We made it to Friday, newsletter fam; another week down! And don’t forget to look forward to Monday, when our favorite author, Kate, is back in action. Let’s dive in.
The Big Takeaway
I’ve always believed that “the personal is political” — essentially, you’re just naturally going to care more about issues that directly affect you. Elected officials are no exception to this: Serving your own self-interest is a pretty powerful motivator, even when your whole job is technically to be beholden to your constituents. Politicians, they’re just like us!
Take the issue of chronic wasting disease spreading in deer in Minnesota. It’s fatal for animals, and generally not great for humans, either. During a recent agriculture budget bill debate, state Sen. Karla Bigham won rare bipartisan support from GOP colleagues to add an amendment that would impose regulations on deer farms to combat the disease, including a moratorium on new operations.
The victory didn’t last long, as the Minnesota Reformer reported. After a short recess, the bill language was watered down at the urging of Majority Leader Jeremy Miller. As it happens, his brother Todd owns a deer farm and a hunting preserve, which bills itself as “Minnesota’s #1 destination Whitetail hunting destination.” Huh!
Because of that, Jeremy Miller should have stayed out of it, according to Senate Minority Leader Melisa López Franzen. “Sen. Miller needs to explain why he didn’t recuse himself on this vote, and to clarify his relationship to the deer farming industry, and what interest he had in interrupting Senate proceedings on an important bill so that he could convince five members of his caucus to change their votes and overturn a bipartisan amendment,” she said.
To be fair, Minnesota lawmakers are part-time legislators who often have businesses or occupations that are intertwined with legislation and regulation, and as of now, there are no plans to launch a formal ethics complaint. A spokesperson for Jeremy Miller confirmed he doesn’t have a financial stake in his brother’s deer farm, nor does his economic disclosure form list any deer operations.
If the situation seems murky here, it’s a lot clearer over in Louisiana. Less than a week after a carbon dioxide pipeline operated by Denbury Resources burst in a rural Mississippi community, state Sen. Sharon Hewitt filed a bill drafted by Denbury into her own legislature that would make it more difficult for landowners to oppose CO2 pipelines. It became law in 2020.
Probably just a big ole coinkydink that, in the same year, Hewitt’s husband earned up to $4,999 in royalties from Denbury, according to her financial disclosure statement. Thanks to an investigation between Floodlight, The Lens, The Louisiana Illuminator and The Guardian, there’s now a trove of public records showing how Hewitt’s pushed for laws to benefit her family’s finances. Will you look at that!
Over the past three years, she has introduced, co-sponsored and voted on at least seven pieces of legislation that would benefit the oil company her husband works for or his fossil fuel investments. Oh and by the way, Hewitt maybe wants to run for governor next. (Full disclosure: Hewitt, her husband and Denbury, which is now called Denbury Inc., did not respond to requests for comment on the project.)
Like in Minnesota, there’s a long history in the Louisiana State Capitol of legislators passing laws that profit their respective industries. But public policy experts point to Hewitt’s record as evidence of the oil and gas industry’s outsized influence there, despite its diminishing role in the state’s economy.
“There is a point at which it goes beyond conflict of interest to the abdication of duty,” said Carroll Muffett, the president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law.
Arizona, ultimately, might just take the cake here. The Moonlight Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group, found that somehow-still-a-Congressman Paul Gosar* spent more than $7,800 for travel, lodging and vehicle expenses while attending events with far-right groups and white nationalists, per the Arizona Mirror.
An additional review found he has spent nearly $1 million on travel since 2016 — including having taxpayers pay for his trip to speak at a white nationalist conference in Florida last year. But hell yeah small government, amirite?
A Gosar spokesperson has said the expenses were all within the realm of official activity and have been reviewed both “in-house” and by Congress. However, it should be noted that lawmaker spending is pretty shielded, since expenses are filed under vague categories such as “commercial transportation” or “travel.”
*Seriously, how is he still in Congress??
Caught Our Eye
Just in time for the weekend, the team at the Idaho Capital Sun dropped a two-part investigation it’s been working on for the past six months.
Dr. Ryan Cole went from being a pathologist at a small laboratory to a national figure in a movement that eroded trust in medical institutions and public health advice. His ascent came at the expense of patients, taxpayers and public health, according to the Capital Sun. During the pandemic, his lab was paid a premium rate for COVID-19 tests, because it claimed it was using fully automated, high-volume systems. Only except it wasn’t.
What’s more — as Cole’s lab took in federal and state funds — he misdiagnosed at least two patients with cancer, claiming to see a spike in cancers at his laboratory and attributing that spike to immune damage from the COVID-19 vaccine. (Like other conspiracy theories around the pandemic, this is simply not true.)
From the Newsrooms
- (Georgia) Hyperlocal control on the ballot as voters decide whether to carve three cities from Cobb
- (Ohio) Government watchdog: Health care giants improperly denied Medicare benefits
- Mothers join in cause to rattle Oregon into action on addiction care
- (New Hampshire) Senate sends ‘right of conscience’ bill to interim study, passes repeal of clinic buffer zone law
- (New Jersey) New lawsuits over nursing home COVID deaths claim ‘state-created danger’
One Last Thing
I am literally counting down the minutes until my workday is over so I can devour Netflix’s Selling Sunset reunion special. Christine won’t be there (sad!) but apparently Heather finally gets her Oreo (IYKYK).
This edition of the Evening Wrap published on May 6, 2022. Subscribe here.
