Oct 2, 2008 -- The Hill: Rangel's beach trip got ethics thumbs-up
By: Susan Crabtree

The ethics committee approved a trip Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) took to an Antigua beach resort late last year — an excursion that critics say was paid for by lobbyists.

Last November, Rangel, his son Steven and a top aide, George Dalley, attended a business conference at the Sandals Grande Antigua Resort & Spa for a foundation affiliated with a weekly New York-based Caribbean newspaper.

The organization, the Carib News Foundation, has organized and sponsored the annual conference to promote business, trade and ties between the U.S. and the Caribbean at luxurious resorts in different areas of the islands of the South Atlantic for more than a decade.

Rangel's attorney, Lanny Davis, provided The Hill with a copy of the ethics committee letter, dated Oct. 16, 2007.

"Pursuant to House Rule XXV, clause 5(d)(2), the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct hereby approves the proposed trip for you and your child to Antigua, West Indies, scheduled for November 8 to 11, 2007," the ethics committee wrote in its letter to Rangel.

The journey has come under scrutiny because Rangel failed to file a post-trip report, as House ethics rules require, within 15 days of returning from privately sponsored travel. On Tuesday, Rangel corrected the error by filing the post-trip report.

The ethics committee started requiring the post-trip reports as part of its effort to crack down on a rash of lobbyist-funded junkets that came to light during and after the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal and its notorious golf trip to Scotland. Abramoff paid for the trip by funneling money through a nonprofit, which members such as former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) then listed as the trip's sponsor on their disclosure forms.

Lobbyist-funded travel has long been prohibited, but in early 2007 Democrats instituted new ethics rules barring lobbyists or entities that employ them from funding junkets in any way.

When asked why Rangel didn't file the post-trip report last year as required, Davis — a regular contributor to The Hill's Pundits Blog — referred to Rangel's previous comments about a series of mistakes and omissions the New York Democrat made to the IRS and the ethics committee about his personal finances. Rangel has said they were simply oversights and mistakes that did not involve any ill intent.

In addition, corporations such as Macy's, AT&T and Pfizer are listed on a program as sponsors of different panel discussions at the Antigua conference, raising questions about whether lobbyists for the corporations paid for the conference and attended it. The New York Post ran a story in mid-September charging that lobbyists paid for the trip by bundling their "sponsorship cash" through the Caribbean newspaper, the NY Carib News.

Karl Rodney, a Jamaican-born businessman and founder of the Carib News, flatly denied that federal lobbyists paid for the Antigua trip or attended.

"That is patently false," he said.

Rodney said the conference's purpose is to promote information, trade and business ties between the U.S. and the Caribbean and expressed frustration that his trips were being scrutinized when other organizations fund similar conferences in Puerto Rico and Israel. On the certification forms groups sponsoring trips are required to turn into the ethics committee, Rodney checked the box indicating that the sponsor of the trip does not retain or employ a federally registered lobbyist or foreign agent.

Despite the language in the program, Rodney said the Carib News Foundation is the conference's "sole sponsor." The corporations, he said, donate to the nonprofit's general fund and that fund is used to pay for the conference and other initiatives. Rodney, however, would not say exactly how much money the corporations gave to the charity and denied that the money was "earmarked" or specifically donated to pay for the conference.

The new House ethics rules on travel prohibit private sponsors from donating money to a charity that was given specifically to pay for the trip. If they do so, they then must be considered a "private source" for the trip and may not be an entity that hires federal lobbyists.

Rodney did not immediately provide a copy of his most recent IRS 990 form, which would show how much income the foundation received and its sources. A search on www.guidestar.org, which makes nonprofit information publicly accessible, produced information for the charity's fiscal year starting May 31, 2005, and ending June 1, 2006.

That form showed that the foundation received zero donations that year even though it held its annual Caribbean business conference as usual.

Rodney said the charity's previous IRS filings did not list any income because the organization had received less than $25,000 and he was told that precluded it from listing any income or its sources.

Because of the new scrutiny of congressional travel, however, Rodney said he decided to list all of the organization's income and its sources in its most recent IRS filing.

"We became very specific about how we file because of the changes in the ethics rules," he said.

Meredith McGehee, the policy director of the Campaign Legal Center, said the ethics committee has provided very little evidence that it is doing anything to enforce its own travel rules, such as asking nonprofits that are sponsoring trips where the money is coming from.

"They see that it's being sponsored by a foundation that does exist and is known to do things and that's pretty much the end of the effort to decide whether something gets approved or not," she said.

The fact that Rangel turned in the post-trip forms until almost a year had elapsed is part of his pattern of carelessness and blatant disregard for the rules, McGehee argued.

"It's like that line in 'Casablanca': 'There's gambling going on here? I don't believe it,'" she said.