Posted on 01/20/2003 11:13:21 PM PST by Timesink
| This is a copy of an invitation to a party in honor of Assistant Commerce Secretary Nancy Victory, the Bush administration's point person for telecommunications policy. Victory allowed wireless phone company lobbyists to help pay for a private reception at her home, and then 10 days later urged a policy change that benefited their industry, according to documents and interviews. (AP Photo) |
WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 —
Just days before going to bat for the wireless industry, the Bush administration's top policy export on telecommunications, Nancy Victory, allowed wireless phone company lobbyists to help pay for a private reception at her home.
Three lobbyists from Cingular Wireless, SBC Telecommunications and Motorola threw the party on Oct. 14, 2001, along with an attorney from Victory's old law firm where her husband is a partner specializing in communications law. Telecom industry representatives were among the dozens of party guests.
Victory said she regards the lobbyists as personal friends, and cleared the private reception in advance with her department's ethics office.
"My friends paid for this party out of their personal money," Victory said in an interview last week with The Associated Press.
Ten days after the catered reception at Victory's million-dollar home in Great Falls, Va., she asked the Federal Communication Commission to immediately repeal restrictions that Cingular, SBC and other major cellular companies had long complained about.
In today's market, "rules such as these that draw arbitrary lines in the name of ensuring competition are simply not needed," Victory wrote the FCC on Oct. 24, 2001.
The FCC voted two weeks later to phase out by Jan. 1, 2003 restrictions on how much of the spectrum individual carriers could own in a geographic area.
The carriers argued that more airwaves would give them the space to provide advanced mobile services, but critics said the change would squeeze out smaller competitors and drive up rates.
Casting the single vote against the change, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said that the agency had not done enough to study the shortage of airwaves.
"This is, for some, more about corporate mergers than it is about anything else," Copps said at the time.
Victory did not report the October 2001 party as a gift on her government ethics disclosure form, and said it was "ridiculous" to draw a connection between the party and her letter to the FCC.
"Many of the attendees had nothing to do with that issue," she said, declining to further identify the guests.
Ethics experts said the arrangement at the very least heightens public concerns about the appearance of a conflict of interest, and may have run afoul of federal ethics standards.
"Accepting this gift seems to be insensitive in light of public concern about whether this Bush administration is in the pocket of corporations and lobbyists. It doesn't look good for her or the administration," said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who teaches legal and government ethics.
In a statement, Victory said "the Commerce Department ethics office has confirmed that, under the ethics rules, the benefit to me did not qualify as a reportable gift." But Clark questioned that conclusion and Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University's law school, stated flatly that Victory had a legal obligation to disclose the lobbyists' largesse on her financial disclosure form.
"Victory's industry friends could pay for the party out of their own pocket, but she had a duty to reveal their contribution to the public," Gillers said.
Clark called the Commerce Department's advice "a very strange interpretation" and "a bizarre legalistic search for loopholes where there are none."
If the outside legal experts are correct, Victory can correct the omission by revising her financial disclosure form.
As an assistant secretary of commerce, Victory is administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and is the administration's policy representative before the independent FCC.
A copy of the party's invitation, obtained by AP, clearly names at the top lobbyists Brian Fontes of Cingular Wireless, Priscilla Hill-Ardoin of SBC Telecommunications and Rich Barth of wireless phone manufacturer Motorola.
At least one company whose lobbyist helped pick up the tab, SBC, is checking to see if the approximately $480 Hill-Ardoin spent came from corporate funds. Fontes and Barth said they don't remember how much they paid or whether the money came from corporate funds.
"A group of folks who either worked with Nancy or have known her for many years just got together to toast her," said Fontes, the Cingular lobbyist. Victory had been confirmed by the Senate for her new government post two months earlier.
Cingular and SBC both had formally urged the FCC to end the restrictions. Motorola did not weigh in on the issue, but it's largest commercial cellular customers, including Cingular, advocated repeal.
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