Links Between Charity and Congressman Raise Questions

A nonprofit group that helps disabled people find employment appears to have helped coordinate ties between Rep. John Murtha and lobbyists and business executives seeking federal appropriations, reports The Washington Post.

Carmen Scialabba, a former aide to Mr. Murtha, a Democrat from Pennsylvania who sits on the House Appropriations Committee and is expected to become its chairman in January, established the group in question—the Pennsylvania Association for Individuals With Disabilities—in 2001.

Currently, five government contractors serve on the charity’s board of directors, three lobbyists sit on its advisory board, and several other contractors are honorary board members.

The defense appropriations subcommittee has doled out millions of dollars in defense contracts to corporations that have employees on the board, while the lobbyists with ties to the charities have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees from the contractors. Mr. Murtha’s campaigns, in turn, have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from directors of the charity.

“It’s a real tangled web between the congressman, the nonprofit, the defense contractors and the lobbyists,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group. “It’s hard to say where one stops and the others start.”

Mr. Murtha did not respond to requests to comment for the article. Mr. Scialabba denies that his organization has mixed politics and charity in any way that is unacceptable.