Politics
Donna Shalala, on coronavirus oversight board, pays fine for not revealing stock sales
Miami Rep. Donna Shalala, who admitted last week that she broke federal law requiring the disclosure of stock sales, will pay a $1,200 fine for six violations because she failed to report hundreds of transactions made last year by a broker setting up a blind trust, according to the Democratic congresswoman’s office and a newly filed disclosure published Tuesday.
A 62-page report from Shalala made public Tuesday by the House Clerk details 556 stock transactions made by the congresswoman in 2019. She did not make any stock transactions in 2020.
There is no indication that Shalala engaged in insider trading, though her stock holdings on her previous financial disclosure, from 2018, led to criticism from left-leaning outlets that her portfolio conflicted with her work on an oversight committee set up oversee $500 billion in taxpayer money being used for coronavirus-related payouts to large businesses.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi named Shalala to the committee as the lone representative for House Democrats on April 17. Pelosi said on April 24 that Shalala’s position on the committee is secure despite her failure to disclose the stock trades.
“It was an honest mistake and she takes full responsibility,” Shalala spokesperson Carlos Condarco said. “Everything the congresswoman did was to prevent any appearance of gaming the system. She understands fully why public officials should disclose stock transactions. From now on she’ll be posting all her financial disclosures on her website.”
Shalala told the Miami Herald last week she sold a variety of stocks throughout 2019 to eliminate any potential conflicts of interest after she was elected to Congress in November 2018. But the transactions were not publicly reported as required by the STOCK Act, a 2012 law that prohibits members of Congress and their employees from using private information gleaned from their official positions for personal benefit and requires them to report stock sales and purchases within 45 days.
STOCK Act disclosures led to public revelations that North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr sold millions in stocks before markets tanked due to the coronavirus — but after he received classified briefings on the virus. Burr is now under investigation by the Department of Justice for insider trading.
The penalty for violating STOCK Act disclosure requirements is a $200 fine for every missed disclosure. Since the timing of Shalala’s transactions fell within six separate 45-day disclosure periods, she faces six fines totaling $1,200 for violating the law. The volume and value of transactions plays no role in how the fines are levied. Shalala’s office said she has already sent a $1,200 check to the House Ethics Committee.
Most of the 556 transactions, which are reported by range of their value, involved sums totaling between $1,000 and $15,000. Ten transactions, nine stock sales and one stock purchase were valued between $15,001 and $50,000.
Two transactions were valued between $50,001 and $100,000: an October 2019 selling of stock in Mednax, a Sunrise-based company that sells anesthesia and other healthcare-based services, and a February 2019 partial selling of stock in UnitedHealth, one of the country’s largest for-profit health insurers. She did not report capital gains in excess of $200 on either of those transactions.
Shalala, who served on UnitedHealth’s board until 2007, continues to hold UnitedHealth stock, her office said.
Condarco said Shalala informed her financial adviser in early 2019 that she wanted to divest her portfolio and set up a blind trust to remove any perception of conflicts of interest. After that happened, her individual stock holdings were transferred to an algorithm by her broker, which resulted in hundreds of transactions, including some purchases.
“There were some purchases that happened during this time frame, because of the way the congresswoman’s portfolio was set up,” Condarco said. “It wasn’t actively managed by a person but rather these algorithms.”
In mid-2019, Shalala requested that her broker sell off the remaining stocks and the final stocks were sold in August. She has not yet finished setting up the blind trust.
“The goal and the overall trend was to sell all these stocks,” Condarco said.
Shalala’s office said she continues to hold stocks in individual companies like UnitedHealth and Lennar, a Miami-based home construction company where Shalala earned at least $730,000 in deferred compensation, stocks and options during her 13 years and two stints on the company’s board. Her office said her remaining holdings, which will be made public in her next financial disclosure due in August, will not conflict with her upcoming work on the coronavirus oversight board.
“The overwhelming majority of her individual stock holdings have been sold off,” Condarco said. “The overwhelming amount of positions she has and the overall majority of the dollar value of assets...have been divested.”
The report confirms Shalala sold Alaska Airlines stock in March 2019, a company that stands to receive coronavirus bailout money. She also sold individual stocks in companies that could apply for bailout money, including Chevron, Conoco, AMC Networks and two firms advising the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve on the disbursement of loans and funds: Moelis and BlackRock. All of these sales were made at least seven months before she was chosen to sit on the oversight board as part of the CARES Act, the $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill.
Kedric Payne, former deputy general counsel for the Office of Congressional Ethics, said members of Congress should be restricted from trading individual stocks while they’re in office.
“Disclosure is the first step towards government accountability, but to rebuild public trust in government, Congress needs to go further and restrict trading of certain individual stocks,” said Payne, who now works at the Campaign Legal Center, an advocacy group that seeks to limit the influence of money in politics. “Their constituents deserve it.”
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