Wampum

I just posted this as a comment over at The Next Hurrah, in regards to Marcy's post yesterday on Kempthorne's secretive New Subcommittee on Royalty Revenue Management, which, according to POGO, met this week.

The subcommittee itself is just chockful of interesting folk. First, there's David Deal, who was originally picked by Kempthorne to head the subcommittee, but withdrew that idea after outcry from Senators investigating MMS. So who is Deal? From Findlaw,

"Immediately prior to joining the firm, Mr. Deal served as Assistant General Counsel & Director, Office of General Counsel, for the American Petroleum Institute in Washington, D.C., the nation's largest petroleum industry association. Mr. Deal, who has extensive experience in the federal regulatory process, had worked for the Institute since 1975. He has written and delivered testimony before Congress, analyzed legislation, managed challenges of agency regulations in federal courts, mostly the DC Circuit, and participated in regulatory negotiation. His natural resources and environmental experience includes serving as senior legal advisor on the Clean Air Act, with 10 years devoted almost exclusively to state and federal motor fuels issues.

For more than 20 years, he was the sole API lawyer on federal royalty management matters including legislation, rulemaking, litigation, and Congressional investigations. In addition, he was the sole API lawyer on OCS Lands Act, Mineral Lands Leasing Act and Coastal Zone Management Act matters. He served as a two-term member of the Secretary of the Interior's Royalty Management Advisory Committee. Most recently, for his work in the federal royalty management area, Mr. Deal was named to receive a US Department of the Interior Mineral Management Service's Corporate Leadership Award for 2002."

Then there are the two chairs Kempthorne ended up going with: Bob Kerrey and Jake Garn. I'm sure most Progressives have more than a few things to say about Kerrey, but for our purposes, one of the things he is not is an expert on Mineral Management - he spent his time in the Senate on Ag, which has oversite for the Department of Agriculture, not Interior, wherein MMS lies.

More interesting is the selection of Jake Garn, former Senator from Utah. Garn is best known for his authoring of the 1982 Garn - St Germain Depository Institutions Act, which led to the Savings and Loan meltdown later in the decade. And who was the lobbyist who wrote most of that bill? Fred Thompson.

Also on the committee is Cynthia Lummis, who most recently was one of the three finalists selected by the Wyoming GOP for consideration by the Wyoming Governor to replace Craig Thomas. Thomas was co-chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which has oversight on MMS regarding royalities from Indian Lands. (One of the other finalists was our friend, Tom Sansonetti.) Lummis was Wyoming Treasurer when former MMS director Johnnie Burton was head of the Wyoming Department of Revenue, and they'd previously served in the Wyoming Legislature together.

Of all the committee members, only Deal and Lummis have experience with Mineral Royalties (nearly all of Wyoming's revenue comes from oil, gas and mining royalties.) Clearly, while Kerrey and Garn are figureheads, this is Deal's committee, just like Kempthorne planned all along.

Boy, this gets more interesting by the minute, neh?

With all the dirt the WaPo is slinging at Cheney regarding his hands-on involvement in Interior, this is an intriguing footnote.

Update: Here's an interesting tidbit. While Koch Industries was being investigated in the late 1990s for royalties fraud, Bob Kerrey received contributions totalling $7000 from Koch.