The Long Shadow of a Sex Scandal
News: Although Foleygate dominates the news, less salacious ethics violations persist.
October 16, 2006
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In the wake of the Cunningham, Ney, and DeLay scandals, and in these early days of Foleygate, the Republican-controlled Congress has lost any pretense to reform credentials. If recent polls are to be believed, voters have soured on the GOP majority and are ready to entrust Democrats with leadership of one or both houses. But for Democrats—and for anyone who cares about transparency and ethics in government—there’s danger in focusing only on the most egregious cases of congressional mischief. By zeroing in on Congress’s worst rogues, we run the risk of missing the layers of more subtle corruption.
A prime example of this less discernible culture of corruption is Rep. Jeb Bradley, a two-term Republican incumbent from New Hampshire who is virtually assured re-election next month. In 2004, when he ran for his second term in Congress, Bradley allowed his chief-of-staff, Debra J. Vanderbeek, to collect $114,779 in government salary, even as she actively ran his re-election campaign. As early as April 28, 2004, Vanderbeek was identified in press reports as “a spokeswoman for the Bradley campaign.” On at least seven other occasions that year, newspapers quoted or named Vanderbeek as campaign manager or campaign press secretary. But at no time in 2004 did Vanderbeek disappear from Bradley’s payroll. In her lowest-paid quarter, she earned $25,268 in government salary; in the fourth quarter, which encompassed all of October and the beginning of November—that is, peak campaign season—she collected $30,060 in government pay.
Vanderbeek’s total salary for 2004 placed her well above GS-15, Step 10—or, in layman’s terms, the highest step on the federal government’s highest civilian pay-grade. In no quarter did her quarterly salary fall below GS-15 status. In short, Vanderbeek was always a full-time, senior member of Bradley’s government staff.
Tom Anfinson, the financial administrator in Bradley’s government office, told me that it’s standard practice on the Hill for congressmen to shift some of their government staff to the campaign payroll during election season. He also said that it’s “commonplace” for Hill staffers to switch to part-time status, and to split their time and their pay between the government and campaign accounts.
But this isn’t uniformly true. Bradley’s Granite State colleague, Republican Senator Judd Gregg, routinely lends his chief of staff, Joel Maiola, a seasoned and well-respected political operative, to his re-election campaigns and to other statewide GOP campaigns, and in almost every even-numbered year, Maiola scrupulously disappears from Gregg’s government payroll for anywhere between two and six weeks. This is how it should be done. When Maiola isn’t working for the government, he isn’t collecting a paycheck from the taxpayers. Other congressmen are less conscientious about the law and blur the line between their government and campaign offices. But Jeb Bradley and Debra Vanderbeek didn’t blur the line. They crossed it.
Federal law specifically states a congressional employee may not perform campaign work “while the employee is on duty” or “in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties by an individual employed or holding office in the Government of the United States or any agency or instrumentality thereof.” The House Ethics Committee further stipulates that “as to what constitutes a staff member’s ‘own time,’ this is determined by the personnel policies that are in place in the employing office...This free time may include, for example, a lunch period, time after the end of the business day, and annual leave. However, a Member may not adjust the work requirements of the congressional office...”
Anfinson told me that Vanderbeek was drawing about 80 percent of her standard government salary between June and September 2004. This means she should have been logging at least a 32 hours of work each week, during normal business hours. Yet it defies belief that Vanderbeek could manage a $1 million re-election campaign for a one-term incumbent, in a highly competitive state, while also working at least 6.4 hours each day for the federal government.
Moreover, while Anfinson claims that Vanderbeek was paid at 50 percent her normal government salary level between October and early November, she still drew over $30,000 in government pay between October 1 and December 31—roughly the same amount she earned in the first quarter, when she worked full-time for the government. According to Anfinson, the fourth-quarter figure probably included Vanderbeek’s end-of-the-year bonus. But this explanation should raise alarm bells. By granting Vanderbeek a large holiday bonus, Bradley effectively paid her a full-time salary for half-time work.
