$2,000 to Lawmakers Before Vote to Buy Trucks Called ‘Coincidence’

A Newport Beach congressman was among a group of six lawmakers who accepted $2,000 honorariums from a Wisconsin trucking company hours before voting on a measure that forced the U.S. Army to buy 500 more trucks from the firm than it wanted.

Although Rep. Robert E. Badham and aides for some of the other congressmen who attended the April breakfast said Friday that the timing of the payments was merely “coincidental” with their vote last year, some critics called it a blatant conflict of interest.

“There’s no question that it looks bad,” added Lewis Clark, executive director of the Government Accountability Project, a Washington-based government watchdog group.

Badham called the $2,000 honorarium from the Oshkosh Truck Corp. “absolutely meaningless” in terms of his decision-making on the truck issue.

Financial Disclosures

The honorarium disclosures were contained in financial disclosure statements the congressmen had to file for 1987 by last month and were the subject of news reports published Friday.

Federal law allows congressmen to accept honorariums up to $2,000.

The vote in question was taken on April 1, 1987, hours after Badham and six other members of the House Armed Services Committee were taken to breakfast by Oshkosh executives and each given $2,000 honorariums.

Oshkosh officials, also insisting that the timing of the breakfast was coincidental, said they gave the honorariums to compensate the elected officials for their time.

Besides Badham, the other congressmen present were Democrats Marvin Leath of Texas, Roy Dyson of Maryland, Norman Sisisky of Virginia, and Republicans Bill Dickinson of Alabama and Larry Hopkins of Kentucky, according to aides for the congressmen.

Forced Purchase by Army

Afterward, the house armed services procurement subcommittee--which included all of the congressmen at the breakfast except Dickinson, who is a ranking Republican on the full committee--voted overwhelmingly to approve an amendment sponsored by Leath that forced the Army to buy 500 more of Oshkosh’s 10-ton trucks. The trucks are used as support tankers and ammunition haulers.

Since the measure passed on a voice vote, a record was not made on how each of the congressmen voted. Badham, Dyson and Hopkins voted in favor of Leath’s amendment, the congressmen and their aides said Friday. Sisisky’s office said he voted against it.