From the Associated Press:

For the past five years, Sen. George Allen, has failed to tell Congress about stock options he got for his work as a director of a high-tech company. The Virginia Republican also asked the Army to help another business that gave him similar options.

Allen’s people say because the stock was selling below the purchase price, the options were worthless, so he didn’t feel he had to report them.

But that’s beside the point. The disclosure requirement exists to make sure lawmakers aren’t pushing legislation that could benefit them financially. Just because the stock is selling below the option price, for example, doesn’t mean a lawmaker couldn’t steer a couple of federal contracts the company’s way to give the price a nudge.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 8th, 2006 at 7:45 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.