By Bart Jansen and Alex Knott, CQ Staff

A small number of lobbyists are super insiders. They don’t just donate money to their favorite congressional causes — they serve as treasurers of the lawmakers’ campaign committees.

One of them is Janice Enright, a registered lobbyist who is also treasurer of HillPAC, one of the political committees of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton , D-N.Y.

Cleta Mitchell of the Foley & Lardner lobbying firm is treasurer for two congressional political action committees: Wyoming Values PAC, affiliated with Sen. John Barrasso , R-Wyo., and Fund for a Conservative Future, affiliated with Sen. James M. Inhofe , R-Okla.

Those in the business of seeking favors and those in a position to grant favors can be intertwined in such ways without running afoul of lobbying or ethics laws or congressional rules.

Congressional Quarterly’s examination of campaign finance, lobbying and legislative records found 18 members of Congress who entrusted registered lobbyists with responsibility for the record-keeping of their re-election campaign committees or leadership PACs during 2007.

Some of those lawmakers were listed by the House and Senate Appropriations committees as having requested spending earmarks included in the fiscal 2008 omnibus appropriations law (PL 110-161) for clients of their lobbyist-treasurers.

Watchdog groups are predictably critical of such arrangements.

“What a way to get your hand in the pocket of the lawmaker,” said Craig Holman of Public Citizen.

“It’s not saying that all of them are evil characters,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center. “It’s simply saying that by definition as a lobbyist you are being paid by a private interest to influence the outcome of public policy made by these federal officials.”

The number of lawmakers who turn their campaign finance accounting over to lobbyists is small and getting smaller, perhaps because recent lobbying scandals and last year’s lobbying overhaul (PL 110-81) put a spotlight on the interactions of legislators and paid advocates.

In 2005, the Center for Public Integrity identified 27 lobbyists who doubled as treasurers for 44 congressional re-election committees or PACs.

“It’s an infinitesimally small number,” said election law expert William B. Canfield, who until March 6 was treasurer of Idaho Republican Sen. Michael D. Crapo ’s Freedom Fund.

“It’s not the job it once was,” said Canfield, explaining that computer software has taken over much of the record-keeping chores. “I think a lot [of treasurers] don’t even read the reports before they sign them and push the enter button to send them off to the FEC.”

“We have always done it as a matter of legal services,” said Guy R. Martin, a Perkins Coie lobbyist, who serves as campaign treasurer for Rep. John D. Dingell , D-Mich. “I don’t think John would recognize me if I walked across the street right now.”

The Federal Election Commission is considering additional regulation of congressional campaign committees and PACs with treasurers who are registered lobbyists. Under a proposed rule, if the FEC concluded that a political action committee was “controlled by a lobbyist” additional disclosure reports would have to be filed by candidates who received bundled contributions from that committee.

The FEC cannot impose additional regulation at the moment. Without enough commissioners in office to muster a quorum, all rule-making is effectively on hold.

Lawmakers See No Conflict

Rep. Ed Pastor , D-Ariz., said he had a good reason to put his faith and his campaign finance paperwork in the hands of lobbyist Arthur A. Chapa, part of the congressman’s inner circle for 17 years. “He was a friend and I trusted him,” Pastor said.

Clients of Chapa received earmarks worth more than $2.5 million in the fiscal 2008 spending package — all requested by Pastor and all in Pastor’s district. They ranged from a highway extension analysis to a mobile prenatal clinic.

“These are projects that I would have supported whether or not he was a lobbyist,” said Pastor.

“These are not bridges to nowhere,” said Chapa, who was paid about $220,000 by the Pima County Board of Supervisors, St. Joseph’s Hospital and Northern Arizona University for his help in securing the projects, according to lobbying reports. The university is affilated with Translational Genomics Research Institute, which received a $900,000 earmark.

“I would never bring him something that is going to be an embarrassment to him or his constituents. I wouldn’t do that. And you know what, he’d throw me out of his office if I did.”

Enright is the lobbying partner of Harold Ickes, a Clinton presidential campaign adviser, and they both worked in the Clinton White House.

The Senate Appropriations Committee listed Clinton as having jointly requested, with Sen. Charles E. Schumer , D-N.Y., hundreds of millions of dollars that the spending law earmarks for New York projects. About $4 million of that funding went to clients of Enright and Ickes, including $292,000 designated for a United Auto Workers training program that is a part of an umbrella group, Consortium for Worker Education, that Enright represents.

Another $487,000 is going to the Brooklyn Public Library for learning centers; and $585,000 to the New York Hall of Science in Queens for science exhibits and educational programming. Both recipients are clients of Enright, who also helped secure three earmarks totaling $1.5 million for the Abyssinian Development Corp. for family displacement, after-school, summer and at-risk youth programs.

Enright also represented Nassau County, which is getting $1.56 million for buses and bus facilities.

Those clients paid the Enright-Ickes team a total of $450,000, with the Brooklyn Public Library, Nassau County and Abyssinian Development fees coming as part of contracts through a sister firm, Johnson, Madigan, Peck, Boland & Stewart Inc.

Jeffrey Peck, a partner at Johnson, Madigan, Peck, Boland & Steweart, said that while he was not aware of the reason specific clients were handled by Ickes-Enright, “We are going utilize the person who has the best background, experience or a relationship in a particular situation.”

Neither Enright nor Clinton aides responded to requests for comment.

Mitchell, a former National Republican Senatorial Committee counsel and now a lobbyist at Foley & Larger, was both treasurer of Sen. James M. Inhofe ’s Fund for a Conservative Future and counsel to the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum last year.

Inhofe successfully requested a $97,000 earmark for the facility, which memorializes victims of the 1995 federal building bombing.

Mitchell’s fee from the memorial was roughly $60,000.

The lobbyist said she has known Inhofe for 30 years, and described her work for the memorial as providing quarterly briefings to the Oklahoma congressional delegation, which has been trying since 2005 to win appropriations that were authorized earlier but not fully funded. She is also trying to dislodge from federal storage artwork salvaged from the former Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

“This is not some pet project that is a bridge to nowhere. This is a national memorial that involved the bombing of a federal building and the loss of federal employee lives,” Mitchell said.

Jon S. Bouker, former chief counsel to Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton , D-D.C., is now a lobbyist at Arent Fox. From Feb. 26, 2007 to Jan. 17, 2008, he was listed as treasurer of Norton’s re-election committee — a disclosure detail that Norton and Bouker said unintentionally outlasted his tenure.

“We learned that there was an error, apparently made by the campaign staff, in submitting his name long after he was off,” Norton said. “It’s our mistake. It sure isn’t his.”

While Bouker was listed as treasurer on the campaign committee’s reports, Holmes Norton secured a $500,000 earmark for the Forest City development project, which Bouker represented. She also introduced a bill (HR 4033) sought by other Bouker clients aimed at providing better maintenance at District of Columbia public golf courses. Bouker was paid about $80,000 by the two sets of clients.

As illustrated by the D.C. example, earmarks are not the only way a lawmaker can help the clients of a lobbyist. Members of Congress can write, support or oppose legislation that a lobbyist is being paid to promote or block. That can present the appearance of a possible conflict of interest.

Lobbyist Michael J. Remington is a former chief counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property. He is also treasurer of the campaign fund of House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. , D-Mich.

Remington now represents two big players in the debate over changing patent law (HR 1908)— the Biotechnology Industry Organization and Amgen Inc.

“The way I’ve handled it is I’ve told staff to treat me as any other lobbyist,” said Remington. “I don’t want any favors for me or my clients.”

A Conyers spokeswoman said the chairman “evaluates the issues that Mr. Remington or any other lobbyist brings before him on the merits, consistent with House ethics rules and law.”

Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn was involved in the patent overhaul debate at the same time that the treasurer of his Alamo PAC, Kerry N. Cammack, was lobbying on the issue for software company SAP America. Cammack collected $180,000 last year from SAP to lobby on the Senate patent bill (S 1145) approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last July. Cornyn, a member of the Judiciary panel, co-sponsored the legislation.

A Cornyn spokesman declined to talk about Cammack.

Cornyn’s Texas Republican colleague in the Senate, Kay Bailey Hutchison , has also picked a lobbyist as her campaign treasurer. Ben A. Brooks III lobbies for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Administration, which receives federal funding.

“Mr. Brooks has not ever lobbied this office,” said Hutchison spokesman Matt Mackowiak, who added that the senator “does not believe there is any conflict of interest.”