LegiStorm

Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) has lost one of his longest-serving staffers to an engineers' group.

Longtime staffer Matt McGinn is now senior manager for government relations at the American Society of Civil Engineers. The trade group has spent about $1.4 million on federal lobbying in the last year, working on issues including the infrastructure bill and funding for STEM education.

McGinn had spent nearly a decade with Cicilline's D.C. office and was most recently a senior legislative assistant.

A lobbyist from a fast-growing firm has made his first pass through the revolving door, now working for Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.).

Skylar Borchardt has begun as a legislative assistant handling labor, education and small-business issues for the congresswoman.

Borchardt comes from Venn Strategies, where he was most recently assistant vice president and lobbied on behalf of clients including Intel Corp. and Eli Lilly. Venn Strategies is on track to bring in $8.36 million in lobbing revenue this year, an increase of more than 20 percent over last year.

With a new lobbying job under his belt, a high-powered GOP staffer is back in the Senate.

Viraj Mirani started this month as legislative director to Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.). He comes from King & Spalding, where he worked a brief stint as senior government-relations adviser.

Mirani has previously worked as chief of staff to then-Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), a title he reprised under Coats when the senator became the director of national intelligence. Mirani has also worked for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and led the Joint Economic Committee, in addition to having held several previous lobbying jobs.

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) recently disclosed that he has transferred millions of dollars in assets into a blind trust, joining a small list of other members who have done the same this year.

The blind trust agreement, which Phillips filed earlier this month, gives a trustee, RBC Trust Co., the power to make decisions regarding the purchase, sale or reinvestment of the trust's assets, without the knowledge of or involvement in any decisions by Phillips, his spouse, dependent children or his "representatives."

The 42-page document notes that Phillips has transferred between $9 million to $31 million worth of stocks and other assets. 

Phillips' disclosure comes nearly a year after an ethics complaint was filed against him, alleging possible violations of the STOCK Act for financial transactions he made during the onset of the pandemic.

According to disclosures filed with Congress, Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) is the only other member of the House who has filed a blind trust agreement this year. Prior to his disclosure, Malinowski faced criticism and ethics complaints for failing to report, on multiple occasions, financial transactions within the reporting window required by the STOCK Act. Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) have also each filed blind trust agreements this year. 

These disclosures mark a recent increase in the number of members who have filed blind trust agreements. Prior to this year, Rep. Carolyn Maloney's (D-N.Y.) December 2018 disclosure and Sen. Tammy Baldwin's (D-Wis.) May 2013 disclosure marked the most recent trust agreements filed by members, excluding amended agreements.

Google's heavily funded advocacy team has a new addition from the Senate.

Piper Stretz comes from the office of Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and most recently worked as his digital-media assistant.

She joined the tech behemoth this month as a public-policy and government-relations analyst. Google has disclosed spending more than $8.8 million on its federal lobbying program in the last year. Google and Alphabet subsidiaries spent another $2.2 million.