By Elizabeth Williamson, The Washington Post, June 19, 2007

19 Jun 2007 // A private government watchdog organization said yesterday that nearly 100 chairmen and ranking minority members of House committees used their positions to benefit their families, including employing relatives for campaign or consulting work.

The arrangements described in the report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) are not illegal, but they highlight a murky aspect of campaign finance. While it is illegal for lawmakers' families to collect a salary from Congress, the law does not prevent lawmakers from using campaign money to pay salaries and fees or to bankroll the political ambitions of their spouses, children and other kin.

"I can't say these people definitely broke the law, but the Federal Election Commission should be looking at this," said Melanie Sloan, the group's executive director. The organization began the study amid reports of federal probes involving payments to the families of lawmakers, including Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.), whose wife's firm allegedly did work for now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff while her husband did legislative favors for him.

"This is not occasional," Sloan said of the payments to family members. "Some people are putting as many as six family members on their payroll."

Over the past five years, Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) has had three children, a brother and a nephew on the campaign payroll. Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) has employed six of his eight children in his campaigns, paying his then-20-year-old daughter Laura more than $30,000 in wages and expenses in 2004. Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) put his wife, three children, two daughters-in-law and a sister-in-law on the campaign payroll in recent years. Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez (D-N.Y.) gave $2,000 from her campaign chest to her husband to help finance his unsuccessful run for the New York City Council in 2002. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) has paid more than $280,000 in fees to a company in which her husband had a financial interest.

"My children worked hard on my campaigns and should not go unpaid just because I am their father," Cannon said in a statement.

Lofgren said that her husband, John Collins, helped with her campaigns for "many years" while working as a partner in a firm specializing in campaign finance and management. "The firm was also hired by a number of other candidates in California, including federal, state and local candidates," she said in a statement. "Although the services rendered were legal and proper, we did not want anyone to question whether we were personally profiting from my re-election campaign. Last year the firm itself dissolved."

Reps. Forbes, Rush and Velazquez were not available for comment.

The CREW report focuses on the leaders and ranking members of House committees and subcommittees only. The study is based on member family information, personal- and campaign-finance disclosures and news reports available online. "CREW has rarely been able to verify the qualifications of relatives on the campaign payroll, but the legitimacy of at least some payments -- those made to children, for example -- appears dubious," the report reads.

Money paid to family members must be appropriate for their qualifications and duties, campaign-finance experts say. But gauging appropriate compensation can be tricky, said Lawrence Noble, a former FEC general counsel, now an attorney at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Federal law prohibits a lawmaker from spending campaign money on personal expenses such as food, clothing and sporting events, Noble said.

Overpaying a family member can constitute a personal-use violation. But if a lawmaker pays a relative too little, the services can be viewed as an illegal campaign contribution. "You have to walk this path where you can basically show you're paying for services rendered," he said.

Members are allowed to give campaign contributions they have collected to relatives' political campaigns "as long as they're lawful under state law," Noble said.

The report is available at http://www.citizensforethics.org/familyaffair.