Baron Hill Obtains $375,000 Earmark for Top Staffer's Former Lobbying Client

It is a striking and incredible useful capability of the Internet to allow citizens to notice interesting connections between congressmen, lobbyists, congressional staffers, and earmarks that before would have never seen the light of day.

After he lost the election in 2004, Baron Hill went and got a job at mCapitol Management, a big Washington lobbying firm.

When he went to mCapitol, Baron was followed at the same time by Ryan Guthrie, his former chief of staff:

mCapitol Management today announced the hiring of former Congressman Baron P. Hill as Senior Advisor to the firm and former Chief of Staff Ryan C. Guthrie as Vice President of the firm effective immediately.

Baron, being a former Congressman, was not given lobbying responsibilities; he got a cushy job as a "senior advisor."

Guthrie, however, did become a registered lobbyist.

His clients included the Cook Group, Emergent Biosolutions, Integrity BioFuels, MWH Global, and Schneck Memorial Hospital.

He also represented some of those same clients, including the Cook Group and Schneck Memorial Hospital, in 2005.

In 2006 alone, mCapitol--while Baron was a "senior advisor" and Guthrie was a lobbyist and "vice president"--was paid $30,000 by Schneck Memorial for lobbying services.

You might remember Schneck Memorial Hospital.

It's in Seymour, Baron's home town.

Baron Hill and Ryan Guthrie must have liked Schneck Memorial a lot.

So much, in fact, that Hill (now back in Congress) and Guthrie (now back as Baron's chief of staff) requested it get an earmark to the tune of $375,000 in the current round of appropriations bills (detailed in a listing provided recently by the Courier-Journal):

• $375,000 to Schneck Medical Center in Seymour to expand the emergency department.

For being a "nonprofit" hospital, Schneck sure has good business sense.

It gave $30,000 to mCapitol Management for lobbying by Ryan Guthrie in 2006.

Baron Hill, Guthrie's boss, got Schneck an earmark for $375,000 as soon as he got back in Congress.

That's the sort of return on investment that would make any for-profit investor more than just a little happy; 1,250% in about a year.

Your tax dollars at work.

It's not illegal as far as I can find, even under the new Congressional ethics rules the Democrats have claimed to tighten.

The so-called revolving door of Congressmen and their staffers going to work as lobbyists can barely be considered closed as it stands.

However, Guthrie and Schneck (his former client) benefited from a sort of reverse revolving door that is not even covered under ethics rules insofar as they currently exist.

Regardless of the letter of those ethics rules, this sure looks unethical in the less-legislated and less-Washington-insider senses.

It's the sort of startling shady deal and eye-opening conflict of interest that Baron Hill campaigned on trying to clean up in Washington.

Instead, it looks like he is fostering an entirely new form of it alongside his chief of staff.

And these are just the sorts of shady deals that we can find out with the limited transparency currently available to the public.

Full transparency remains elusive.

Earlier in the year, according to an article in the April 2 Indianapolis Star, Baron refused to disclose a full list of requested earmarks despite promising to do so in 2006 after he was elected.

His spokesperson explained this apparent shift by saying that Mr. Hill misunderstood the promise when he made it.

EDIT: Label update.