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WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Ethics Law Toughens Rules for Lawmakers
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President Bush signed legislation that requires lawmakers to disclose more about their efforts to fund pet projects and to raise money from lobbyists. Backers call the measure the biggest ethics reform in decades.
The new law requires lawmakers seeking targeted spending projects, or earmarks, to divulge their plans in advance. Lawmakers and political committees must identify lobbyists who raise, within a six-month period, $15,000 or more for them by bundling campaign donations from many people.
The law, drafted by congressional Democrats in response to lobbying scandals that sent two former lawmakers to prison, bars House and Senate members from taking gifts from lobbyists or their clients. Former senators and senior executive branch officials will have to wait two years before lobbying Congress; former House members will have to wait one year.
Senators and candidates for the White House or the Senate who use private planes will have to pay their full share of the cost. House members and candidates are barred from accepting trips on private airplanes.
Conferences Cost Justice Dept. Millions
It cannot rival the Pentagon's $600 toilet seat, but the Justice Department's $4 meatball is noteworthy, too.
An internal audit showed that the department spent nearly $7 million to plan, host and send employees to 10 conferences over the past two years. This included paying $4 per meatball at one lavish dinner and spreading around an average $25 worth of snacks to each participant at a movie-themed party.
More than $13,000 was spent on cookies and brownies for 1,542 people who attended a four-day "Weed and Seed" conference in August 2005, according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. And a "networking" session replete with butterfly shrimp, coconut lobster skewers and Swedish meatballs at a Community Oriented Policing Services conference in July 2006 cost more than $60,000.
The report, which looked at the 10 priciest Justice Department conferences between October 2004 and September 2006, was ordered by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The Justice Department's management and administration office promised to prevent future extravagances of the sort that Fine's auditors turned up.
Six of the 10 conferences were approved by the department's Office of Justice Programs, whose head, Assistant Attorney General Regina Schofield, resigned this week.
It could not immediately be determined whether the report had anything to do with that.
-- From News Services
