“A bill to require executive branch employees to report certain royalties, and for other purposes.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section amends the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 (5 U.S.C. §§ 13103-13104, 13107) and 18 U.S.C. § 208 to expand financial disclosure requirements for executive branch officers and employees, including special government employees, and members of specified public health and science advisory committees, as follows: (1) Adds to the list of required filers in 5 U.S.C. § 13103(f) new paragraph (13) covering members of 11 named committees (e.g., National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology) and any other advisory committee determined by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to have made implemented public health recommendations to an agency or the President in the prior 10 years; directs GAO to publish such list within 180 days of enactment and annually thereafter (new § 13103(j)); and sunsets the catch-all provision after 5 years while narrowing it to successors of the named committees and repealing § 13103(j). (2) Requires supervising ethics offices to notify specified congressional committees of any waiver of filing requirements under 5 U.S.C. § 13103(i) and of exemptions under 18 U.S.C. § 208(b)(1) or (3) or 5 C.F.R. pt. 2640 subpt. C, including detailed justifications. (3) Requires disclosure in public financial reports under 5 U.S.C. § 13104(a)(1) of the source and value of royalties received by filers, their spouses, or dependent children from inventions developed during the filer's government employment (including under the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986), notwithstanding confidentiality protections in 15 U.S.C. § 3710a(c) and 35 U.S.C. § 209. (4) Directs agencies and offices to publish such reports on their websites upon request, notwithstanding 15 U.S.C. § 3710a and 35 U.S.C. § 209. (Thus, these changes promote transparency of potential conflicts from royalty income tied to government inventions for officials influencing public health and science policy.)
This section directs the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council and the Office of Management and Budget to enact or update regulations, as appropriate, requiring conflict of interest reviews for prospective contractors or grantees to include royalties paid to them in the preceding calendar year. It further requires each agency conducting such reviews to report annually, beginning one year after enactment, to the Senate Committees on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the House Committees on Oversight and Government Reform and Energy and Commerce—plus, for intelligence community agencies (as defined in 50 U.S.C. 3003), to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence—on the number of identified potential conflicts of interest related to royalty payments and steps taken to mitigate them.
This section provides a severability clause, stating that if any provision of the Act or its amendments is held unconstitutional as applied to any person or circumstance, the remainder of the Act and its amendments remain effective.