The Clarion-Ledger Editorial, 9/13/7
In a nutshell, the Bloomberg-Barbour situation is this: The financial news service reported in August that Barbour was still an owner of the lobbying firm he created in 1991 in Washington, D.C., when he became governor here in 2004 and that he now receives $25,000 a month from it via a “blind trust” of which the Mississippi Ethics Commission is aware and has given its blessing.
The nature of the income is significant because the firm, which still operates under the name Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, represented clients in 2006 who were lobbying in Mississippi for Hurricane Katrina recovery contracts. If payments to Barbour were part of a fixed pension plan, that would be one thing. If the payments were related to how well the firm was doing or were profit-sharing, then that would put the governor in the position of receiving, in a roundabout way, personal wealth as a consequence of the devastating storm.
In the affray, Barbour has said only that it being an election year, no “liberal New York media” could be expected to report anything nice about him.
Magnolia Tribune
