Private and personal relationship

Bill Shuster admits ‘private and personal relationship’ with airline lobbyist

She "doesn’t lobby my office," Transportation chairman says.

By John Bresnahan, Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster is dating a top lobbyist for the leading U.S. airline trade association, an organization that spends millions of dollars trying to influence his panel.

The Pennsylvania Republican is currently at the center of high-stakes negotiations to enact the most sweeping overhaul of the Federal Aviation Administration in decades. The package could include changes to the nation’s air travel system, including the privatization of the air traffic control system. Airlines for America’s members — all of the nation’s largest airlines — have a major interest in the legislation.

Shuster and Shelley Rubino, vice president for global government affairs for Airlines for America, have been romantically involved since last summer, according to multiple sources familiar with their relationship. Rubino, a former top House Democratic leadership aide, has been with the trade group since March 2012.

The two are often seen together at fundraisers and D.C. events, where Shuster is a sought-after figure. They also have been spotted together in Washington when Congress is not in session.

“Ms. Rubino and I have a private and personal relationship, and out of respect for her and my family, that is all I will say about that,” the 54-year-old Shuster said in a statement.

Shuster added that his office “has in place a policy that deals with personal relationships that cover my staff and myself. This was created in consultation with legal counsel and goes further than is required by the law. Under that policy, Ms. Rubino doesn’t lobby my office, including myself and my staff.”

When Shuster started dating Rubino, 49, in the summer of 2014, he drafted a formal document stating she would not lobby him or his staff, including committee staff. This does not prevent Rubino from lobbying the other 50 members of the committee, and their aides.

An official with Airlines for America said the group has consulted outside counsel about Rubino’s relationship with Shuster. A4A, as the group is known, also said Rubino does not lobby the eighth-term lawmaker directly. But the trade group did not respond when asked whether she lobbies other committee members.

“She [Rubino] lobbies on varied issues affecting our members and their customers, including proposed airline regulations, tax issues and matters related to safety and security,” said Jean Medina, a spokeswoman for A4A.

“As a matter of practice, and out of respect for our employees’ privacy, we do not comment on their personal lives,” Medina said in a statement. “A4A ensures all of our advocacy work complies with all lobbying rules. A4A President and CEO Nick Calio has a longstanding relationship with Chairman Shuster, as he did with his father before him. As such, Mr. Calio is the chief person who lobbies Chairman Shuster on behalf of A4A and our members.”

Rubino, who made more than $400,000 in 2013, did not respond to a request for comment.

Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) office also did not have an immediate comment on the propriety of Shuster’s relationship with Rubino, which legal experts say would not appear to violate ethics laws.

Shuster’s father, Bud Shuster, resigned from Congress in January 2001 after allegedly accepting gifts from and giving preferential access to a former aide-turned-lobbyist. Bill Shuster won the seat after his father resigned. The elder Shuster denied wrongdoing at the time.

It isn’t the first time Bill Shuster’s personal interactions with female lobbyists have been an issue. He was said to be among a half-dozen congressmen then-Minority Leader Boehner spoke to about partying with female lobbyists at a Capitol Hill townhouse, according to news reports in 2010.

Shuster’s coziness with A4A goes beyond his personal ties with Rubino. He recently hired Chris Brown, A4A’s vice president for legislative and regulatory policy, to be staff director on the Transportation Committee’s aviation subcommittee. That panel is playing a critical role in the FAA reauthorization. Shuster’s personal office chief of staff, Eric Burgeson, is married to Christine Burgeson, senior vice president of government relations at A4A.

A4A is a powerful industry lobbying group. Its members include Delta Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, FedEx, Atlas Air, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest, United, UPS and US Airways. It spent $6.8 million on lobbying in 2014, according to disclosure forms filed with the Senate.

The group is led by Calio, who was the White House’s legislative affairs director under President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush. Shuster and Calio are close personal friends, according to several sources.

A4A and its employees have contributed more than $20,000 to Shuster’s campaign committees, according to Federal Election Commission records. The group’s political action committee donated $10,000 to Shuster during the 2014 election cycle, making him the only member to whom the group made the maximum contribution. Calio has given $6,700 personally to Shuster’s campaign committees as well.

A4A member companies and their employees have given hundreds of thousands more to Shuster throughout his career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign donations.

When the airline lobby hired Rubino from her job as chief of staff to Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), Shuster was quoted in the group’s news release, heaping praise on her.

“I have worked with Shelley and Chairman Larson’s office for the past few years and I have always found her to be hardworking, capable and bipartisan in her approach to issues,” said Shuster in a March 2012 news release put out by the association at the time. “I think Shelley will be a tremendous addition to the A4A team that Nick Calio is building.”

Rubino previously worked as director of government law and strategies at Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels in Hartford. She has long been involved in politics in the Nutmeg State, serving as a top aide to the former statehouse speaker.

Shuster has been closely aligned with A4A’s legislative priorities. As of the end of 2014, A4A was lobbying on the Transparent Airfares Act of 2014, legislation that Shuster personally introduced. The bill, which passed the House in July 2014 but has not become law, would roll back the Department of Transportation requirement that airlines advertise the cost of taxes and fees.

Shuster and A4A have also described how the airline industry is taxed in similar fashions. Shuster has called commercial airlines “the most regulated deregulated industry in America” and said it is targeted for taxes and fees much the way alcohol and tobacco are.

In a news release Wednesday, A4A stated: “In fact, air travel is taxed at much higher rates than other modes of transportation. Aviation’s federal tax rate is higher than that of alcohol or tobacco — products taxed to discourage their use.”

Medina, the group’s spokesman, acknowledged the organization often borrows Shuster’s rhetoric.

“As head of the T&I committee, Chairman Shuster shares A4A’s (and many other organizations’) views on how to improve travel and infrastructure without further harming airline customers who already are overburdened by taxes,” she said in an emailed statement. “In many cases, it is A4A picking up his language. He has pushed for a transformational FAA reauthorization bill. We fully agree and use that language as well. Alignment on the issues and making travel better for airline customers and creating jobs drives the agreement; to suggest otherwise is inappropriate.”

House ethics rules do not prohibit Shuster from working on issues affecting A4A. Conflict-of-interest rules don’t prohibit family members, including spouses, from lobbying lawmakers, although members are barred from taking action on an issue in which they have a direct financial stake. Other romantic relationships are not addressed in the House Ethics Manual.

That manual states that members are permitted to vote on an issue unless they have “a direct personal or pecuniary interest in the event of such question.?” Shuster did not report holdings in any airline stocks in his most recent financial disclosure.

Stan Brand, the former general counsel of the House and an ethics expert, said that as long as Rubino is a registered lobbyist — which she is — there is no apparent ethics violation by Shuster, even if he backed or advocated on behalf of legislation supported by her organization.

“Absent some exchange of gifts or things that would otherwise be a problem under the rules, I don’t think the mere fact of her relationship with [Shuster] trespasses any other rules, at least none that I know of,” Brand said. “The rules don’t automatically disqualify a spouse from being employed in a trade association that may have interests before the committee. … I don’t think that, in and of itself, is a violation.”

Bud Shuster, Bill’s father, was also a former chairman of the Transportation Committee. Following a long investigation, the Ethics Committee found Bud Shuster engaged in a “pattern and practice” of allowing his former top aide Ann Eppard — a transportation lobbyist — to appear before him on behalf of her clients after she left his staff. The CBS show “60 Minutes” filmed the elder Shuster hiding from TV cameras in the back seat of Eppard’s car in an attempt to conceal his relationship with her.