To evaluate the charges against Representative Waters, discussed in my last post, we should begin with the meeting that she arranged in her September 2008 telephone call to then-Treasury Secretary Paulson. Although the ethics investigative subcommittee did not find that this meeting itself violated any House rules, the Statement of Alleged Violation devotes its first section to this meeting, and it seems that the meeting is somehow integral to the charges against Waters.
In arranging the meeting, Waters was engaged in what is commonly described as “casework.” The House Ethics Manual describes casework generally as “act[ing] as a ‘go-between’ or conduit between the Member’s constituents and administrative agencies of the federal government.” Quoting the late Senator Paul Douglas, it states that “there is a ‘sound ethical basis for legislators to represent the interests of constituents and other citizens in their dealings with administrative officials and bodies.’”
The Ethics Manual provides broad guidance on performing casework, but it sets forth few hard and fast rules. As Dennis Thompson notes, referring to the seminal House advisory opinion which forms the basis for both the House and Senate’s guidance on casework, it “advises against very little and prohibits even less.” (see Ethics in Congress p. 91).
Nevertheless, there are a few basic principles. As the Ethics Manual states, “a Member’s obligations are to all constituents equally, and considerations such as political support, party affiliation, or one’s status as a campaign contributor should not affect either the decision of a Member to provide assistance or the quality of help that is given to a constituent.” Thus, Members can perform casework for campaign contributors, so long as they would perform the same services for non-contributors, but must “take care not to show favoritism to them over other constituents.”
There is also no absolute prohibition against performing casework on matters where a Member has a personal financial interest. While the rules explicitly prohibit a senior House employee from contacting a federal agency regarding “nonlegislative matters . . . in which the employee has a significant financial interest” (absent written permission from the Member or other employing authority for whom the employee works), no such prohibition applies to the Member. The Ethics Manual cautions, however, that Members should “refrain” from performing casework that “would serve their own narrow, financial interests as distinct from those of their constituents.”
These principles would have made it problematic for Waters to have arranged a meeting with Treasury officials for the purpose of discussing a bailout of OneUnited. Exactly where one draws the line between a merely incidental financial interest shared in common with many others (as, in the example given by the Ethics Manual, where a Member who happens to be a farmer represents constituents in discussions of farm policy with the Department of Agriculture), on the one hand, and a “narrow, financial interest,” on the other, is not clear, but Waters’ significant stock ownership in a small financial institution seems to fall closer to the latter.
In this case, however, the impropriety of intervening on behalf of OneUnited is apparent for a different reason. OneUnited was not a constituent of Waters. Generally speaking, the Ethics Manual states that Members are not supposed to perform casework for non-constituents. This is not an absolute rule, but, combined with Waters’ personal financial interest in OneUnited, it would seem to justify a finding that performing casework for OneUnited constituted at least a prima facie violation of the ethics rules.
The investigative subcommittee did not allege such a violation, however, because it found that Waters had arranged the meeting not on behalf of OneUnited, but on behalf of the National Bankers Association (NBA), a trade association of minority-owned financial institutions. Moreover, the subcommittee was probably correct that performing casework for NBA did not violate the rules, even if Waters knew that the casework would advance OneUnited’s interests along with those of other NBA members. As the chair of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity of the House Financial Services Committee, Waters had a legitimate interest in ensuring that the NBA’s concerns were addressed. Had it not been for her ties to OneUnited, it certainly would not have been considered unusual or improper for her to set up a meeting on behalf of NBA.
There are a number of facts about the meeting which remain unknown. For example, what did Waters understand about the relative interests of OneUnited and other members of the NBA with respect to the meeting? Clearly, Waters must have understood that OneUnited had a significant interest in getting a bailout from the Treasury Department, but the record does not reflect what she knew or was told about the interests of other NBA members. If she understood that OneUnited’s interests were the primary motivation for the meeting, it would make her actions more problematic under the ethics rules.
Another question is whether Waters’ response to the meeting request suggests favoritism on her part. Certainly it cannot be common for her to telephone a cabinet secretary to set up a meeting. The memorandum of her interview with OCE states: “When asked about other conversations with Sec. Paulson, Rep. Waters stated that ‘you don’t use your chits for nothing, you call when there is an important issue.’” On the other hand, as Waters’ counsel points out, there is no evidence that she took other actions, such as importuning Treasury officials, beyond setting up the meeting. This would cut against a finding of favoritism.
In the absence of any additional evidence on these issues, which the subcommittee decided not to explore, I would say that Waters’ action in setting up the meeting with Treasury, though it may come close to the ethical line, did not cross it. The subcommittee was therefore justified in concluding that this meeting did not violate the rules.
In my next post I will consider the subcommittee’s conclusion that Waters’ conduct after the meeting violated the rules.