Feeney sinks further into ethics swamp

St. Petersburg Times Editorial

August 29, 2007

If U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Oviedo, has failed to burnish an image as a congressional influence peddler, it is not for lack of trying. Apparently not content with the outrage over his lavish 2003 Scotland golf trip on the dime of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Feeney is now paying for his legal defense with $5,000 from a businessman seeking a NASA contract.

Call it shameless symmetry.

Feeney created his legal defense fund in June, at the same time he was denying that the Justice Department considers him a suspect in its ongoing investigation of bribery in Congress. He told the Orlando Sentinel then that the fund was going to be used to provide necessary records to investigators and to "demonstrate conclusively that I always have acted with honesty and integrity."

Toward that quest to demonstrate his integrity, Feeney has now taken a $5,000 contribution from a company owned by his longtime political benefactor, Tyng-Lin Yang. Yang, as the Sentinel reports, is also president of Yang Enterprises, which is seeking a "logistics operations" contract at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Feeney is the senior Republican on the House Science space subcommittee. Feel cozy?

Yang and Feeney are no strangers. Feeney once worked as a lobbyist for Yang Enterprises and was accused, while he served as Florida House speaker, of using his position to intervene in a contract dispute with the state. Over the past six years, Yang and his wife have donated $18,000 to Feeney's campaigns.

Feeney's spokesman says the congressman has never asked NASA to consider Yang for work. Feeney himself generally continues to beg off questions about the Justice investigation, saying he is "anxious to discuss this matter further when the time is appropriate."

For Feeney, most observers would view that the "appropriate" time has long since passed. But Feeney, named "Representative #3" in Abramoff court documents and one of the "20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress" by a Washington ethics group, appears to be on a different mission. If his reason for silence is to further stoke the public's growing distrust, he is right on schedule.