Apr 28, 2015 3 min read

Perception is reality, so goes the saying.

The reality for U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster is that he is dating a lobbyist who has business before a congressional committee that he heads. Certainly the perception is that such a relationship, if not illegal, and perhaps not even unethical on technical grounds, has a peculiar odor to it, and raises valid questions about just who Shuster is working for.

A few weeks ago, the Politico website broke the story about the relationship between Shuster and Shelly Rubino, a vice president and lobbyist for the trade group Airlines for America, which pushes for legislation favorable to the industry. Having been freshly handed his divorce papers after 27 years of marriage, Shuster is allowed to consort with whomever he pleases. But given his role as chairman of the House’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the wall between what Shuster has described as a “private, personal relationship” and his official business is a fragile and porous one indeed.

Shuster, who represents parts of Washington and Greene counties in a sprawling district that stretches 200 miles to the east, has stressed that Rubino will not be lobbying him specifically, and House ethics rules specify only that members must refrain from voting only on those matters in which they have a “direct personal or pecuniary interest.” Nevertheless, Rubino can lobby other members of the committee, and, to top it off, Shuster’s chief of staff is married to an executive with Rubino’s organization, and, according to Politico, the chief executive of Airlines for America, Nick Calio, is among Shuster’s closest friends.

With so many intimate ties to Airlines for America – and that’s even setting aside the amount of money that the group has put into Shuster’s campaign coffers – it’s highly implausible that Shuster would not look with a special and urgent interest on what it desires.

Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, which beats the drums for government transparency, told Politico that “it’s just human nature that when you’re involved with somebody, you’re going to look more favorably on the things that they think and the things that they do.”

Allison added, “I’m not saying that nobody should ever fall in love. But if a relationship could affect public policy, the public should know about it.”

And, as a further demonstration that the apple tends not to tumble far from the tree, when Shuster’s father, Bud, was the chairman of the same House committee during his tenure on Capitol Hill, he was found to be more or less living with a former aide who had become a lobbyist for clients who had business before the committee. And, if the situation hadn’t already been knotty enough, the former aide continued to oversee fundraising operations for Shuster’s father to the tune of $3,000 per month.

Given that Shuster is sighted in Washington and Greene counties with about the same frequency as Bigfoot, his constituents in this region have reason to wonder if he has their best interests at heart, or even knows what they are. The fact that he is so deeply tied to representatives of an industry for which he is supposed to be exercising oversight should raise the same question for all the voters who sent Shuster to Washington, D.C., to act in their name.