Baxter International, seen here in Deerfield, Ill., has steadily increased the amount of data it discloses each year, said the company’s spokeswoman. Companies try to clean up their act

Having the wrong political benefactor can be as toxic an asset as a bundled bunch of subprime loans.

Just ask the PMA Group, Kuchera Defense Systems and Kuchera Industries, all companies caught up in a federal investigation surrounding Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.).


So it should be of little surprise that a growing number of corporations are beefing up scrutiny and disclosure of their own political activities to shareholders.

The Center for Political Accountability, an organization that works with shareholders to get companies to open their political books, is set to announce Tuesday that seven additional firms have agreed to do so: Alcoa Inc., Dow Chemical Co., Cummins Engine, U.S. Bancorp, El Paso Corp., Baxter International Inc. and Dominion Resources.

Overall, that means that 40 of the nation’s 100 largest corporations have begun to provide more details about their political operations and donations in their annual reports.

In some cases, that information goes beyond what is available in public disclosure reports.

For instance, the center and its shareholder partners have been prodding corporations to release contributions made to trade associations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and PhRMA.

Those donations are typically not available to the public because trade groups aren’t covered by campaign finance laws. And that dearth of information can make it difficult for the public and lawmakers to know who’s really behind some lobbying campaigns.

It’s an end-run that has become well worn in Washington as businesses seek to avoid offending their bipartisan customer or client bases or picking fights with Congress that might come back to haunt them.

But keeping secrets from partisan opponents or campaign watchdogs is a lot easier than withholding data from shareholders, once the disclosure decision has been made.

Baxter International, for instance, has steadily increased the amount of data it discloses each year, said spokeswoman Deborah Spak.

And Alcoa agreed this year to release the portion of its Chamber dues that’s applied to the trade group’s overall lobbying efforts, said firm Vice President Donna Dabney.

“It’s not a large amount, and some of our shareholders are interested in this information,” she said. “Our policy has always been to be transparent.”

.Insurance giant Aetna is now a veteran in the shareholder disclosure field, with its 2007 annual disclosure report that illustrated the wealth of political giving that’s not required to be disclosed by law.

Beyond the $506,500 it gave to state and federal candidates, the firm spent $3.2 million on dues and other payments to a variety of state and federal trade associations, the report noted.

Eleven of those contributions were more than $50,000, triggering an in-house corporate policy of disclosure.

Among them: $950,000 to American Health Insurance Plans, $750,000 to the Coalition for Affordable Quality Healthcare, $235,000 to the Business Roundtable and $50,000 to the Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform.

All of the groups are expected to be very active in the health care reform debate likely on Capitol Hill this summer. And, on occasion, Aetna might even find itself on both sides of a fight as those trade groups take differing positions.

The drug maker Pfizer also extensively lists its political activity. Its report keeps track of its winners and losers and puts a symbol by the name of lawmakers who received contributions and have Pfizer facilities in their districts.

Pfizer executives also disclosed that the firm donated $50,000 to PhRMA, the major pharmaceutical trade group in Washington, which isn’t required to disclose that type of information.

The Center for Political Accountability’s executive director, Bruce Feed, has been pressing the case for shareholder disclosure for three years, and he senses that the corporate world is coming around.

“We’re finding in discussions with companies that they are paying much more attention to the recipients of their political spending. They have much tighter vetting procedures,” he said.

Corporate executives increasingly are vetting candidates with an eye toward ensuring that an association won’t “come back and bite them in the tush,” he added.

As the corporate proxy season opens, Freed and his partners have filed 56 shareholder resolutions urging firms to provide greater details about their political activities in annual reports.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a hard target in the shareholder sunshine campaign has been the financial sector.

American Express, Capitol One, Prudential and U.S. Bankcorp are among the financial houses providing shareholders with more information.

Citigroup is expected to release a report in March, so it’s not yet clear how detailed it will be.

Resolutions urging disclosure are on file at Charles Schwab, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Regions Financial and Wells Fargo.

Bank of America, a major recipient of billions of dollars in federal bailout funds, rejected a shareholder resolution for technical reasons. But, of course, it now has a new shareholder with a fair amount of clout to find out anything it wants: Congress