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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Watchdog Group: Wilson Case Shows Need For Congressional Reform

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Tuesday, November 5, 2013   

SANTA FE, N.M. - Former Congresswoman Heather Wilson of New Mexico was being paid big money by nuclear laboratories immediately after she left Congress, and a watchdog group said that situation shows the need for Congress to reform itself. The Albuquerque Journal reported that Wilson started a $10,000-per-month consulting job with Sandia National Laboratories, located in her erstwhile Congressional District, on her first day out of office in early 2009.

According to Jay Coghlan, director at Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Wilson finalized the deal with Sandia while still in office. Sandia is a government-owned/contractor-operated Department of Energy (DOE) laboratory engaged in research supporting national security issues.

Wilson told the Journal she could not recall exactly when she made the deal final. Coghlan declared that Wilson's actions were not illegal but that the ethics of the matter are in question.

"To have this trail of financial links to the laboratories while advocating that taxpayer monies be spent on the laboratories," he said, "now that just doesn't smell right. "

Wilson told the Journal that she complied with all congressional rules and policies related to her post-Congress consulting business.

Coghlan urged Congress to add laws limiting its former members from making money in industries they were involved with while in office.

"Members of Congress should be prohibited for, I would say, two years from entering directly into financial contracts with essentially the clients that they helped serve," he said.

The Journal cited a Department of Energy inspector general's report that found evidence of prohibited lobbying in Wilson's contract. Wilson and Sandia have both denied the finding but, according to the Journal, Sandia returned to the government the more than $200,000 it had paid Wilson from 2009 to 2011.





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