Does Jeffrey Immelt’s appointment to President Obama’s jobs council present a conflict of interest? Immelt, after all, has no plans to step down from his current position as CEO of General Electric, despite the fact that what policies the council opts to promote could directly impact GE’s financial well-being.
“There definitely is a conflict when you have somebody who is the CEO of a company that is the biggest spender on lobbying in the past twelve years and is a serious seeker and recipient of contracts from the federal government,” argues Paul Blumenthal, a senior writer for the Sunlight Foundation, which advocates greater government transparency.
Blumenthal isn’t ready to call for Immelt to be fired, but he would like to see more safeguards in place. For starters, he would like to see Immelt disclose the same amount of information a cabinet member or White House official would need to. And he wants Immelt to publicly announce any companies other than GE that he has a financial interest in.
Blumenthal also questions whether Immelt ought to be involved in every decision made by the council. “Is he going recuse himself from certain decisions that this council may make that could benefit his company?” he asks, talking about tax policies that GE has lobbied for in the past.