OC Register covers CFEE funded junkets

The Orange County register has given it’s take on junkets being funded by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy, a non-profit organization founded by several large Corporations in the Energy and Telecommunications industry. Their take is that this abuse of non-profit status is similar to the Abramoff case and could be considered “bribery” – though it would be difficult to prove. Our take has already been written here. We wouldn’t begrudge Schwarzenegger Administration officials and California Legislators an occasional junket if there were doing a decent job of international business development in the interests of California companies and citizens- but they are not doing a decent job- they are doing a crappy job. Also, where are the “trip reports” for these junkets? I can’t find them, and they certainly don’t seem to be on the CFEE website. How can the recipients of these junkets claim they were in the public interest, if the information they (should have) generated is not available to the public? Excepts from the OC register article:

At the end of March, lawmakers and members of the Public Utility Commission joined corporate executives on a trip to Japan. The expenses, valued at $8,000 to $9,500 per person, were picked up by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy – a nonprofit in San Francisco funded and connected to firms represented on the trip.

Lawmakers say trips like these are valuable educational experiences; government watchdogs say they’re attempts to buy influence and circumvent the law, which bars corporations from buying trips for government officials or funneling money through organizations that can.

But without evidence, like a memo or an e-mail, directly linking corporate money to officials’ travel, the law says it’s OK. ‘It’s extraordinarily frustrating,’ said Carmen Balber of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer and Rights. The foundation recently uncovered documents showing the value of the Japan trip. ‘You don’t need a smoking gun in California to know a $10,000 gift to the Speaker of the Assembly is illegal,’ Balber said. ‘But the law does require that smoking gun if that $10,000 gift is funneled through a nonprofit organization. And that’s absurd.’

The Jack Abramoff case illustrates the kind of concrete evidence needed to substantiate such a connection. By now, it’s known the disgraced former lobbyist used the National Center for Public Policy Research and other nonprofits as intermediaries for himself and his clients to pay for trips to Scotland and other things. (At the time, businesses were allowed to pay for House of Representatives trips; Abramoff was trying to dodge a rule that required trip sponsors to be directly connected to the reason for the travel.)

But proving those links required a mountain of documentation and testimony: e-mails showing Abramoff arranging pass-through payments; donations dated the same day trips were taken; sworn statements by insiders. I asked Bryan Sierra, a Department of Justice spokesman, why political corruption cases require reams of evidence. He said the burden of proof can be incredibly high.

For bribery, he said prosecutors have to prove the intent of two parties: the briber, who must be shown to have offered something of value and delivered it, and the bribed, who must be shown to have taken an official action directly because of that thing offered or delivered.