All in the Family

One of the first pleasant chores of a freshman Congressman is to decide how he will spend some $40,000 a year that he rates for office help. He can hire his clerks, secretaries and office managers from the pool of old pros who live and work around Washington (and run the chance that his secrets may soon be on the grapevine), or he can reward his friends and relatives with jobs. One hazard: if he puts someone with his own family name on the federal payroll, his open nepotism may well backfire when the payroll records are made public. Last week came time for the public report on payrolls, and, sure enough, the backfiring was heard round the country.

At least six Democrats of the 82 new House members listed their wives on the payroll. Vermont's William H. Meyer, reported paying a nepotic pittance of a salary: his wife, Bertha, gets only $4,047.37 a year. Others, notably Iowa's Democratic Leonard Wolf, are more generous: wife Marilyn Wolf collects $13.344.62 a year --an amount, by curious coincidence, that is the exact maximum permitted for any one congressional staffer.

But the sharpest backfire came for a pair of Carters. Democrat Steven V. Carter, 43, of Leon, Iowa, listed his 19-year-old son Steven as his public-relations assistant, at a salary of $11,872.26 a year. Steve's job, explained Congressman Carter proudly, is to "take care of the folks who come in from Iowa, let them know what I'm doing, help them enjoy themselves." Young Carter, a part-time prelaw student at nearby George Washington University, insists that he puts in 40 hours a week on the job--although his morning class schedule scarcely permits him to get to the office much before noon--adds that "I stay in the evening often till 6 o'clock.''

For a beginner. Public Relations Man Carter succeeded pretty well. After the bureaucracy-wise Washington Daily News sniffed out the story, both he and his father hit newspapers and TV stations all over the country--including the ones back home. The Des Moines Register, for example, allowed dryly that "lowans will fully appreciate how quickly Congressman Carter is becoming adjusted to the Washington style of doing things."

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