Bishop gives relative 46 percent raise to go part-time

U.S. Representative Tim Bishop, D-NY, has so far paid his daughter nearly $270,000 in salary and expenses from his re-election fund, giving her a 46 percent raise when she switched from salaried employee to part-time consultant, research by the Majority Accountability Project (majorityap.com) has found.

Bishop first put his daughter Molly on the campaign payroll in 2002, when he paid her a total of $12,145.21, and an additional $178.83 in expenses. Since that time, she started her own fundraising firm, MCB Consulting, and Bishop now pays her $5,000 a month for “fundraising consulting,” plus expenses. Bishop paid MCB Consulting a total $132,327.48 between 2006 and 2007.

HQ, GOV’T OFFICE AT SAME LOCATION
More troubling is that the “principal executive office” for MCB Consulting is at the same address as Bishop’s official Congressional office, a majorityap.com review of federal and state records found.

But according to filings made with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), Bishop doesn’t send MCB Consulting’s payments to the firm’s Coram, NY, headquarters. He instead sends them to his Southampton home.

BIG PAY RAISE, REDUNDANT WORK
During Molly’s first four years on her father’s payroll, her salary grew at a steady pace. But the biggest jump came when she left the campaign as a salaried employee and was hired as a vendor.

In 2005, the last year Bishop reported paying Molly a salary, she earned $3,423.27 each month. With expenses, Bishop paid her a total of $40,609.89 that year. Her first year as a consultant, Molly Bishop saw her monthly paycheck increase to $5,000, a 46 percent raise despite the fact she ostensibly left Bishop’s staff to become a private contractor.

Bishop paid MCB Consulting a total of $66,461.59 in 2006, and another $65,865.89 in 2007. That two year total, $132,327.48, is just shy of what Bishop paid Molly in salary and expenses for the previous four years.

When Bishop first retained MCB Consulting, he was already paying another fundraising consultant, Angle and Associates in Washington, DC, $4500 a month. Bishop first retained Angle and Associates in 2003, and has been paying them each month since that time for the same services, “fundraising consulting,” as his daughter.

POLITICAL FAVORS?
A search of FEC records revealed that Bishop is MCB Consulting’s only federal client. But Molly Bishop has further profited from her father’s political base.

The New York State Board of Elections reports that MCB Consulting received $164,381.10 in consulting fees and expenses from more than a half-dozen candidates and committees in Suffolk County. One of those clients, the Brookhaven Town Democratic Committee, received financial contributions from the elder Bishop.

PRACTICE CRITICIZED
While it is not illegal for members of Congress to put relatives on their campaign payroll, the practice is widely criticized by government watchdogs.

"Public service should not be a way to build a family fortune," Celia Wexler, vice president for advocacy at Common Cause, told the Los Angeles Times in 2005, following a report that 39 members of Congress were “paying their spouses, children or other relatives out of campaign funds, or have hired companies in which a family member had a financial interest.”

A more recent study conducted by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) claimed that “64 (House Members) paid family members through their campaign committees or PACs.”

Despite the fact that Bishop has been paying his daughter for more than a half-decade, he escaped CREW’s notice. One reason may be that while the group claims to be “a non-profit legal watchdog group,” the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call revealed that the organization attacks only “groups and individuals who are the foes of CREW’s donors (subscription required).”

Roll Call’s report further found that “CREW’s funding comes from liberal groups and big donors to Democratic candidates and causes. And all but a handful of its complaints against Members of Congress have targeted Republicans.”