Espy Repays $7,400 for Gifts and Expenses : Ethics: His attorney says the agriculture secretary wants to avoid apearance of impropriety. Payments included car lease and football tickets.
Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy has reimbursed the government and private organizations in recent weeks for expenses and gifts ranging from Super Bowl tickets to lease payments on a Jeep Cherokee that Espy occasionally used for personal transportation during his frequent trips to his hometown of Jackson, Miss.
An attorney for Espy said Wednesday that the agriculture secretary was not legally required to repay the funds but that he wanted to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. A court-appointed independent counsel, Los Angeles attorney Donald C. Smaltz, is investigating whether Espy violated the law by accepting gifts from companies regulated by his department.
“He took the position that where there was even the remotest question about his conduct, he wanted to repay it and clear up any questions,” said Reid Weingarten, one of Espy’s lawyers. “He wanted to put this behind him.”
The recent reimbursements totaled about $7,400. They covered nearly $6,200 for the lease payments that Espy billed to the department for seven months for his vehicle, $700 for four tickets to last January’s Super Bowl in Atlanta and $450 for a night’s stay at a resort where Espy addressed a trade association.
Previously, Espy said that he had repaid the cost of travel and tickets to a Dallas Cowboys championship football game from Tyson Foods, the large Arkansas poultry company with close ties to President Clinton, and tickets to a Chicago Bulls basketball game provided by a Quaker Oats executive at Espy’s request.
Ethics laws prohibit senior federal officials from accepting all but small gifts from companies with interests before their agencies. A strict 1907 law bars agriculture officials with responsibility for regulating the meat and poultry industries from taking any gratuities from companies the department oversees.
A former three-term congressman, Espy had originally leased the Jeep through his congressional office for use when he was in his district. As agriculture secretary, Espy visited Mississippi on nearly a quarter of his 89 trips during his first 20 months in office, according to records released last week.
Espy, who has been mentioned as a possible future candidate for governor or the Senate in Mississippi, used the vehicle for official business. But he also used it on occasion to drive his two children who reside in Mississippi or for other personal reasons, Weingarten said. Espy is divorced.
He repaid the government $6,200 for leasing the Jeep, which he subsequently bought.
The Super Bowl tickets were a gift from an Atlanta museum that developed a Smokey Bear program in conjunction with the game. Espy, who oversees the Forest Service as agriculture secretary, planned to attend the game as a participant in the program, his attorney said. But because the museum event was curtailed, Weingarten said, Espy later decided to repay the $700 for all the tickets. Espy, who gave the other three tickets to friends, had initially reported two of the tickets as gifts valued at $350.
Nonetheless, Weingarten added, “His presence there (at the Super Bowl) was purely official.”
Espy also repaid the American Crop Protection Assn. $450 for the cost of a one-night stay at a West Virginia resort in September, 1993. Espy addressed the agricultural chemical producers’ conference there.
Jay Vroom, the association’s president, said that “in a rush to leave right after the speech, nobody ever checked (Espy) out and the hotel just incorporated that charge on our master account.”
Weingarten said that the association was supposed to send Espy a bill for his lodging.
