prohibiting Members and staff from accepting officially-connected travel from a private source that retains or employs lobbyists or agents of a foreign principal, for most trips the travel provisions of the gift rule prohibit Members and staff from accepting travel from a private source if the official will be accompanied by a lobbyist or agent of a foreign principal on “any segment” of the trip (House Rule 25, clause 5(c)(1)(A)). The term “segment” means any part(s) of the travel to and from the destination, rather than the event itself or location being visited that is the purpose of the trip. Whether a lobbyist may be involved in planning, organizing, requesting, or arranging a trip also depends on the source of the travel expenses.

So there you go. A “segment” does not include the segment of the trip that includes the purpose of the trip. If a “segment” of a trip is only defined by the coming and going part of “trip,” does this extend to “any aspect” of said trip? Doubtfully, considering the sponsor, the Foundation, is paying not just for airfare, but for food and lodging.

This trip is certainly a case of questionable twisting of ethics rules, if not an outright violation. The loopholes evident make the restrictions placed on privately paid travel easy to circumnavigate, and thus ought to addressed.

Thanks to those guys, Jack Abramoff and pals, lawmakers are taking far fewer privately paid trips overseas. Newly enacted ethics rules ban lawmakers from accepting travel gifts from registered lobbyists or organizations that employ one or more registered lobbyist. Congressional Quarterly reports that privately paid travel is off 43 percent from last year.

Legistorm - which tracks congressional travel - has a neat graphic showing the cost of private travel over time:

(Click through for interactivity.)

Budgeting political risk helped Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and financial services companies avoid the kind of scrutiny they needed from Congress for the past several years. Millions of dollars in private travel, campaign contributions, and lobbyists-galore created a border wall that no regulation or reform could climb over. Florida Rep. Tim Mahoney's hole gets deeper as a 2nd affair is revealed, the FBI opens and investigation, and the Democrats ditch him. There's more in this round-up of today's news:

Dave Jamieson at The New Republic looks into the lavish treatment members and staffers of the House Financial Services Committee received from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and financial services companies in the years preceeding the collapse of the industry. Former chairman Mike Oxley, who now works for NASDAQ and as a lobbyist, approved a half-million dollars worth of privately paid travel, much of it offered by financial services companies. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had approximately one lobbyist for each member of the 70 person committee. Campaign contributions were spread around like butter on cornbread. Of course, all of this largesse eventually lured numerous staffers and committee members into the private sector and Jamieson names names:

Former Oxley adviser Carter McDowell moved on to the American Bankers Association; Karen Lynch Calton, one-time counsel to the committee, has lobbied for the Consumer Bankers Association; Greg Zerzan, an aide to Oxley, eventually went to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association; Linda Dallas Rich, a committee adviser, headed to the New York Stock Exchange; longtime Oxley aide Clinton Jones hopped to Fannie for a spell, before returning to Congress to serve Bachus on the finance committee; and even though Baker had been a perennial foe to the GSEs, the congressman's own former chief of staff, Duane Duncan, became a star on Fannie's lobbying team.

Rep. Tim Mahoney is in a load more trouble after the Associated Press revealed another affair and ABC News, the team that broke this story, reported that the FBI is investigating the allegations of hush money paid to the first reported mistress. It is alleged that Mahoney hired Patricia Allen, the first reported mistress, to both his campaign and congressional staffs. After things went sour (she discovered he was having another affair) Mahoney fired her and allegedly paid her $121,000 to keep her from filing a wrongful termination lawsuit. Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for an ethics committee investigation (although those haven't really led to anything since, I don't know, the 1990s) and House Democrats effectively abandoned the freshman Florida congressman to fend for himself in a difficult district.

The defense team in Sen. Ted Stevens' trial for filing false statements on his personal financial disclosure forms is attempting to show that the home renovations at the center of the charges were done for VECO's Bill Allen and not for Stevens. Stevens' daughter, Susan Stevens Covich, testified that when she appeared at her father's Girdwood, Alaska home to spend time while visiting Allen was present in numerous other people, often taking up all five available bedrooms leaving her to sleep on the couch. Covich said she stopped staying there after Allen's constant presence became "creepy". Previously, defense attorneys have shown that Stevens spends most of his time living in Washington, DC and not at the home in Girdwood. The judge presiding over the case stated that the case will likely be handed to the jury next week.

The House Ethics Committee officially launched a probe of the troubled finances of Rep. Charles Rangel, the House Ways and Means Committee Chairman. The investigative subcommittee will look into the following charges:

• The use of official congressional stationary to solicit funds for an educational center bearing his name.
• His occupancy in four rent-stabilized apartments in his Harlem district.
• The undisclosed income from his Dominican Republic vacation home and the no-interest loan he received when the home was purchased.
• The storage of his Mercedes-Benz in the House parking lot in contravention of House rules and tax laws.

The Ethics Committee also announced a stricter policy on filing private travel disclosures, so they can be properly reviewed. The Committee instituted a "hard" 14-day deadline for all filings for private travel. That means that all disclosures must be handed in 14 days prior to the beginning date of the trip.

The previous rules required disclosures to be submitted 30 days prior to the beginning of a trip, however, the Committee reports that, "many members and staff" failed to file in timely manor. Failure to file on time was for no other reason than because members could get away with it, "In the vast majority of cases, such belated requests are not due to any special circumstances, but instead stem merely from a failure to submit the request in a timely fashion."

One trip in particular that set off the implementation of these new rules was one taken by none other than Rep. Charles Rangel. According to The Hill:

The ethics committee directive comes after the New York Post reported Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) took a trip costing thousands of dollars to the Sandals Grand Resort and Spa in Antigua and Barbuda last year after the new rules had passed.

On his forms, Rangel listed the NY Carib News Foundation as the sponsor, but the Post found that several corporations financed the trip, including AT&T, HSBC, Sandals and Pfizer.

The new deadline will go into effect for trips beginning on October 21st.

On Friday, August 1, 2008, the Clerk of the House must launch a public database on the Clerk's web site for travel and gift disclosures and personal financial disclosures filed by lawmakers. This action is mandated by the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

Earlier this year, under mandate from the same ethics reform bill, the Senate launched a searchable database of travel and gift disclosure forms. Users can also download the entire database in XML format.

By the end of the week, we should be able to see what disclosure looks like on the House's side.