VA Official Charmain Bogue Did Not Disclose Links to Outside Group – National Legal and Policy Center
Last week, NLPC raised important ethical questions about an effort to influence the Veterans Administration (VA) to limit veterans’ ability to use their GI Bill benefits at certain colleges.
An outside interest group opposed to for-profit education, Veterans Education Success (VES), drove the effort. VES paid the husband of a key career official at the VA, Charmain Bogue, while at the same time advocating that she take action to further VES’s ideological crusade against for-profit schools.
Now, NLPC has obtained the official federal financial disclosure forms for Charmain Bogue. The forms raise more questions than they answer about her husband Barrett Bogue’s income from VES.
Under the section where a spouse’s income is supposed to be disclosed, Charmain Bogue wrote only, “Self-Employed (Consulting Firm)” and listed the income type as “Salary, Consulting Fees.” There is no disclosure of the name of the firm or the amount of income Barrett Bogue earned.
A key purpose of financial disclosure rules is to ensure that there are no hidden conflicts of interest by government officials. Yet these disclosure forms failed to inform VA leadership and the public of the conflict caused by VES’s payments to her husband while trying to influence Charmain Bogue.