March 2013

Recently, we noted a pay-to-play scandal in Pennsylvania that resulted in multiple arrests.  This week, New Jersey’s Attorney General charged seven executives or shareholders of Birdsall Services Group, an engineering firm.  The alleged Birdsall scheme illustrates the ease with which pay-to-play violations and campaign finance violations can mix.

Pay-to-play laws typically restrict or prohibit public

With near-unanimous bipartisan majorities, Congress last year passed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (“STOCK”) Act in an effort to confront alleged insider trading by federal officials.  A major part of that legislation required that financial information of high-level government employees be disclosed in a searchable, sortable, and downloadable internet database.  Although the officials’ underlying

The Vermont Senate might soon scrap the Green Mountain State’s campaign finance law in its entirety in favor of new legislation.  The pending bill would change contribution limits, increase reporting frequency, and require groups paying for electioneering communications to disclose their major donors.  The ambitious bill, which is making its way through the state

Groups that are planning to run independent expenditures in the New Jersey gubernatorial election this year should be aware of a new advisory opinion issued by the State’s Election Law Enforcement Commission late last week.  Under this latest guidance, groups that support or oppose New Jersey candidates may have to register as political committees and

We can learn two important lessons from the recent Pennsylvania Turnpike pay to play scandal.  The first of these lessons is straightforward, but important:  beware of providing benefits to public officials who can influence contracting or regulatory decisions impacting your company.  The second—and less intuitive—lesson, which has been lost amidst the furor over the scandal,

Many public companies are busy fending off shareholder demands (in one form or another) that they disclose political and lobbying expenditures.  Covington’s Election and Political Law Practice Group and its Securities Law Practice Group are holding a conference call this Thursday, March 21, 2013, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, to discuss recent developments, and strategies companies

Political spending proposals were among the most common shareholder proposal topics in 2012, with more than 90 political spending proposals being submitted to S&P 500 companies (only 56 were voted upon). Despite the significant number of such proposals submitted in 2012, political spending proposals did not fare well with shareholders, garnering only 26% support from

In a press statement yesterday announcing that he would not run for re-election to the Senate in 2014, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) foreshadowed a new investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (“PSI”) concerning what he described as the IRS’s “failure” to police the use of undisclosed political money by tax-exempt organizations.  As the