Wednesday, November 30, 2011
CandidateSpeak - Cases In Point
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Pricing Gap Revealed in Apple REIT Eight
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FINRA CEO Says Brokers Must ?Push and Pull? for Private Placement Information
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?NAVIGATING THE JOB HUNT JUNGLE?
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Article courtesy of Nancy Grimes - Founder GLI / Grimes Legal, Inc. - Legal Search Firm Retained Legal Recruiters © Copyright 2008 Grimes Legal, Inc. | All rights reserved
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Anyone can change the world. Will it be you?
INSPIRING WORDS FROM STEVE JOBS:
“? You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something ? your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it [...]
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Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Using a Recruiting Agency to Find Your Company?s Board of Directors?
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FINRA Expels Firm and Brokers Sanctioned
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Can Investment Advisors, Private Fund Managers, and their Employees Contribute to Governor Perry?
Last February, we posted an entry flagging potential concerns arising from the SEC’s new pay-to-play rules for investment advisors as applied to presidential candidates. Admittedly, at the time we were talking about Governors Haley Barbour and Mitch Daniels, but the same holds true now for Texas Governor Rick Perry.
The Compliance Building blog (Presidential Campaign Season and the SEC’s Pay-to-Play Rule) has just posted an excellent analysis of the issue. I highly recommend you check it out. As the blog notes:
“Registered Investment Advisors, private fund managers getting ready to register with Securities and Exchange Commission, and their employees need to be very cautious about making contributions to Governor Perry if they have a Texas state sponsored fund as a client or investor, or hope to have one as a client or investor in the next two years.”
Transparency Alert: the author is campaign counsel to several federal candidates including former Speaker Newt Gingrich.
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CandidateSpeak - Cases In Point
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Have you used Mark E. Imbertson as Your Broker?
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Atlanta Update: Cooler Heads Prevail
Atlanta’s Fulton County Commission met yesterday as predicted http://www.paytoplaylawblog.com/2011/08/articles/georgia/atlanta-takes-anothe... ">here to take up its latest pay-to-play resolution.
Everyone’s dying to know what happened.
Drum roll . . . It failed.
Interestingly, Fulton County’s Commission didn’t simply reject the resolution, they made sure to give the bill sufficient medical attention to permit the orderlies to wheel it in to the room where they could execute it properly and with finality. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported on the gruesome course of events thusly:
Fulton County commissioners didn't just reject Vice Chair Emma Darnell's proposal to limit contractors' donations to political campaigns. They killed it.
Darnell sought to prohibit any company or individual from bidding for county work if they have donated more than $500 to a commission candidate, or have given gifts to commissioners or county employees, during the past year.
The board opposed the plan 4-2, then, on a motion from Commissioner Tom Lowe, voted 4-2 to officially deny it so it can't be brought up again. Lowe called the idea stupid and bad for business
Not everyone sees the issue the same way. On the same day Fulton County was doing its work, the Brigantine Beach, New Jersey, City Council voted a strikingly similar piece of legislation onto the books. The Brigantine Beach ordinance, based largely on an Atlantic County, NJ, ordinance, and drafted with the assistance of the Atlantic County counsel, bans all professional contractor contributions one year before bidding and limits success ful bidders to $300 candidate contributions after that with aggregate total limit contributions from a corporation holding a city contract to no more than $2,500 annually.
The regulatory patchwork continues to be sewn together stitch by stitch with no sign of uniformity on the horizon.
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Principal Protected Notes, Lehman Brothers and UBS Financial Services Arbitrations
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Halliburton Class Action for Securities Fraud, Case Reinstated ? a Victory for Claimants
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Monday, November 28, 2011
GLI SPOTLIGHTS CARLOS RIAZ
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Atlanta Takes Another Shot at Procurement Restriction
Request approval of a Resolution amending the Fulton County Code of Laws regarding campaign contributions from entities doing business with, or seeking to do business with, Fulton County.
The resolution to be taken up, proposed by Commissioner Emma Darnell, closely mirrors a pay-to-play contract restriction proposed two years ago for the City of Atlanta by Common Cause Georgia. In its current form, the proposed resolution provides that no corporation, entity, or individual will have the right to bid for, or hold, a county contract if it has either made a campaign contribution of $500 or more to a County Commissioner or has provided any direct or indirect gift or contribution to a County Commissioner or any Fulton County employee.
For the purposes of determining whether a person has reached the $500 threshold, Commissioner Darnell’s resolution proposes aggregating all contributions or gifts made by an individual, their parents, siblings, spouse, or children as well as by any company that the individual controls or holds a 10% stock interest in. With respect to company contributions and gifts, the proposed resolution would aggregate all contributions or benefits conferred by any “officers, directors, partners, members, or salaried employees of the entity, and of any affiliated or subsidiary entities.”
Yes, you read that right. Under the proposed resolution, a company such as Delta Air Lines would theoretically be debarred from contracting with Fulton County (they have an airport in Atlanta, don’t they?) if even one of its salaried employees pays for a birthday cake for a next door neighbor who just happens to be a Fulton County employee. (Transparency Note: Delta Air Lines is a client of our firm, but this example could just as easily apply to any corporation having any employee who inadvertently makes a $500 campaign contribution or any gift to a County Commissioner or county employee).
As this blog has noted before, well-meaning and good-intentioned efforts to restrict back room dealing almost always get hoisted upon the petard of the broad language necessary to prevent circumvention but predictably results in negative, unintended consequences. The Law of Good Intentions almost always loses out to the Law of Unintended Consequences. Under this proposal, compliance costs will skyrocket, as will the likelihood of unnecessary and inefficient bid protest litigation due to inadvertent violations. In light of these potential effects, simple disclosure of all campaign and gift activity in the contracting process strikes me as the much more sensible approach.
I also have concerns that such restrictions will needlessly limit campaign activity and chill political speech inside of Fulton County. The words I wrote two years ago here still ring true to my ear:
While few would argue that the procurement process in Atlanta doesn't need more sunshine, the Common Cause proposal appears to go a few steps to far. Most troublesome is the proposal to prohibit persons who make contributions of over [$500] from bidding on any … contracts for the next year, as the prohibition applies even if the contract in question was not in existence at the time of the contribution. Restricting contribution amounts in this manner would undoubtedly chill the making of political contributions for City of Atlanta elections altogether, as any person or entity with any potential interest in any City contract in the future could not make contributions without the fear of being locked out of all future business. This is the sort of broad restriction that has proven to be problematic in jurisdictions such as Colorado. Similarly problematic is the apparent willingness to consider contributions by spouses and children of contributors in making prohibition determinations. Again, Colorado should serve as a cautionary tale here.
Needless to say, Common Cause Georgia, and many others, do not share my concerns. Whether Fulton County’s proposed resolution passes tomorrow or not, however, the waves of “restriction as reform” continue to hit the beach.
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Ambac & Others Agree to Pay $33M to Settle Fraud Allegations Surrounding Bond/Insurance Litigation
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Deficit "Super Committee" Transparency - Will We Get to See the Budgetary Sausage in Production?
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”).
For those who have spent all of their time recently tracking satellite orbits and running calcu lations on their chance of having to make a potentially uncovered hom eowners claim, the Super Committee is a balanced delegation of six Democrats and six Republicans (split evenly between members of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate) formed in August of this year as a means of permitting Congress and the White House the opportunity to avoid responsibility for identifying an additional $1.5 trillion in federal budgetary cuts over the next decade. Whether one agrees with the premise of granting 12 Members of Congress such extraordinary authority over federal, fiscal decision making, it is readily apparent that the ongoing work of the Super Committee has drawn a great deal of attention from political organizations and commentators across the ideological spectrum. Given the nature of the current (entirely justified) cynicism with the political process, and the enormity of the task before the Super Committee, it should not surprise readers of this blog to learn that much of this attention across the political continuum has been focused on increasing the political transparency of the Committee’s activities.
One of the more prominent efforts to accomplish this goal has been organized by the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to using the “power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency.” On August 3, 2011, the Foundation issued a letter to congressional leadership urging them to adopt a series of recommendations that the Foundation believes will ensure the Super Committee operates in a fully open and transparent manner. Those recommendations included: (1) holding live webcasts of all official Committee meetings and hear ings; (2) posting the Committee’s draft recommendations for at least 72 hours prior to a final committee vote; (3) promoting disclosure of every meeting held by Committee members with lobbyists and other “powerful interests”; (4) ensuring the immediate disclosure of all campaign contributions received by Committee members during their service on the Committee; and (5) demanding additional financial disclosure standards for Committee members and their staffers. In addition, the Foundation has teamed up with various transparency activists and supporters to launch a grassroots campaign designed to encourage greater accountability and openness from the Super Committee. The movement’s allies in this endeavor include such left-leaning organizations as The Bre nnan Center for Justice, the Project on Government Oversight, and Public Citizen.
Although not necessarily backing each of the Sunlight Foundation’s specific recommendations, many organizations and individuals on the conservative and libertarian end of the political spectrum have also echoed the Foundation’s calls for transparency in Super Committee activities. For example, Jim Harper of the CATO Institute and Rob Bluey of The Heritage Fou ndation’s Center for Media and Public Policy have both recently demanded that the Super Committee permit open public access to Committee meetings and legislative proposals as a means of ensuring that all citizens are kept abreast of the activities of this uniquely powerful legislative panel. Along those same lines, Harper and Bluey have also called for Committee transparency as a safeguard against the passage of expansive legislation that is subject to little or no debate or public input.
All of this makes perfect sense. As we have previously observed here, efforts to govern matters such as this from behind closed doors can lead to embarrassing exchanges.
Bi-partisan support for greater Super Committee transparency has even begun to emerge within Congress itself. In fact, in early September, Representatives Mike Quigley (D-IL), Dave Loebsack (D-IA), and Jim Renacci (R-OH) introduced H.R. 2860, the Deficit Committee Transparency Act, which would implement six transparency reforms along the lines of those recommended by the Sunlight Foundation. Similarly, Senators David Vitter (R-LA) and Dean Heller (R-NV) have also introduced two separate bills, S. 1501 (the Budget Control Joint Committee Transparency Act) and S. 1498 (the Super Committee Sunshine Act), that are designed to ensure the openness of Super Committee meetings and greater transparency in the political fundraising of Committee members.
At present, none of the aforementioned bills have been acted upon in Congress, but there does appear to be growing support on both sides of the political aisle for a more open and forthright framework for Super Committee action. Recognizing the growing momentum in support of such transparency, the Committee has taken the initial step of keeping its three preliminary meetings open to the public (and also available for video review over the Internet). It remains to be seen, however, whether this policy will continue as the Committee gets deeper into the task of formulating its deficit-reduction proposals. Likewise, it remains to be seen whether any of the other aforementioned transparency proposals will gain any traction with the Committee itself. Stay tuned in the coming months to find out.
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There is DEFINITELY a New Sheriff in Albany - Governor Cuomo Proposes Sweeping Ethics and Pay-to-Play Reform
This week, Governor Cuomo announced that he, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver had reached a three-way agreement on a substantial ethics reform package. Initially, and possibly more appropriately, named the “Clean Up Albany Act” in early press releases, the “Public Integrity Reform Act of 2011” proposes sweeping changes across a number of ethical disciplines. The proposed changes include the following:
Financial Disclosures: Financial disclosure statements filed with the new Joint Commission on Public Ethics from elected officials will now be posted on the internet and the prac tice of redacting the monetary values and amounts reported by the filer will be ended. The Act also includes greater and more precise disclosure of financial information by expanding the categories of value used by reporting individuals to disclose the dollar amounts in their financial disclosure statements. The Act requires disclosure of the reporting individual’s and his or her firm’s outside clients and customers doing business with, receiving grants or contracts from, seeking legislation or resolutions from, or involved in cases or proceedings before the State as well as such clients brought to the firm by the public official.
In Albany, this is a controversial measure as a number of legislators – who will now be required – effective July 1, 2012 and upon potential penalty of $40,000 for failing to do so – to disclose the names of “outside clients and customers” – are attorneys who do not wish to disclose the identities of their clients. As one would expect, backlash from legal members of the Assembly was immediate and vociferous.
Increased Access to Who is Appearing Before the State and Why: The Act establishes a new database of any individual or firm that appears in a representative capacity before any state governmental entity.
Additional Disclosures for Registered Lobbyists: The bill expands lobbying disclosure requirements, including the disclosure by lobbyists of any "reportable business relationships" of more than $1,000 with public officials. It also expands the definition of lobbying to include advocacy to affect the "introduction" of legislation or resolutions, a change that will help to ensure that all relevant lobbying activities are regulated by the new Joint Commission.
A New Joint Commission on Public Ethics: This is potentially the most significant development of the newly proposed legislation. The new Joint Commission on Public Ethics will replace the existing Commission on Public Integrity with jurisdiction over all elected state officials and their employees, both executive and legislative, as well as lobbyists. Among other restrictions, no individual will be eligible to serve on the Joint Commission who has within the last three years been a registered lobbyist, a statewide office holder, a legislator, a state commissioner or a political party chairman. Commissioners will be prohibited from making campaign contributions to candidates for elected executive or legislative offices during their tenure.
The Joint Commission will have jurisdiction to investigate potential violations of law by legislators and legislative employees and, if violations are found, issue findings to the Legislative Ethics Commission, which will have jurisdiction to impose penalties. Significantly, if the joint commission reports such a violation to the Legislative Ethics Commission (with full findings of fact and conclusions of law), that report must be made public along with the Legislative Ethics Commission’s disposition of the matter within strict timeframes. The Joint Commission will have jurisdiction to impose penalties on executive employees and lobbyists. Any potential violations of federal or state criminal laws will be referred to the appropriate prosecutor for further action.
This provision has proven controversial almost immediately. In order to initiate an investigation, the new Joint Commission will require that two appointees of the same party in a given branch assent. This means, as many have already pointed out, that in theory the commission could vote 11-3 to take action without anything being done. Similarly, the New York Times noted that “commissioners appointed by the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, could effectively block investigations of any Democrat in the Legislature, while commissioners appointed by the Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, a Republican, would have similar power over investigations of any Republican.”
Overall, however, it appears that most public interest groups believe that the newly proposed Joint Commission will strike the right balance between unbiased investigation and the prevention of politically motivated “witch hunts” against the party out of power.
Forfeiture of Pensions for Public Officials Convicted of a Felony: Certain public officials who commit crimes related to their public offices may have their pensions reduced or forfeited in a new civil forfeiture proceeding brought by the Attorney General or the prosecutor who handled the conviction of the official.
Clarifying Independent Expenditures For Elections: The Act requires the state board of elections to issue new regulations clarifying disclosure of Independent Expenditures.
Increased Penalties for Violations: The Act substantially increases penalties for violations of the filing requirements and contribution limits in the Election Law, and provides for a special enforcement proceeding in the Supreme Court. The bill also increases penalties for violations of certain provisions of the state’s code of Ethics that prohibits conflicts of interest.
Without a doubt, this legislation represents sweeping change that must be carefully studied, and compliance prepared for, by all doing business in New York.
Now, if only we could get the Governor to introduce a “Clean Up Washington Act”.
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The SEC's Newly Proposed Rules on Derivative "Swaps"
This effort to regulate conduct in the derivative swap market by the SEC emerges out of the Dodd-Frank Act's comprehensive framework for monitoring over-the-counter swaps and the activities of “security-based swap dealers” and “major security-based swap participants” that engage in security-based swap transactions with counterparties (including “special entities” such as federal agencies, states and political subdivisions, employee benefit plans, governmental plans, and endowments). The rules the SEC advanced this week would require swap dealers to disclose to their buyers the risks associated with transactions, the potential conflicts of interests involved, and the day-to-day values of their swaps, which would aid purchasers in assessing the overall worth of specific deals.&nbs p; The rules would also mandate that swap dealers doing business with special entities ensure that their counterparts use independent financial advisers to assist with transactions. Additionally, dealers would be prohibited from participating in a wide range of “pay to play” practices.
Under these new pay to play rules, securities-based swap dealers and their “covered associates” would specifically be barred from engaging in swap transactions with a “municipal entity” for a two-year period if they choose to make certain types of political contributions to officials of that municipal entity. This Proposed Rule 15Fh-6 is modeled on, and intended to complement, existing restrictions on pay to play practices under Advisers Act Rule 206(4)-5, which imposes restrictions on political contributions by investment advisers providin g or seeking to provide investment advisory services to public pensio n plans and other government investors, and MSRB Rules G-37 and G-38, which impose such restrictions on municipal securities dealers and broker-dealers engaging or seeking to engage in the municipal securities business. The pay to play restrictions are also similar to rules the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) recently proposed for non-securities-based swaps.
According to SEC Chairwoman Mary L. Schapiro, these new pay to play provisions and the other business conduct standards in the proposed rules will work to “level the playing field in the securities-based swap market by bringing needed transparency to this market and by seeking to ensure that customers in these transactions are treated fairly.” That is yet to be seen, but all five SEC commissioners nevertheless voted unanimously to propose the rules and introduce them through formal public notice. The proposed rules will remain open for public comment until August 29, at which point the SEC will take any submitted remarks under advisement and make a final vote as to their implementation.
It will be interesting to see how business leaders and public officials alike react to the SEC’s proposal during the upcoming notice and comment period. Businesses, and in particular investment firms, have had to adjust to a litany of newly proposed regulations and pay to pay rules in the wake of the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act. As such, it has left companies universally unsure as to what types of activities are permitted and prohibited in their day-to-day business. Public officials, however, have been quick to applaud any and all efforts by the federal government and its numerous business regulatory bodies to restrain “unsavory” corporate practices – practices that the SEC, MSRB, CFTC, and other entities assert have contributed to the current economic downturn and led to the misappropriation of billions upon billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Over the next few months, we shall see if both trends continue and if the movement toward increas ed federal regulation of business conduct and political speech persists.
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Sunday, November 27, 2011
Prince George's County, Maryland Adopts a Different Approach to Pay-to-Play
Last November, the Washington, DC area was somewhat titillated by news reports that Prince George’s County Executive Jack B. Johnson and his wife, Prince George’s County Councilwoman-Elect Leslie Johnson had been arrested by the FBI in connection with an investigation into allegations that certain real estate developers in Prince George’s County, Maryland were bribing public officials in exchange for official acts benefitting the developers and their companies. The FBI moved in, it was reported, when their wiretaps overheard Johnson instruct his wife to flush a developer’s check for $100,000 down the toilet and to conceal another $79,600 in cash in her bra.
Regardless of where the money went, the result was inevitable - pay-to-play legislation.
In an interesting symbiotic pairing, corrective legislation is moving through the Maryland General Assembly at precisely the same pace as Prince George’s County Council member Leslie Johnson moves through the Maryland criminal justice system. On March 25, 2011, the very day the Justice Department filed new criminal charges against Johnson for conspiracy to commit witness and evidence tampering, Maryland’s House of Delegates passed House Bill 614 in response to the Johnson episode.
What makes the Maryland legislation unique is the approach taken to remedy the harm inflicted on public confidence in local government. The easy approach would have been to enact feel-good prohibitions against developer interactions with county executives. Such legislation is easy to pass but is exceedingly difficult for well-meaning citizens to comply with and often does little to prevent the truly nefarious bad actors who simply “find another way”. As the team at CityEthics.org correctly observed, the problem in Prince George’s County was not as much with the private sector but rather an inadequate ethics program and unique powers to hold up development unless a payoff is made:
But there can be no pay-to-play without special powers. Developers only pay when they have to. And there can be no special powers without a very poor ethics environment. It's a vicious circle, and it appears that Prince George's County is caught up in it.
House Bill 614 goes a long way towards addressing these issues, and does so by placing limitations where they belong, on the county executives who are perceived to have abused their far-reaching powers for personal gain. According to the Washington Post the County has long housed “complaints that past councils have operated secretively, threatening developers that their plans would be held up indefinitely unless they offered concessions or hired an associate of a council member.” If signed into law, the current legislation will severely curtail the County Council’s ability to shelve development deals and enhance the County’s ethics commission by installing a full time executive director and require regular meetings.
This strikes us a sensible approach, targeted to address a clearly identified problem, that does not place undue hardships on the honest 99% in the private sector who have succeeded in keeping their knickers clean.
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Performance Fee Thresholds for Investors to be Raised by the SEC
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Los Angeles Passes its Pay-To-Play Ordinance
As proposed, the ballot measure put before the public read:
Shall the Charter be amended to (1) restrict campaign contributions and fundraising by bidders on certain City contracts; require increased disclosure for bidders; and provide for bans on future contracts for violators; and (2) build upon the city's voter-approved campaign trust fund, which provides limited public matching funds for qualified city candidates who agree to spending limits, by lifting the maximum balance in the fund while allowing the LA City Council by a two-thirds vote to not make the annual appropriation and temporarily transfer funds to meet City budgetary obligations in certain emergency conditions?
Language like that is difficult to vote against. The Devil, as they say, is in the details. Specifically, as passed, the measure restricts contractors holding or seeking City contracts in excess of $100,000 from making campaign contributions to, or fundraising for, City officials (including the Mayor, the City Attorney, the Controller or a member of the City Council) or candidates to those offices. Second, the ordinance lifts the maximum balance on the City’s public finance vehicle - the Campaign Trust Fund.
This contribution ban extends not just to those authorized by the company to represent it in seeking or negotiating the contract, but also to the contractor’s Board Chairman, President, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and anyone who holds more than a 20% ownership stake in the contractor.
As if these compliance challenges are not imposing enough for the well meaning corporation that might not have absolute control over the campaign contributions of its 21% minority owners, the new ordinance extends the ban to subcontractors and their officers if the subcontractor has a $100,000 interest in the City contract. While it is easy to perceive the logic that leads to such a prohibition, one can anticipate that the unintentional violations of this ordinance - and dramatic negative consequences - will be legion.
On the other hand, many argued against the measure on the ground that it does not go far enough in banning contributions and will simply drive unscrupulous contractors to measures that will evade disclosure altogether. A good example of such an argument can be found here.
Interestingly, the City taketh away just as it giveth. A third element of the ordinance provides that the City may, during “financial emergencies” (when do you anticipate LA won’t be laboring under a “financial emergency”?), borrow money from that trust fund without appropriating funds back in. Now that’s playing without paying!
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Wozniacki Sets Up Uggs Boots
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Can Investment Advisors, Private Fund Managers, and their Employees Contribute to Governor Perry?
Last February, we posted an entry flagging potential concerns arising from the SEC’s new pay-to-play rules for investment advisors as applied to presidential candidates. Admittedly, at the time we were talking about Governors Haley Barbour and Mitch Daniels, but the same holds true now for Texas Governor Rick Perry.
The Compliance Building blog (Presidential Campaign Season and the SEC’s Pay-to-Play Rule) has just posted an excellent analysis of the issue. I highly recommend you check it out. As the blog notes:
“Registered Investment Advisors, private fund managers getting ready to register with Securities and Exchange Commission, and their employees need to be very cautious about making contributions to Governor Perry if they have a Texas state sponsored fund as a client or investor, or hope to have one as a client or investor in the next two years.”
Transparency Alert: the author is campaign counsel to several federal candidates including former Speaker Newt Gingrich.
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Trenton Update (To the Tune of "Suspicious Minds")
We brought Trenton to your attention here just a few days ago to highlight the potential pitfalls of “ban first, inquire later” pay-to-play enforcement. At the time, we observed that Trenton Mayor Tony Mack’s effort to rescind a pay-to-play ban was “procedurally murky”. The Trentonian apparently agreed and reported on the issue complete with a YouTube embed of Elvis singing “Suspicious Minds” as a musical accompaniment to its call that “[t]here is no reason for the City of Trenton to continue with another embarrassing decision made by a city council that lacks backbone.”
This call precipitated two immediate effects. First, it instilled great personal shame in myself for having failed to this point to accompany my entries with Elvis embeds. I resolve to remedy that.
Second, public pressure such as that brought to bear by The Trentonian has caused the law firm in question, Cooper Levenson, to terminate its contract with the city over the issue. A copy of the termination letter can be found here. Whether this result was warranted or appropriate, one should bear this little tune in mind before contributing in Trenton.
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Leased Instruments Delivered with only a Small Down Payment
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ClientSpeak - GLI Delivers!
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Even the Government Turns to Recruiting Agencies To Find the Best Employees
Government Sectors [...]
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Saturday, November 26, 2011
Did Goldman Sachs Play an Unwholesome Role in the Recent Financial Crisis?
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Friday News (06.10.2011)
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SUCCESSFUL SELF-UNDERWRITTEN IPO?s
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Atlanta Update: Cooler Heads Prevail
Atlanta’s Fulton County Commission met yesterday as predicted http://www.paytoplaylawblog.com/2011/08/articles/georgia/atlanta-takes-anothe... ">here to take up its latest pay-to-play resolution.
Everyone’s dying to know what happened.
Drum roll . . . It failed.
Interestingly, Fulton County’s Commission didn’t simply reject the resolution, they made sure to give the bill sufficient medical attention to permit the orderlies to wheel it in to the room where they could execute it properly and with finality. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported on the gruesome course of events thusly:
Fulton County commissioners didn't just reject Vice Chair Emma Darnell's proposal to limit contractors' donations to political campaigns. They killed it.
Darnell sought to prohibit any company or individual from bidding for county work if they have donated more than $500 to a commission candidate, or have given gifts to commissioners or county employees, during the past year.
The board opposed the plan 4-2, then, on a motion from Commissioner Tom Lowe, voted 4-2 to officially deny it so it can't be brought up again. Lowe called the idea stupid and bad for business
Not everyone sees the issue the same way. On the same day Fulton County was doing its work, the Brigantine Beach, New Jersey, City Council voted a strikingly similar piece of legislation onto the books. The Brigantine Beach ordinance, based largely on an Atlantic County, NJ, ordinance, and drafted with the assistance of the Atlantic County counsel, bans all professional contractor contributions one year before bidding and limits success ful bidders to $300 candidate contributions after that with aggregate total limit contributions from a corporation holding a city contract to no more than $2,500 annually.
The regulatory patchwork continues to be sewn together stitch by stitch with no sign of uniformity on the horizon.
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Prince George's County, Maryland Adopts a Different Approach to Pay-to-Play
Last November, the Washington, DC area was somewhat titillated by news reports that Prince George’s County Executive Jack B. Johnson and his wife, Prince George’s County Councilwoman-Elect Leslie Johnson had been arrested by the FBI in connection with an investigation into allegations that certain real estate developers in Prince George’s County, Maryland were bribing public officials in exchange for official acts benefitting the developers and their companies. The FBI moved in, it was reported, when their wiretaps overheard Johnson instruct his wife to flush a developer’s check for $100,000 down the toilet and to conceal another $79,600 in cash in her bra.
Regardless of where the money went, the result was inevitable - pay-to-play legislation.
In an interesting symbiotic pairing, corrective legislation is moving through the Maryland General Assembly at precisely the same pace as Prince George’s County Council member Leslie Johnson moves through the Maryland criminal justice system. On March 25, 2011, the very day the Justice Department filed new criminal charges against Johnson for conspiracy to commit witness and evidence tampering, Maryland’s House of Delegates passed House Bill 614 in response to the Johnson episode.
What makes the Maryland legislation unique is the approach taken to remedy the harm inflicted on public confidence in local government. The easy approach would have been to enact feel-good prohibitions against developer interactions with county executives. Such legislation is easy to pass but is exceedingly difficult for well-meaning citizens to comply with and often does little to prevent the truly nefarious bad actors who simply “find another way”. As the team at CityEthics.org correctly observed, the problem in Prince George’s County was not as much with the private sector but rather an inadequate ethics program and unique powers to hold up development unless a payoff is made:
But there can be no pay-to-play without special powers. Developers only pay when they have to. And there can be no special powers without a very poor ethics environment. It's a vicious circle, and it appears that Prince George's County is caught up in it.
House Bill 614 goes a long way towards addressing these issues, and does so by placing limitations where they belong, on the county executives who are perceived to have abused their far-reaching powers for personal gain. According to the Washington Post the County has long housed “complaints that past councils have operated secretively, threatening developers that their plans would be held up indefinitely unless they offered concessions or hired an associate of a council member.” If signed into law, the current legislation will severely curtail the County Council’s ability to shelve development deals and enhance the County’s ethics commission by installing a full time executive director and require regular meetings.
This strikes us a sensible approach, targeted to address a clearly identified problem, that does not place undue hardships on the honest 99% in the private sector who have succeeded in keeping their knickers clean.
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