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

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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Still have questions about what the STOCK Act really means?

In this interview with LexBlog Network Television, I explain the legislation, what drove it, and where it could be headed.

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by Stefan C. Passantino and Benjamin P. Keane

Proponents of ethics reform and increased political transparency in Washington don’t often see reform proposals pass through Congress by overwhelming margins, and rarely does anyone bemoan an excess of “political intelligence” in Washington, but that’s exactly what happened on Capitol Hill this past week. While the reform community can’t quite be sure what version of reform will survive the ongoing tug of war between the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, it is clear that those trading on “inside political knowledge” are clearly in the transparency crosshairs.

If you are a consultant, a lobbyist, a law firm, or simply a person with inside knowledge of how Washington thinks, this post pertains to you (but you already know that, of course).

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Last year (coincidentally, almost to the day), this blog was all atwitter (you’re following us, right?) about CalPERS’ announcement that it would now require contractors to reveal whether they are using placement agents to seek business with the pension fund. Now, one year later, CalPERS has announced that its governing board approved new corporate governance principles calling upon corporations to detail all yearly political and charitable donations -- including those made through trade associations and tax-exempt groups.

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By Stefan C. Passantino and Benjamin P. Keane

Whether you agree with Justice Brandeis that sunlight is the “best of disinfectants” or with former American League of Lobbyists president Dave Wenhold that “too much sunlight causes cancer”, it should be readily apparent to the readers of this blog that public officials of all stripes have increasingly begun to listen to the chorus of voices calling out for more transparency in all levels of government. At PaytoPlayLawBlog, we often write about how the push for greater transparency at the federal, state and local levels is affecting the operation of government, as well as the interaction of the public with government officials. As strictly objective, rational observers (ahem), it seems to us that disclosure alone generally trumps both inaction and punitive regulation in the pay-to-play space. Over the past month or so, we have come to see new evidence of this welcome push for openness at the federal level, particularly with regard to the activities of the newly-formed Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (or the so-called Deficit “Super Committee”).      

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