Date sent: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 02:12:50 -0600 (CST)
From: LindaP (Texas)
Subject: Fees paid to Hilary - Tucker


>Subject: Fees paid to Hilary - Tucker
>
>January 31, 1996
>
> 
>Inquiry Focuses on Fees Paid To Hillary Clinton
>
>By Drew Lindsay
>New York's state attorney general will decide soon whether to close or to
>widen a
>politically charged inquiry into compensation paid to Hillary Rodham Clinton
>and several
>prominent educators by a leading education think tank, a spokesman for his
>office said last
>week.
>At issue is $102,000 earned by Mrs. Clinton in 1991 as a consultant for the
>National Center
>on Education and the Economy, a not-for-profit education-reform and
>policymaking group
>based in Rochester, N.Y.
>State investigators are also examining payments made to Michael Cohen, now an
>adviser
>to U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley; David W. Hornbeck, now the
>Philadelphia
>schools superintendent; and Marc Tucker, the president of the center.
>New York Democrats are calling the inquiry part of a Republican smear
>campaign to tarnish
>the first lady's image as President Clinton prepares for his re-election bid.
>New York Attorney General Dennis C. Vacco is a political ally of U.S. Sen.
>Alfonse
>D'Amato, R-N.Y., who is heading a Senate investigation into President and
>Mrs. Clinton's
>Arkansas business dealings.
>Questions about whether Mrs. Clinton actually worked for her fees from the
>think tank
>were first raised in an article in Newsday, a Long Island newspaper, two
>years ago.
>"We had been asked those questions then," Neel Lattimore, a spokesman for
>Mrs. Clinton,
>said last week, "and we answered them."
>Chris McKenna, a spokesman for Attorney General Vacco, said that the state
>examines the
>financial operations of about 400 nonprofit organizations in the state each
>year. "We do
>this routinely," Mr. McKenna said, "and we would characterize this inquiry as
>routine."
>A decision about a more exhaustive investigation will be made "in the next
>couple of
>days," Mr. McKenna said last week.
>Wrongdoing Denied
>Laurie Miller, a lawyer for the National Center on Education and the Economy,
>said its
>financial arrangements with Mrs. Clinton and others cited in the inquiry were
>neither illegal
>nor improper.
>The center contracted for Mrs. Clinton's services with the law firm where she
>was a partner
>at the time, the Rose Law Firm of Little Rock, Ark., and paid no fees
>directly to her.
>Those fees were "absolutely not" inflated, Ms. Miller said. "The center has
>no qualms
>about whether the money was earned." Before President Clinton's election in
>1992, Mrs.
>Clinton was widely known as an expert and advocate on children's issues,
>including
>education, both in Arkansas, where Mr. Clinton was governor, and at the
>national level.
>Documents that the center turned over to Mr. Vacco indicate that Mrs. Clinton
>directed the
>day-to-day effort to promote the recommendations of its 1990 report,
>"America's Choice:
>High Skills or Low Wages." (See Education Week, June 20, 1990.)
>Work Performed
>Mrs. Clinton gave speeches about the report; met with leaders in business,
>labor, and
>education; and helped prepare draft legislation, the papers indicate. Mrs.
>Clinton was a
>member of the center's board of trustees, but she received no compensation in
>that role,
>according to the documents.
>Mr. Vacco also asked for details of work done by Mr. Hornbeck and Mr. Cohen.
>In
>opening the inquiry, the attorney general's office noted that Mr. Hornbeck
>had received
>$162,000 for two-weeks-a-month consulting work in 1993. Mr. Cohen, it said,
>earned
>$86,913 in salary and $23,900 in benefits as a full-time center employee, but
>it is not clear
>what time period that covered.
>In a written response to Mr. Vacco, Ms. Miller notes that Mr. Hornbeck was
>first a
>consultant for and later the co-director of the National Alliance for
>Restructuring
>Education, a group of school districts and states working with the center to
>promote
>standards-based school reform. Mr. Cohen was the director of the alliance and
>oversaw its
>operations.
>Both Mr. Hornbeck and Mr. Cohen were traveling late last week, according to
>aides, and
>were unavailable for comment.
>The attorney general also sought an explanation for why Mr. Tucker's pay as
>the center's
>president jumped from $32,500 in 1988-89 to $192,913 in 1993. In her written
>response, Ms.
>Miller explained that Mr. Tucker's salary through August 1990 reflected that
>he continued
>to work as a professor at the University of Rochester and was working only
>part time for
>the center.
>Since then, his salary has grown considerably as the center has grown from a
>small group
>with a budget of less than $1 million to an organization with 50 employees
>and a $14.1
>million budget in 1994, she said.