Chuck Neubauer and Tom Hamburger @ The LA Times:
BULLHEAD CITY, ARIZ. — It’s hard to buy undeveloped land in booming northern Arizona for $166 an acre. But now-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid effectively did just that when a longtime friend decided to sell property owned by the employee pension fund that he controlled.
In 2002, Reid (D-Nev.) paid $10,000 to a pension fund controlled by Clair Haycock, a Las Vegas lubricants distributor and his friend for 50 years. The payment gave the senator full control of a 160-acre parcel in Bullhead City that Reid and the pension fund had jointly owned. Reid’s price for the equivalent of 60 acres of undeveloped desert was less than one-tenth of the value the assessor placed on it at the time.
Six months after the deal closed, Reid introduced legislation to address the plight of lubricants dealers who had their supplies disrupted by the decisions of big oil companies. It was an issue the Haycock family had brought to Reid’s attention in 1994, according to a source familiar with the events.
If Reid were to sell the property for any of the various estimates of its value, his gain on the $10,000 investment could range from $50,000 to $290,000.
It is a potential violation of congressional ethics standards for a member to accept anything of value — including a real estate discount — from a person with interests before Congress.
In a statement, Reid’s spokesman Jon Summers said that the transaction was not a gift and that the price was due to the property’s history and the fact that only a partial interest was sold. Reid’s action on the lubricants issue was unrelated to the sale and reflected the senator’s interest in fairness for small businesses, Summers said.
Reid “has never taken any official action to provide personal financial benefit to me, and I would never have asked him to,” Clair Haycock has told The Times. Haycock’s son, John, who runs the petroleum-products distribution company with him, said in a recent e-mail that it was “absolutely wrong” to connect the land sale and Reid’s lubricants legislation, which did not pass.
Records and interviews show that beginning in the mid-1990s, Reid tried several times to push legislation that would have protected lubricants distributors from abrupt cancellations by their suppliers. Though unsuccessful, the legislation sent a clear message to the oil firms that there was congressional interest in the matter, according to Sarah Dodge, then-legislative director for an industry group that worked on the bill.
By the time of the land sale, the Haycocks say, they had lost interest in the issue and were not aware that the legislation had been introduced.
Where were Harry Reid and his sons during the shootings in Wisconsin? Because I heard……..
Are you saying that Democrats are as self-serving as Republicans?
@Liberal1 (objectivity): Sorry they are much worse!!
@Common Sense: Whose worse? The Republicans?
@Liberal1 (objectivity): Sorry but not even close, the wacho Democrats are worse as evidenced by Reid’s disgusting displays.
How about this issue> http://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/06/will-reid-accusations-mccarthyism-from-the-desert/
How about this? http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/costs-conflicts-arise-in-reid-push-for-green-power-164858086.html People who live in glass houses should not throw stones!
@ Randy
If one strikes into Harry Reid’s history at any given spot, one invariably sees the signs of a well oiled and fuliy established criminal enterprise. It’s the family business and business is good.