The Missoulian reports new info on Conrad Burns' involvement with Marianas House Speaker Ben Fitial and Jack Abramoff.
Burns voted against a bill in May 2001 that would have strengthened U.S. oversight over the commonwealth's labor and immigration laws. A little more than a year before Burns had not opposed an identical measure.
The specifics inside.
Burns has said the $5,000 donation from an Abramoff client had nothing to do with his 2001 change in stance on the bill. Rather, the senator told Lee Newspapers this month he was persuaded to vote against the measure after reading two government reports about the islands and meeting with Fitial, who was then speaker of the Marianas House of Representatives.
Initially, Burns said he didn't know why he changed his position on the bill.
Burns' records show the senator met with Fitial for 15 minutes on the afternoon of April 3, 2001.
Campaign finance records and reports in Pacific Magazine show Fitial is a former executive of Tan Holdings. Eloy Inos, another Tan Holdings executive, donated $5,000 to Burns' Friends of the Big Sky on April 20, 2001, a little more than two weeks after Fitial's meeting with the senator.
...
Inos' check was among $12,000 Burns collected from Abramoff, his clients and associates in the weeks before the vote.
More recently, now-Governor Fitial commented that Abramoff "protected our Covenant" and denied that he was actively cooperating with federal investigators. Despite this, other members of the CNMI government have commented that they are, in fact, cooperating and corresponding with federal investigators.
The CNMI government hired Abramoff from 1994 to 2001 under a number of contracts, all totaling nearly $10 million. Abramoff earned nearly $1.1 million in 2001 for his work on the bill in question.
The AP reported last month that:
Abramoff's billing records, which AP obtained from the U.S. territorial islands under an open records request, show that in the three months before the vote, the lobbyist's team met twice with Burns and several more times with his Senate aides to discuss Marianas issues.
One of those meetings, between Burns' staff and Abramoff associate Todd A. Boulanger, occurred just six days before the vote.
Burns, as chairman of the Interior Department appropriations subcommittee, was in a position to do a great deal of favors for Fitial.
The Saipan Tribune reported back in 2001:
The two leaders talked about policies to strengthen the CNMI economy, the importance of local control, and ways in which the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee could assist the Islands with infrastructure and community development as well as capital improvements.
Local control meaning halting all US legislation which would regulate their inhumane industries - the sweatshops, the sex trade, etc.
The AP also reported:
At least some of the meetings, the billing records say, involved a federal matching funds program that helped the island with local construction projects.
The Marianas wanted relief from a requirement that the islands match some of the federal money it received.
In June, Burns' Senate subcommittee approved a committee version of the legislation including a provision that urged the Interior Department to re-evaluate the requirement, citing hard economic times in the islands.
James Pendleton, Burns' spokesman, has offered this response: "That was point one," he said. "The economic impact of (the defeated bill) would be negative."
It seems Conrad Burns cares more about helping exploitative industries prosper (which just happen to give him thousands of dollars) rather than regulating them. Jon Tester is right to call Burns on it.