
At the suggestion of a Virginia elected official, I took a look at VPAP for the latest Conflicts of Interest Disclosure for members of the Virginia General Assembly. There’s a ton of information in there, and I only looked for about an hour, but here’s some stuff that jumped out at me.

First, can someone explain to me how a legislator can own less than $215K of Berkshire Hathaway? One share costs $215K, yet 6-7 legislators said they owned less that that. Weird.

Then there are all of these people who say their stock is “name of brokerage account,” even though what you’re required to list is specific investments, not just a brokerage account. As a Virginia Democratic friend of mine put it, “It’s not a f***ing net worth disclosure.” For instance, these are examples of doing it totally wrong:

There are many other examples of this; the aforementioned are simply examples, not particularly egregious or anything, just typical.

Now here’s an example of doing it correctly: Sen. Dick Saslaw (D) of all people lists out individual companies he’s invested in — Citibank, Microsoft, Sirius, Teva Pharmaceuticals, etc.

Finally, here are a few other interesting items that popped out at me.

In my mind, a lot of this stuff constitutes examples of “legalized corruption,” a system in which legislators vote on all kinds of stuff impacting the very companies and organizations they accept free trips from, own stock and other investments in, etc. It’s the “Virginia Way,” I guess. Or something.

By the way, I’m sure there’s a ton more interesting stuff in here; this is just a short sample. So…let us know if you find anything else that jumps out at you. Thanks.