From the NYT:

Specter Denies Funneling Money for Lobbyist

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: February 17, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 — Senator Arlen Specter defended himself and a member of his staff on Thursday after the disclosure that clients of a lobbyist married to the staff member had received money through the senator's actions.

Vicki Siegel Herson, who until recently was Mr. Specter's legislative assistant on the Appropriations Committee, is married to Michael Herson, a top executive of the lobbying firm American Defense International.

Mr. Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and his staff confirmed that six of Mr. Herson's clients received a total of about $50 million over the last four years through items Mr. Specter inserted into military appropriations bills in a process known as "earmarking." The earmarks were first reported Thursday in USA Today.

In a conference call with reporters Thursday afternoon, Mr. Specter said that neither he nor his aide, who uses her maiden name professionally, had violated any ethics rules.

"Vicki Siegel's husband did not lobby me or anybody in my office," Mr. Specter said, adding that she left her position with the committee six months ago for unrelated personal reasons. She remains on his staff.

Still, Mr. Specter said he would conduct a further inquiry into the possibility that Ms. Siegel might have knowingly played a role in allocating federal money to one of her husband's clients.

"That would be a blatant conflict of interest," Mr. Specter said. "I don't think that happened, but I am going to go back and take a look at the specifics of it."

By the end of the day, a spokesman for Mr. Specter said he had decided "voluntarily" to refer the case to the Senate Ethics Committee as well.

Many Congressional staff personnel — along with several members of Congress — are married to lobbyists. But the questions raised about whether Ms. Siegel had a role in helping her husband's clients receive millions of dollars is coming to light at time when recent scandals have drawn new scrutiny to lobbyists' influence on Capitol Hill.

The potential benefit to the Siegel and Herson household from the appropriations could set off Senate rules governing conflicts of interest. The rules state that a staff member must not "permit any compensation to accrue to his beneficial interest from any source, the receipt of accrual of which would occur by virtue of influence improperly exerted from his position."

The Senate ethics manual describes the rule as "a broad prohibition" against either members or staff personnel, "directly or indirectly, deriving financial benefits from the use of their official positions."

Earmarking, the process that allows Mr. Specter and other members of Congress to insert financing for favorite projects into major spending bills, has recently become a special target for reform efforts. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service recently said that the number of earmarks climbed last year to 15,877 items with a value of $47.4 billion from 4,126 with a total value of $23.2 billion in 1994.

Last week, a bipartisan group led by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, introduced a proposal to make inserting such earmarks much more difficult. Others are proposing new enforcement measures to police Congressional ethics.

Mr. Specter said many Republicans were debating the issue but he also defended the practice. Eliminating defense earmarks entirely could hurt Pennsylvania companies, impair the industrial base for military work, and deprive military officials of the thinking of experienced members of the Appropriations Committee. "You have got a lot of weighty considerations," Mr. Specter added.

Mr. Specter said that "I think I knew" that Ms. Siegel's husband was a lobbyist, but that he had met him only a few times and might not recognize him "in a crowded room."

He said that all six clients of Mr. Herson's firm who received the allocations had made their appeals to his office through other channels. A spokesman for Mr. Specter said later that Drexel University, in Philadelphia, which was the recipient of some of the largest allocations, had made its requests through one of its officials and through another lobbying firm, American Continental Group.

Another recipient, 3e Technologies International, with headquarters in Rockville, Md., and facilities in Pennsylvania, had approached his office through the government relations firm Edington, Peel and Associates. A third, Universal Space Network, of Horsham, Pa., worked through the firm Capitol Resource Group. Executives of three other companies, Gestalt, Power + Energy, and Gentex, approached Mr. Specter's office personally, his spokesman said.

"The allocations in issue went to Pennsylvania companies for items which were important to national defense," Mr. Specter said in a statement.

Neither Ms. Siegel nor Mr. Herson returned telephone calls seeking comment. A spokesman for Mr. Specter said Ms. Siegel joined his staff about seven years ago. Before that, she was a lobbyist for a firm with clients in the military industry. Mr. Specter said that about six months ago she reduced her work schedule to spend more time with her children; she now works in Mr. Specter's office as a liaison to Jewish groups.

Mr. Herson worked in the personnel office of the Defense Department before becoming a lobbyist. Separately Thursday, members of Congress presented new proposals for policing Congressional ethics. Representative Martin T. Meehan, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, proposed the creation of a new nonpartisan office of public integrity to investigate ethics complaints. Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, said he had introduced a bill to create an independent commission outside of Congress that could investigate possible improprieties.