Pay-to-Play

That's what was clearly involved when on July 29, 2005 former House Transportation Committee Chairman Don "Bridge to Nowhere" Young placed a statement in the House record designed to starve funding for the new provision that Senator Orrin Hatch had just spearheaded in the big transportation authorization bill that was designed to break up Traffic.com's monopoly. A check of the company's contributions to Young's reelection fund and PAC shows several strategically placed contributions, right around the times that Traffic.com needed Cong. Young's influence. They paid, he played.

More recently, Young has gotten embroiled in yet another "pay-to-play" scheme involving a new Coconut Road interchange along I-75 in Florida, hardly in his "district" that encompasses the entire state of Alaska. It seems that if you throw a fund-raiser and raise $40K for his campaign you can get the Alaska congressman to put a new exit road pretty much anywhere you want. You pay, he plays. No wonder Young is widely regarded in Washington, DC as one of our nation's premiere "coin-operated politicians."

Of course, Young is in good company. "Pay-to-play" was the game that Trimble Navigation was playing when they likely gave former Congressman and future Commerce and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta a whole lot of extra stock options under the table back in 2000, as Mr. Mineta was about to become Commerce Secretary. (More details here and here.)

Their "pay" was likely up to $900K in extra stock options that Mr. Mineta failed to disclose on his Public Financial Disclosure report covering the period he was Commerce Secretary. Such disclosure is required by the Ethics in Government Act, but of course that Act is only useful if the authorities (including the FBI, USDOT Inspector General's office, and SEC) are willing to enforce it. Things have gotten so corrupt in our nation's Capitol these days that none of these authorities have been willing to dig into this almost certain major ethics violation by a recent senior Administration official.

Ironically, Mr. Mineta, who was likely "pre-paid" by Trimble Navigation to benefit their cause, exhibited something that almost seems in some strange sense to be honorable behavior in his willingness to follow through with his part of the bargain, the "play." Mr. Mineta not only supported policies that would benefit the GPS/location technology arena in which Trimble Navigation was a market leader when he was Commerce Secretary in the Clinton Administration, he continued to support additional policies and initiatives that would benefit that market after he became Transportation Secretary in the Bush Administration. For years Mr. Mineta fulfilled his part of this Faustian bargain.

It seems that once a high-level "public servant" crosses over to the pay-to-play modus operandi and sees how enormously profitable this game is, there's no turning back. Mr. Mineta is now the Vice Chairman of one of our nation's largest public relations firms, Hill & Knowlton, and he's now at the top of his "pay-to-play" game. He has mastered the ability to cash in on his carefully honed reputation that derives from being the nation's longest serving Secretary of Transportation.

Just last week, Mr. Mineta was in Hawaii promoting the use of steel rail technology to the Oahu City Council. Of course, he was once again cashing in on his sterling reputation as a national transportation leader. As I've said before, he's done some very good things over the years. However, he has also likely violated our nation's signature federal ethics law, and collaborated with several other high-level "public servants" to create and sustain a federally sponsored monopoly that works against the public interest in many of our nation's most traffic-congested cities.

In Hawaii, according to news reports, Mr. Mineta was paid $120,000 for providing his "objective" advice that steel-rail technology was the best way to go for Oahu's new 20-mile long fixed guideway system. My guess is that Mr. Mineta would have told the City Council pretty much anything that his client (the Oahu Mayor's administration) wanted him to say, because he's become a very successful hired gun, pure and simple.

Pay to play.

Jerry