May 11, 2010

For many lawmakers, disclosures don’t provide estimate of holdings’ total value

Among other things, financial disclosure forms require lawmakers to list assets such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds and real property to identify potential conflicts of interest. Lawmakers also have to assign broad ranges of value to each asset. But estimating the maximum total value of a lawmaker’s holdings is impossible in many cases. The reason: The forms have an uppermost range of “more th[...]