Thursday, December 31, 2009
McDonnell commerce appointee intends to keep corporate board positions
The incoming secretary of commerce and trade wants to stay on several corporate boards.
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Governor-elect Bob McDonnell's incoming commerce and trade secretary is offering to take a pay cut if he's allowed to stay on the governing boards of several large corporations -- an arrangement that could create conflict-of-interest issues for the administration.
As secretary of commerce and trade, Robert Sledd would oversee 13 state agencies and help the governor carry out business-related policies. Sledd is on the board of directors of three companies that could potentially be affected by any policy changes, including tobacco giant Universal Corp. of Richmond.
Dave Levinthal, spokesman for the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, said the arrangement could create a perception problem for the new administration. "People could develop the view that this is a conflict of interest. It's going to be incumbent on him to explain why it's not."
Associated Press
Bob Sledd will become Virginia's secretary of commerce and trade on Jan. 16.
The details of secretary-designate Sledd's offer -- including the size of his state salary -- have not been worked out, but the attorney general's office has given its blessing, said McDonnell spokeswoman Taylor Thornley. McDonnell chose Sledd as commerce secretary earlier this month.
"The point of his proposing this is to save the commonwealth money, and to stay connected to the business community," Thornley said.
The maximum salary for the secretary's job is just under $153,000 a year. As a director of the Louisiana-based SCP Pool Corp., Sledd earned $177,270 last year, according to records filed with the federal government Tuesday. As a director of Richmond's Owens & Minor Co., a medical supplies distributor, Sledd earned $46,874 last year, according to the records. Sledd was elected a director at Universal earlier this year, so no earnings information was available.
Sledd, a Richmond native, was chief executive officer for Performance Food Group for a number of years. He is now managing partner of Pinnacle Ventures LLC.
Sledd disclosed his proposal Wednesday during an interview with a freelance writer working for the Blue Ridge Business Journal, which is owned by the same company that owns The Roanoke Times.
Sledd could not be reached for comment later. But according to the freelancer's transcript of the interview, Sledd said he hoped to use the money that would have gone toward his salary to spend more money on staff salaries, enabling him to hire "all-stars."
Simultaneously, the arrangement would allow him to stay plugged into the business community, Sledd said in the interview: "There's a lot of regulations and different things that affect business, both federal and state and otherwise, and it's good to stay in touch with that on a personal basis to see how it's affecting companies and see how they're dealing with it. ... So it's a real benefit for me to stay engaged with a couple of these boards."
Additionally, Sledd said, "I kind of need that income."
Levinthal said it is not unheard of for elected and appointed officials across the nation to "keep a foot in" the private sector, but they have to be careful.
"In a way it's like playing all-time quarterback in a pickup game of football -- where do your interests really lie?" he said. "If you're in a position of public trust and you're working on behalf of a private interest all the while, there are some concerns that could be raised about where your interests really lie."
Bob Gibson, executive director of the Sorenson Institute for Political Leadership in Charlottesville, said the arrangement, at a minimum, "is unusual."
The agencies Sledd would oversee include the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, the Department of Labor and Industry, the Virginia Tourism Corp. and the Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission.
Sledd said in the interview that he is on the boards of a number of nonprofit organizations as well, and he will take a leave of absence from most of them.
"In terms of my personal assets ... I'm going to research and find out if I need to put some of these things in a blind trust," he said. "I don't know that I have anything that would be perceived as a conflict, but I need to vet that, and if I do I will put those in a blind trust."
