Van Hollen Applauds STOCK Act Fix Passed by House Today

Press Release

Today Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen announced that the House passed, by unanimous consent, legislation that amends the STOCK Act to address privacy and security concerns raised by a Congressionally mandated study by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA). The legislation has already passed the Senate, and will now be sent to the President.

"I'm pleased that Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle took the policy recommendations of the NAPA report seriously," said Congressman Van Hollen. "Today's legislation preserves the important principles of accountability and transparency while avoiding unwarranted risk to national security, agency mission, and identity theft."

The STOCK Act will help combat insider trading and other conflicts of interest in the federal government -- but there were concerns that a provision added to the law, which would have required career employees in the legislative and executive branch to post personal financial details to a public, online database, would have serious, unintended consequences. In September 2012, Congress postponed the implementation of this online disclosure provision in order to give NAPA time to look at the issue.

The NAPA report, which was submitted to Congress on March 28, 2012, recommended that "Congress indefinitely suspend the online posting requirements and the unrestricted access to searchable, sortable, downloadable databases while continuing implementation of other requirements of the STOCK Act." Today's legislation is consistent with that central recommendation.

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