Executive Ethics

Stephen Spaulding, Common Cause Sr. Counsel for Policy & Government Affairs, discusses The For the People Act on ABC News Live the day before the bill was scheduled for markup in the Senate Rules Committee.

Beth Rotman, a director at the left-leaning watchdog group Common Cause, told Forbes the hires send a message that “powerful family ties may just land you your very own career,” warning it’s “unhealthy for our democracy to continue down this path” and calling for a “competitive hiring process.”

Claire Snyder-Hall, program director for Common Cause Delaware, a good-government group, said the bill would allow public bodies to deny FOIA requests that they consider “inconvenient or embarrassing.” “How will ambiguous and expansive words like “unduly burdensome,” “intended to disrupt” and “abusive” be interpreted in practice?” she asked. “The problem is that the language in the bill is so broad that it could easily be used by corrupt officials to hide information they do not want public to know about,” Synder-Hall added. ”.... It is a basic premise of our system of government that we cannot rely on the goodwill of people in power.”

“This bill will enable security for incumbency,” Aunna Dennis, the executive director of Common Cause Georgia, told me. “It really tramples the person who wants to be the community change agent from becoming an elected official through the legislature, because it’s allowing big donors to create war chests for incumbents.”

Former FCC Chairman Michael Copps found the news disappointing. He said commissioners tend to be more sympathetic to private equity firms and corporations when they are commissioners if they know that they might also, one day, become their future employers. “We have a serious revolving door problem at the FCC,” Copps told The Post. “This is not encouraging.” Private equity firms often put too much debt on media companies and do not have the public interest in mind, according to Copps. He raised the present example of Alden Global Capital buying up many of the country’s newspapers and firing reporters. Two of the four FCC chairs who joined private equity firms since 2001 were Democrats and two Republicans so the revolving door is not about party affiliation, he said.

“When someone sees industry leaders are able to, not even have a seat at the table but actually pay for the table, that doesn’t speak well for how policy decisions are going to be made,” said Beth Rotman, director of money in politics and ethics for Common Cause.  Pointing to next week’s fundraiser for Parson, Rotman said things don’t have to be illegal or corrupt in order to be problematic. “In many instances it’s clear,” she said, “to get the face time, to get the phone call returned, to get the one-on-one conversation, it requires these campaign contributions.”