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

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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Right before the Labor Day holiday weekend, Pay-to-Play Law Blog offered its readers a quick update on some of the latest pay-to-play regulatory happenings along the Potomac.  In particular, we previewed the strict pay-to-play proposal being championed by Washington, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray and Attorney General Irving Nathan, and promised a follow-up post in the wake of a formal legislative submission to the D.C. Council.  Well… that time is upon us.  And for all of our readers who bet that Gray and Nathan would offer up a bill that matched their rhetoric, it’s time to collect.

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With Labor Day weekend at hand and the Republican and Democratic National Conventions upon us, much of the American electorate is finally beginning to tune back into politics and prepare themselves for what will certainly be a very interesting close to the 2012 campaign season. News regarding the race for The White House will certainly dominate the media over the coming months, and rightfully so, but Pay-to-Play Law Blog is here to offer our readers, particularly those residing in swing states, a brief respite from the 24-7 presidential election coverage. We know our readers love Super PAC advertisements, political campaign internet pop-ups, and robo-calls as much as (if not more than) anyone, but we also know that they like to stay up to date on the important state and local pay-to-play news that might otherwise be slipping through the cracks between now and November 6^th. With that in mind, we offer up a few recent items of interest from the Garden State and D.C.   

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With all apologies to 1980s rockers Great White, it would have been quite easy for D.C.Councilman Tommy Wells (D – Ward 6) to take a “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” approach to pay-to-play reform in the District of Columbia. After all, two of his 2011 proposals on the subject were  actively left out of the final version of the city’s recently-passed comprehensive ethics reform bill. Those two proposals would have prohibited bundled corporate campaign contributions and barred District officials from accepting donations from city contractors, but both were met with universal opposition from the other members of the Council.

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