Pay to Play Law Blog : Pay to Play Lawyer & Attorney : Bribery, Campaign Contributions

By Stefan Passantino & Ben Keane

As readers of this blog know well, the avowed goal of the SEC's pay-to-play framework is to protect the integrity of the public procurement process by preventing registered investment advisors from improperly influencing the award of state and local contracts for the management of public investment funds. On its surface, Rule 206(4)-5, which bars investment advisors from managing public investment funds in jurisdictions where their political contributions or the contributions of their “covered associates” exceed $150 per election to elected officials who directly or indirectly oversee such funds, seems well suited to this task. The problem is that many covered by these provisions – and their helpful in-house compliance officers – erroneously believe that SEC restrictions apply to contributions to ALL candidates. This is incorrect. 

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Recent developments have brought once and future changes to the STOCK Act. Not surprisingly, these changes afford less transparency for public sector conduct and potentially far greater disclosure obligations for the private sector.

Moreover, the political intelligence community’s “close up”, which we warned about last week while wearing our best Little Orphan Annie dress, is upon us as the Securities and Exchange Commission just today announced issuance of the subpoenas we knew were “only a day away”. 

I talk about it all with LexBlog here:

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Some time ago, we alerted you to the STOCK Act and warned purveyors of "political intelligence" to prepare for some "enhanced scrutiny". Think of it as akin to "enhanced interrogation" without the need for towels. (And for those for whom a talking head is worth a thousand words, I discuss all this here courtesy of my good friend Colin O'Keefe at LexBlog).

For those new to the issue, the Stock Act was a reaction to news reports appearing to demonstrate that some members of Congress and their staff were benefitting from stock trades based on nonpublic information. Specifically, as we wrote previously, the bill affirmed that Members of Congress are not exempt from insider trading laws and mandated comprehensive online disclosure of trading activities by Congress. Parallel language in the bill designed to mandate enhanced disclosure by "political intelligence" firms died in the House of Representatives.

In an election year, a bill like the STOCK Act made a good deal of sense. This year, it would appear, not so much. In case you missed it, the Senate recently slipped language through in the dark of night gutting the Act's application to staffers and eliminating the requirement that mandated disclosures actually be searchable online. In a nice touch, the White House quietly announced that the President had signed the bill limiting the STOCK Act on the day your taxes were due. Commentators from the Sunlight Foundation to OpenSecrets to Jon Stewart voiced outrage.

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When one hears about state pay-to-play reform efforts underway along the “Northeastern Corridor”, it’s only natural to look first to the news wires in New Jersey, Connecticut and New York. After all, those jurisdictions have proven themselves to be the leaders of the pack when it comes to pay-to-play advancements, or at least reformist, pay-to-play rhetoric. In recent weeks, however, we have begun to see momentum building behind new pay-to-play legislation in the neighboring jurisdictions of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Depending on the outcome of these new efforts, perhaps it’s time that we drop the directional nomenclature and simply start calling the entire region the “Pay-to-Play Corridor”.

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Jeff Brindle, the Executive Director of the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission has made a sensible proposal on pay-to-play reform which deserves both our attention and state action.

One could populate an entire pay-to-play blog with entries culled from the Garden State. We have pointed out here and here that New Jersey enjoys the most complex, and challenging, web of pay-to-play compliance schemes in the country. We’ve even gone out on a limb and editorialized to a large degree that “Until Governor Christie (or someone at the state level) succeeds in implementing a uniform statewide protocol for procurement efforts such as the one proposed here, New Jersey will extend its dubious distinction of having more varieties of pay-to-play legislation than its Turnpike has exits”

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A new complaint was filed with the Federal Election Commission yesterday alleging that Chevron USA violated campaign finance laws and corollary “federal pay-to-play” laws by contributing $2.5 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Super PAC tied by press reporting and former staffers to House Speaker Boehner. While the FEC complaint was filed by organizations likely more interested in “poking the bear” because of Chevron’s environmental footprint than its politics (Public Citizen, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and Oil Change International, hereinafter referred to as “The Usual Suspects”), the complaint has facial merit and needs to be on the radar screen of government contractors, national banks, and foreign nationals everywhere.

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While 2013 may be a quiet year on the federal election front, there will still be plenty of political noise made this fall in the Garden State as New Jersey’s state and local elections take center stage. The ardent politicos among our readers are probably disappointed that we won’t be seeing the “rising star” gubernatorial showdown between incumbent Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, but there will still be high-stakes drama along the Turnpike as both parties tussle over important state and local offices this November. These races will present ample opportunity for political participation throughout the year by individuals, corporations, unions, trade associations, PACs and organizations from around the country. After all, Governor Christie and other state candidates can’t win reelection with only donuts in their pockets… they might need some financial resources as well.

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A Contrasting Pair of Pay-to-Play Reprieves Emerge in the District

By Ben Keane and Stefan Passantino

Just in time for the holiday season, an unexpected present from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has found its way under the tree of a group that was most likely expecting to receive coal in its pay-to-play stocking. “Swap dealers”, the target of increased pay-to-play scrutiny from the CFTC over the past year, recently received the gift of thoughtful pay-to-play enforcement restraint from the Commission’s Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight (DSIO). Meanwhile, a similar enforcement reprieve has also been given by the D.C. Council to the city’s municipal government contractors, a popular target among pay-to-play reform groups – although perhaps not for the same reason. The gifts brought to the manger might be the same, but the wisdom of the bearers … not so much.

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In a post I wrote for the Politics, Law and Policy Blog, I noted that change is coming to Washington in the form of an anticipated overhaul of federal election and tax laws. You can read the whole post here but federal lobbyists – and those who employ them – should take particular note of an initiative launched this week by an organization known as “United Republic”. This group represents the tip of a grass-roots spear pointed at Washington and no one can argue they have a political agenda. Any organization with as diverse a Board of Advisors as United Republic can boast (representing as they do Wall Street, the Occupy Movement, Jack Abramoff, former FEC Chairman Trevor Potter, academics, nonprofits and political operatives) defies partisan categorization. 

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