New Mexico Mercury

It’s been about a month since the news broke that federal inspectors had sanctioned Sandia and Los Alamos National Labs for their no-bid, no-deliverables contracts with former Congresswoman Heather Wilson. The Santa Fe Reporter has done an admirable job reporting on the story even providing a link to the Department of Energy’s Inspector General’s Report.  USA Today, the Washington Post and the independent watchdog group, POGO (Project on Government Oversight) have run national stories. But aside from one front page Albuquerque Journal story on June 12, we have not seen much from the local media here in her former congressional district. There’s been no follow up, no commentary or investigation of a scandal that raises questions about the ethics of former representatives (yes, even those considered saints)  profiting from their prior public service.

Here’s what we know so far. Like many other former legislators at the state and national level, Wilson revved up her own consulting company immediately after leaving office and obtained a number of lucrative contracts to provide consulting to companies with which she had worked with in Congress.  An Air Force Academy grad, and a former member of the National Security Administration, as well as a Congresswoman with plenty of contacts both in Congress and among federal agencies, Wilson was well qualified for the jobs.  Starting in 2009, the year she left Congress, Heather Wilson and Co. was paid $226,400 from Sandia, $195,700 from LANL and $30,000 from Oak Ridge and the Nevada Test Site, according to the Department of Energy’s Inspector General’s report. The Sandia contract was a no-bid contract; Sandia and LANL often paid invoices for $10,000 per month for “consulting,” with no particular projects or deliverables ever identified.

What was Wilson doing? That’s the piece that needs some media digging.  Was she developing new business for the defense contractors who run the labs? Obtaining new contracts with federal agencies for them? Schmoozing the powers that be? Urging her former colleagues to appropriate money for projects each lab is positioned to perform?

This is important because Congress has rules requiring at least a year “cooling off” period during which former members are barred from lobbying their former colleagues.  They are not barred from lobbying federal agencies, however bad that looks. Yet “business development” is off bounds in contracting.  I’ve never understood the difference between business development and lobbying, since both involve contacting federal officials, some of whom former Congress people undoubtedly encountered in their work in Washington and asking them for something.

At any rate, the Inspector General found that the Sandia contract was awarded to Wilson based on the lab’s need for “high level connections and critical engagement with key individuals.”  And the federal examination of documents found that Wilson was actually engaged in business development activities. 

In a stinging reprimand, the IG’s report stated that the procurement process “did not even meet minimum standards of federal regulations” and that the lack of documented deliverables “turned logic on its head.” To sanction the labs, the Inspector General ordered them to return the federal dollars--amounting to a total of about $450,000-- they had paid Wilson and Co. Wilson, now the president of the South Dakota School of Mining and Technology, was not ordered to repay the money and the labs insist that they got good value for her work. Just a problem with documentation, they said.

Whether taxpayers and former constituents were well served is an open question. It is unknown whether the DOE Inspector General has referred the report to the Justice Department for investigation of possible illegal activity. The good government reformers at POGO, the same watchdog group that unearthed defense contracting boondoggles like the $7,600 coffee maker and the $436 hammer, are on the case.  But where is the local concern for the extra money this is costing us all and the inside game that ex-politicians play? 

Perhaps the revolving door is okay with us when it involves New Mexico’s most sacred cows-- the legacy of a popular Republican politician and the economic sanctity of the state’s national labs. But the public and the media elsewhere  (where many states are moving to establish ethics commissions and stop the revolving door) would be outraged by the smell of privilege radiating from the Wilson scandal.

Unless we get busy, the rest of the nation will continue to see New Mexico as an ethical backwater, where lax state laws allow our own legislators to pass through the revolving door swiftly and there is scant media attention to what would even not pass the smell test elsewhere.