NEW DETAILS EMERGE OF FORMER LAWMAKER’S CONSULTING AGREEMENT

Former New Mexico lawmaker Heather Wilson began a $10,000 a month consulting job with Sandia National Laboratories on the day she left the House of Representatives in January of 2009, according to documents obtained by Nuclear Watch New Mexico. The Department of Energy Inspector General revealed earlier this year that Wilson was paid more than $450,000 for undocumented work as a consultant for Sandia, Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories and the Nevada National Security Site while she was out of Congress from 2009 to 2011. The Albuquerque Journal reported yesterday that Wilson did not say that she would be working for Sandia in House disclosure forms, revealing only that she would be employed by Heather Wilson and Co. LLC, a company she incorporated during her last month in Congress.

The Journal also reported that Wilson said she filed the necessary forms revealing that she had begun negotiations for a new job to the House Ethics Committee within the required three days from the start of the talks. Wilson, who was appointed earlier this year to serve on a National Nuclear Security Administration governance panel, defended her actions in an interview with the Journal. “I did what I was supposed to do,” Wilson said. “I disclosed things. I made sure there weren’t conflicts of interest and I answered the questions honestly as they were posed.”

Nuclear Watch New Mexico Executive Director Jay Coghlan called Wilson’s actions “highly questionable ethical behavior” and renewed a call for her to resign from the NNSA governance panel. Lawmakers “should remember that they were elected to represent their constituents, not the for-profit corporations running the labs,” Coghlan said in a statement. “Our politicians should avoid even the appearance of favoring the interests of the nuclear weapons labs above the public’s best interests, which Wilson so clearly failed to do.”