MEDILL NEWS SERVICE > Power Trips: Congress hits the road

Caribbean Trip Favored by Democrats
By CHRIS BOROWSKI
MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON -- At least 21 congressional Democrats have accepted trips in the past six years to luxurious Caribbean resorts organized by Karl Rodney, publisher of a small New York weekly newspaper called CaribNews.

Rodney, who finances the trips by lining up corporate backers, has boasted on his weekly radio programthat these annual jaunts are a more effective way to reach Democratic lawmakers, mianly members of the Congressional Black Caucus, than conventional lobbying in Washington. Republicans have never attended the events.

"You're proposing spending all kinds of money for lobby groups and what have you," Rodney said on his radio program. "They (lawmakers) don't see these lobbyists. They're taking their money and they'll spend 5, 10 minutes at most with a member."

"And here we are, with three days, with 16 (House) members," he said, according to a podcast recording of the progam dated Nov. 15.

The conferences in Bermuda, Bahamas, Jamaica and the Virgin Islands were sponsored in part by several large U.S. companies, including Citibank, AT&T, IBM and American Airlines, whose officials also took part in the meetings. Another sponsor, the pharmaceuticals group Pfizer, was represented at the most recent conference by Karen Boykin-Towns, a lobbyist registered in New York state.

Boykin-Towns and other representatives of the corporate sponsors did not return phone calls seeking comments.

In past years the attendees have included Harry Belafonte and some of the most powerful Democratic members of Congress, whose party leaders have criticized Republicans for taking expensive junkets from lobbyists and promised to enforce rules that prohibit lobbyist-sponsored travel now that they are the majority party.

Following scandals involving trips sponsored by Jack Abramoff and other lobbyists, members of Congress and their staffs to have cut their privately sponsored travel this year by two-thirds, according to a Medill News Service analysis of travel disclosure forms from Jan. 1, 2000, through mid-August 2006.

But the Caribbean Conference remains a favorite destination for some Democrats. The delegation to this year's trip - Nov. 8 to 11 in Panama City, Panama -- included Rep. Charles Rangel, D, N.Y., who is slated to chair the powerful House Ways and Means committee next year.

Between 2000 and 2005, Democratic lawmakers, their family members and staffers accepted at least 43 trips organized by CaribNews, according to an analysis of the disclosure forms. The trips to exotic locations that also included Puerto Rico and Grenada were worth a combined total of almost $60,000.

The most recent conference in Panama City, which took place just days after the sweeping electoral victory by the Democrats, is not included in the total because the deadline for filing travel disclosure forms - 30 days after a trip - has not yet been reached.

But as of the end of November, Rangel had yet to file a travel form for last year's conference in Virgin Islands. Earlier this year he acknowledged that he should not have allowed the Cuban government and a private donor to pay for his to son to accompany him to Cuba in April 2002. He filed an amended travel disclosure form stating that he had reimbursed the sponsors.

Rangel had included the 2005 Cuba trip in his personal financial disclosure forms, but members also are required to file a separate travel disclosure for each sponsored trip. His office did not return several phone calls and emails seeking comment.

In addition to Rangel, this year's conference at the Caesar Park Panama Hotel included Rep. Bennie Thompson D, Miss., the likely new chairman of the Homeland Security committee, and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.,set to take charge of an important subcommittee overseeing financial institutions.

"At the opening session we had 10 members coming in at one time led by Congressman Rangel with the shouts of 'chairman, chairman' and a tremendous uproar," said Rodney on his radio station, CaribWorldRadio.

Rodney, who did not return repeated calls, is a long-time supporter of Rangel and contributed $1,000 to the New York congressman's campaign in 2002.

Organizers said 13 members of Congress were among the more than 350 participants in Panama. However, out of the 18 lawmakers scheduled to attend, at least six said they did not make it, according to their offices.

The conference, which centers on the cooperation between the United States and Caribbean nations, included government officials from the region and Panama, who took part in the panel discussion and held a closed-door meeting with the U.S. lawmakers.

Onhis radio show, Rodney said Caribbean countries had plenty of issues that will come before the new Democratic-controlled Congress, including trade and travel.

The owner of CaribNews said that during the conference, Thompson wrote an e-mail to his chief of staff to look into passport issues that affect the region, while Waters expressed interest in helping to frame the issue of trade with Caribbean islands to avoid clashes with U.S. unions and protectionist Democrats.

On his weekly radio show, Rodney pointed out that Waters is a key member of the Financial Services committee, which is in charge of writing laws that have a direct effect on banking and tax havens in countries such as Bahamas, Panama and Cayman Islands.

Phone calls and emails to the offices of Thompson and Waters produced no official response.
Several leaders of the African-American community, politicians and business owners from the New York area who also took part in the conference said it was a busy weekend packed with panels and meetings.

"There was no chance to catch the sun," said Hazel Dukes, the head of the New York chapter of NAACP.

But Dukes added that the day before the event started, the participants visited the markets in Panama City to do some shopping and enjoyed a night cruise on the Panama Canal.

"I don't think that I spoke to anyone who will forget that experience," said Tony Best, the editor of CaribNews.

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