Tag: Small Business Administration

Tom Brenner for The New York Times WASHINGTON — Linda E. McMahon, one of five women in President Trump’s cabinet and the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, stepped down on Friday as the head of the Small Business Administration, the White House announced. One of Mr. Trump’s most prolific donors during the 2016 presidential campaign, Ms. McMahon joined the administration early in Mr. Trump’s term and avoided the kinds of scandals and high-profile attention that many of her cabinet colleagues endured during the last two years. With Ms. McMahon by his side at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Mr. Trump praised her as a “superstar” who had done much to improve the operation of the Small Business Administration. “Just so smooth. She has helped so many people in the world of small business.” In recent weeks, Ms. McMahon was thought to be a contender to replace Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, once he departs the government. In a statement, Ms. McMahon said that she was proud of the work she had done in government. “The focus that we have put on supporting women entrepreneurship, veteran businesses and rural development has been particularly rewarding for me,” she said in the statement put out by the Small Business Administration. A business executive who turned her attention to politics later in life, Ms. McMahon ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate in Connecticut in 2010 and again in 2012. Her expected departure from the administration was first reported by Politico. People familiar with Ms. McMahon’s thinking said she was expected to take a position at the America First PAC, the political action committee supporting Mr. Trump’s re-election.

The report portrayed such information as crucial to holding appointees to high standards. “Strong ethics programs are critical to ensuring public trust in government and the integrity of actions taken on the public’s behalf,” it states. “Political appointees, in particular agency heads, have a personal responsibility to exercise leadership in ethics. … [M]embers of the public need access to information on who is serving in political appointee positions. Otherwise, they are limited in their ability to discern whether appointees are performing their duties free of conflict.” Neither federal agencies nor the White House are required to publicly post full, up-to-date listings of political appointees or senior government officials, many of whom don’t face confirmation or public hearings by the Senate. “In the absence of comprehensive and timely data on political appointees serving in the executive branch, two nongovernmental organizations — the Partnership for Public Service and ProPublica — stated that they collect and report some data themselves,” the report notes. The report states that ProPublica’s Trump Town tracks all types of federal political appointees but “one limitation is that they rely on agency responses to FOIA requests and therefore the data may not be comprehensive or timely.” ProPublica staffers (including the author of this article) were interviewed by the GAO in 2018. The GAO recommended Congress consider legislation that would require the “comprehensive and timely information on political appointees serving in the Executive Branch to be collected and made publicly accessible.” The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is now considering the GAO recommendation. Launched in March 2018, Trump Town is a searchable database of 3,232 current and former Trump administration political appointees, including their jobs and offices, employment history, lobbying records, government ethics documents, financial disclosures and, in some cases, resumes. In 2012, a group of former federal officials in law enforcement, diplomatic and national security positions wrote to congressional leaders, saying a searchable list would “create significant threats to the national security and to the personal safety and financial security of the executive branch officials and their families, especially career employees.” The letter also called complete personal financial information of all senior officials on the internet a “jackpot for enemies of the United States intent on finding security vulnerabilities they can exploit.” The GAO report did not address this assertion, but it implied such circumstances are a long way off: “Until the names of political appointees and their position, position type, agency or department name, start and end dates are publicly available at least quarterly, it will be difficult for the public to access comprehensive and reliable information.” Filed under: The Trump Administration