Where are retiring Congress members going to work? Loopholes let them job hunt in secret

WASHINGTON – Thirty-five members of Congress – 32 in the House and three in the Senate – are serving out the last months of their terms while the public is left in the dark on whether new jobs they may land pose a potential conflict of interest.

The two main reasons: a loophole in legislation that was touted as promoting disclosure of retirees' post-congressional job negotiations, and interpretations of how to apply the law. The two combined to result in almost no disclosure for these retiring members or anyone leaving office.

A report released last summer by the group Public Citizen found that only about 2 percent of the 349 House members who retired, resigned or lost re-election from 2008 through 2016 disclosed any negotiations for future employment. Only about 14 percent of 59 Senate members who left during that period made such disclosures.

“These numbers represent a clear problem with compliance to the spirit, if not the letter, of the law,” the report states.

In the current two-year election cycle, the total number of disclosures made so far: zero.

“Nobody’s looking for work, huh?” joked Meredith McGehee with the Campaign Legal Center.

That’s not the way it was supposed to be when Congress passed an ethics overhaul in 2007 that included provisions requiring public disclosure and possible recusal by members of Congress when they begin negotiating for a new job.

Questions of conflicts of interest

A few years before, former Louisiana Rep. Billy Tauzin was accused of negotiating to head the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a drugmakers’ trade group, at the same time he was playing a key role in passing legislation that provided huge financial benefits to drugmakers.

Watchdog groups objected last year when Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, while helping to craft the Republican tax bill, was negotiating to head the Ohio Business Roundtable, which represents numerous large companies in the state.

Tiberi, a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, denied any conflict of interest and refused to recuse himself from the tax debate.

He resigned from the House, effective Jan. 15, to take over the business group.

Tiberi said he followed guidance provided by the House ethics committee. The committee is not allowed to comment or even confirm whether any advice was given to members.

Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., former chairman of the House ethics committee, quit the House in May and in June began two jobs – one as a senior policy adviser at the international law firm DLA Piper and the second as a commentator for CNN.

The public has no way of knowing when Dent began negotiating with either employer. Dent declined to comment for this story, saying he has an exclusivity agreement with CNN that prevents him from talking to other media.

The reason so few public disclosures are available for House members can be found in a small tweak made to the original disclosure language in the 2007 legislation called the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

The original House version of the bill required that members notify the House clerk within three days of beginning negotiations for a new job. Those notices would automatically have been open to the public.

Secret notices of negotiations

The final bill that became law directs that the notice be filed with the House ethics committee. Those notices are kept secret.

The only way they become public is if a House member decides to recuse him- or herself from official action because of a conflict of interest. Then, the Congress member is required to file with the House clerk a copy of a job negotiation notice, which becomes public.

Recusal is required for “any matter in which there is a conflict of interest or an appearance of a conflict," according to guidance provided to House members by the ethics committee.

In the Senate, disclosures of employment negotiations are filed with the secretary of the Senate and immediately become public. The standard for when senators are advised they should file the disclosure is when an offer has been made and negotiations regarding salary and benefits have started.

The Public Citizen report describes that standard as "particularly weak."

For McGehee, the technical legal arguments some members use to avoid notifying the public of job negotiations misses the point of ethics rules.

“Ethics rules are not about beyond a reasonable doubt,” McGehee said. “Ethics rules are about moral standards and public confidence.”

Craig Holman with Public Citizen, who was involved in crafting the 2007 law, said the provisions on disclosing job negotiations turned out differently from what advocates intended.

“Congress has just made (the disclosure requirement) entirely useless,” Holman said.

Holman said he did the report in 2017 to try to embarrass Congress into making changes to require more disclosure.

It didn’t work.

“We all know these retiring members are negotiating employment right now, “ Holman said. “It’s very, very worrisome.”

WSOC