LegiStorm

Ex-Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) has officially registered as a lobbyist.

Shuster is lobbying through Squire Patton Boggs on behalf of TerreStar Corp. TerreStar, which declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2010 and is now largely dormant, is involved in a dispute over use of its wireless spectrum.

Shuster is part of a SPB team lobbying the White House Office on "support for deployment of ... wireless telemetry spectrum resources for remote monitoring of critical care patients," according to a disclosure the law firm filed yesterday. He joined the lobbying firm as a senior policy adviser in February after retiring from Congress at the end of last term. This is his first federal lobbying filing.

The highest-paying House office belongs to a freshman.

Rep. Ben McAdams (D-Utah) pays the highest median salary of any current representative, regardless of seniority. His office's average of $84,200 is well above the next-best-paying freshmen, Jeff Van Drew (D-N.J.) and Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), who have respective median salaries of $74,000 and $69,500.

Average pay among all House member offices for the first quarter of this year is $51,500, slightly higher than the average ($50,700) among freshman offices.

Harley Rouda (D-Calif.) has the lowest-paying freshman office, with a median salary of $37,300, followed by Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) and Donna Shalala (D-Fla.). Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) ranks 34th among freshmen, with a median pay of $53,200. She has received attention for her unusual practice of sharply limiting pay on top staffers and compensating even the most junior staff at least $50,000.

In some offices, the high or low pay rates might reflect the composition of office staff rather than whether they pay generously or poorly. Some offices might hire fewer but more senior-level people who might be more effective, while others might stack their offices with junior staffers who don't require as much pay.

A lobbyist has returned to the Senate Commerce Committee Democrats.

Jared Bomberg joins the committee's Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee as senior counsel under ranking member Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). He comes from Venable, where his lobbying clients included the Association of National Advertisers.

Before joining law firm, Bomberg worked as a Hogan Lovells associate and spent six years with the Commerce Committee.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) made headlines in February for announcing staff pay in her office would begin at a "living wage" of $52,000 and that top staff would be capped at $80,000. But she didn't disclose that her lowest-paid staffer was actually her highest ranking.

According to the House's latest Statement of Disbursements, Ocasio-Cortez pays chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti a rate of $52,722 per year, tied for the lowest in her office. The average pay for a House chief is more than $147,000.

The chief's low pay allows him to avoid financial-disclosure rules that apply to House staffers making at least $127,914. That means it's unclear whether Chakrabarti, who worked in Silicon Valley before moving into politics, has outside sources of income. Critics have questioned whether he may have skirted campaign finance laws by funneling more than $885,000 into two of his private companies.

In the race for freshman representatives to get their offices fully operational, new LegiStorm salary data shows that Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.) was the tortoise, Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) the hare.

Underwood got the slowest start staffing her office of any freshman member, with a staff that worked a combined 652 days in her first three months in office. Haaland led the way with the House's fastest hiring, with a staff who worked 2.5 times that of Underwood's during the same time period. 

Slow-moving members might get the luxury of thinking about their hires more carefully. However, they can also be at a disadvantage in competing for the best staffers, who get scooped up by other members. Slow hirers might also not have the staff to deal effectively with constituent and legislative needs in the first crucial months. 

Reps. Ron Wright (R-Texas) and Sharice Davids (D-Kan.) followed Underwood with the slowest hiring. Reps. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and Susie Lee (D-Nev.) were the next-fastest movers after Haaland. 

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Michael Braun (R-Ind.) got the fastest hiring starts in the Senate. However, it's not as easy to compare senators since the size of budgets for staff depend on which state they come from.