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The Senate is rushing to confirm this Trump nominee despite ethics concerns
Last edited Wed Apr 3, 2019, 11:34 AM - Edit history (1)
Walter Shaub RetweetedThe Senate is rushing to confirm this Trump nominee despite ethics concerns, write @CREWcrew's @WaltShaub and Gabe Lezra
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PostEverything • Perspective
The Senate is rushing to confirm this Trump nominee despite ethics concerns
Former AccuWeather CEO Barry Myers could oversee NOAA soon. Will he have conflicts of interest?
By Walter M. Shaub Jr. and Gabe Lezra
April 2 at 8:15 PM
When President Trump first nominated Barry Myers, then the CEO of AccuWeather and a fierce critic of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, to head the very agency he had spent decades attacking, many who care about government ethics sounded the alarm. The announcement seemed extreme, even by the loose ethical standards of the Trump administration — which is partly why his first nomination stalled in the Senate in 2018. On Wednesday, the Senate GOP leadership plans to ram through Myers’s renomination without a hearing despite his failure to address any of the major ethics issues that were raised the first time he went through this process. If anything, Myers’s financial activity since his first nomination expired only heightens concerns about his ethics.
Myers’s ties to AccuWeather remain deeply concerning. He recounted for the Senate how he and his family built the company from the ground up to become a dominant player in the weather forecasting industry. In addition to Myers serving as its CEO, his wife was its director of executive projects, and his brothers held more than 90 percent of the company’s stock.
When his nomination was first announced, we were concerned about whether Myers could be relied on to oversee an agency that can directly affect his family’s business. AccuWeather uses NOAA’s free weather data to make its own predictions, which it then sells to the public. AccuWeather has also argued that NOAA should reduce the amount of weather information it releases directly to the public — that is, much of the data generated by NOAA with our tax dollars would be available exclusively to private companies like AccuWeather that could then sell us forecasts based on that data. Myers himself has advocated that NOAA do less for America so AccuWeather can increase its profits.
....
Now Myers is back with a new nomination and a mysterious financial arrangement. A year ago, one of us, writing for the Campaign Legal Center at the time, warned the Senate that “nothing in his ethics agreement would prevent him from selling his shares of AccuWeather to his family and, upon leaving the government, offering to repurchase those interests for the same price — possibly even at a negligible price or, at least, without incurring any capital gains.” And indeed, a few months ago, Myers sold his stock under a redemption agreement, which is a contract that lets a closely held company or its shareholders buy back an investor’s stock. Financial disclosure forms show that Myers sold for a fraction of what he previously claimed it was worth.
....
Walter M. Shaub Jr., is a former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and a special advisor to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Follow https://twitter.com/waltshaub
Gabe Lezra is staff counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The Senate is rushing to confirm this Trump nominee despite ethics concerns
Former AccuWeather CEO Barry Myers could oversee NOAA soon. Will he have conflicts of interest?
By Walter M. Shaub Jr. and Gabe Lezra
April 2 at 8:15 PM
When President Trump first nominated Barry Myers, then the CEO of AccuWeather and a fierce critic of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, to head the very agency he had spent decades attacking, many who care about government ethics sounded the alarm. The announcement seemed extreme, even by the loose ethical standards of the Trump administration — which is partly why his first nomination stalled in the Senate in 2018. On Wednesday, the Senate GOP leadership plans to ram through Myers’s renomination without a hearing despite his failure to address any of the major ethics issues that were raised the first time he went through this process. If anything, Myers’s financial activity since his first nomination expired only heightens concerns about his ethics.
Myers’s ties to AccuWeather remain deeply concerning. He recounted for the Senate how he and his family built the company from the ground up to become a dominant player in the weather forecasting industry. In addition to Myers serving as its CEO, his wife was its director of executive projects, and his brothers held more than 90 percent of the company’s stock.
When his nomination was first announced, we were concerned about whether Myers could be relied on to oversee an agency that can directly affect his family’s business. AccuWeather uses NOAA’s free weather data to make its own predictions, which it then sells to the public. AccuWeather has also argued that NOAA should reduce the amount of weather information it releases directly to the public — that is, much of the data generated by NOAA with our tax dollars would be available exclusively to private companies like AccuWeather that could then sell us forecasts based on that data. Myers himself has advocated that NOAA do less for America so AccuWeather can increase its profits.
....
Now Myers is back with a new nomination and a mysterious financial arrangement. A year ago, one of us, writing for the Campaign Legal Center at the time, warned the Senate that “nothing in his ethics agreement would prevent him from selling his shares of AccuWeather to his family and, upon leaving the government, offering to repurchase those interests for the same price — possibly even at a negligible price or, at least, without incurring any capital gains.” And indeed, a few months ago, Myers sold his stock under a redemption agreement, which is a contract that lets a closely held company or its shareholders buy back an investor’s stock. Financial disclosure forms show that Myers sold for a fraction of what he previously claimed it was worth.
....
Walter M. Shaub Jr., is a former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and a special advisor to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Follow https://twitter.com/waltshaub
Gabe Lezra is staff counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
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