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© St. Petersburg Times, published March 17, 2002
Mark Weinberger isn't the only top Treasury Department official who once championed the tax causes of corporate America.
Weinberger's tax policy deputy, Pamela Olson, is a former IRS lawyer and former chairwoman of the American Bar Association's section of taxation. She used to represent companies in IRS disputes as a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, one of the nation's top corporate law firms.
In one case, Olson assisted the defense of a company that the IRS said used a fancy overseas partnership to avoid taxes. A court called it a sham.
But just before joining Treasury last year, Olson praised government rules to discipline lawyers who issue opinion letters endorsing dubious tax shelters.
According to a financial disclosure form she filed last year, she owned stock in corporations with a stake in policy decisions that she is now involved in.
Barbara Angus, the international tax counsel in Weinberger's office, is a former congressional tax aide who later became a lobbyist for PricewaterhouseCoopers. The accounting firm told Forbes magazine in 1998 that it had hired 40 salespeople to promote 30 corporate tax shelters.
Last month, at a House hearing about a troublesome international trade law, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, questioned Angus about her lobbying before joining Treasury.
According to a published report about the hearing, Angus said she had represented a coalition of companies with an interest in the law she was testifying about. But she declined, despite repeated questions from Doggett, to identify the companies in the coalition.
Eric Solomon, a holdover from the Clinton administration, is deputy assistant secretary for regulatory affairs. Before joining the Treasury Department in October 1999, he was a partner at the accounting firm Ernst & Young. Before that, he served at the IRS for five years, holding corporate counsel jobs, among others.
Andrew B. Lyon, deputy assistant secretary for tax analysis, was a professor of economics at the University of Maryland and a senior economist with PricewaterhouseCoopers before joining Treasury last year. Previously, he held positions with the President's Council of Economic Advisers and the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.
William Sweetnam, Treasury's benefits tax counsel, used to be chief Republican tax counsel for the Senate Finance Committee under former chairman William V. Roth of Delaware. Before coming to Washington, he was a consultant at Towers Perrin, an international benefits consulting firm and earlier was chief counsel for compensation and benefits at Sun Company Inc. (Sunoco), an oil refining and marketing company.
Jeffrey H. Paravano, Weinberger's senior adviser, joined Treasury last year. Previously, he was a tax partner at Baker & Hostetler, a large corporate law firm. He represented companies on a wide variety of complex tax transactions.
B. John Williams Jr., the chief lawyer at the IRS, was a corporate lawyer well known for his open combat with the IRS over alleged tax avoiders. Before that, he was a U.S. tax court judge.
According to his financial disclosure report, Williams earned $1-million for legal work in 2000 and the first half of 2001.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Williams engaged in some controversial trial practices in his defense of tax credits used by Shell Oil Co. The newspaper said that he and another Shell lawyer tried to use dubious evidence against a key government witness -- a tactic that so incensed government lawyers that they urged the witness to file a defamation lawsuit.
During his confirmation hearing last year, Williams told the Senate Finance Committee that, despite the episode, he had deep respect for the IRS.
"In terms of trial tactics," he said, "I would submit that whether you work for the government or whether you work for a private client, it is your ethical duty to represent that client as zealously as your skills permit . . . always within the bounds of the law."
Weinberger says the Treasury team brings an enormous wealth of talent and experience to complex government tax work.
"These people are willing to give up a great income for the government," he says. "If you didn't have people with experience in the tax field, how could they administer the rules?"
Ethics rules that govern federal officials who come from the private sector are complicated. Generally, those rules don't prevent officials from acting on broad policy issues that might affect former clients and employers.
The Treasury Department's top official also brings a corporate perspective to the job.
For 13 years, Paul O'Neill ran Alcoa, the world's biggest and richest aluminum company. In 2000, he took home $36.1-million in salary, bonus and stock options. Last year, he agreed to sell about $100-million in Alcoa stock and options -- the largest single-company holdings of any top government official ever -- after critics raised questions about possible financial conflicts.
-- Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.