Whitmire: How the IRS covers up political corruption

This is an opinion column.

The story I’m about to tell you wouldn’t be possible today, and that’s a problem.

In 2017, my colleague John Archibald and I felt around in the dark for the edges of a criminal conspiracy. We worked at it for months.

State Rep. Oliver Robinson had been up to something — that much we could tell. He’d taken a conspicuous interest in the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to clean up toxins in north Birmingham. He opposed the agency expanding its mission to include the nearby suburb of Tarrant, and his charity, the Oliver Robinson Foundation, had been trying to persuade residents not to let the EPA test their soil.

We suspected he was getting paid by somebody. But there’s what you think, what you know and what you can prove — and the first two don’t matter. We couldn’t yet close the loop, so we couldn’t write the story.

But to kick over one more rock, I asked for his non-profit’s 990s, the disclosures charities must make to the IRS. Specifically, I wanted a form the IRS doesn’t include in its online databases — Schedule B, which shows donors who contributed more than $5,000.

“You’re not going to find anything,” Archibald said when I left to pick up the documents. “I’ll bet you a Coke.”

Dirty Business: How Alabama officials conspired against their own people

I wasn’t ready to give up hope. I had to look. Robinson’s lawyer, Doug Jones, left the documents at his law office’s front desk. As I walked back to the elevators in the downtown office building, I slid the 990s out of the manila envelope. I flipped to Schedule B and …

I’m not an athletic person, but for a moment, gravity lost its grip and I flew about three feet off the ground.

There in the documents were donations from a major law firm, Balch & Bingham, which represented Drummond Co., one of the companies under threat from the EPA. We had what we needed to close the loop and write a story. We could prove it.

Robinson went to jail. Two of the men who paid him, Drummond vice president David Roberson and Balch partner Joel Gilbert, were convicted of bribery and are out on bond pending appeal. Most importantly, that story showed how our corrupt system can work against the people it’s supposed to protect.

I’m proud of it.

But if I had to do the same story today, it wouldn’t be possible.

In 2018, the U.S. Treasury Department changed the rules. Early last year, the department finalized those changes. Today, most nonprofits are no longer required to disclose their donors.

Had I looked at those Schedule Bs today, they would have been blank. Robinson and his co-conspirators might never have been caught.

I would owe Archibald a Coke.

The new rule expanded the event horizon of dark money — the flow of political money the public doesn’t get to see.

Now the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that could block state regulators from seeing into that void, too.

Earlier this month, the court agreed to hear an appeal by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a dark money group linked to Charles Koch and his late brother, David Koch. Americans for Prosperity sued the State of California, which requires nonprofits to disclose their donors to regulators (but not the public). The foundation wants to keep its donors completely secret. It’s arguing the First Amendment gives donors and charities a right to anonymity.

But as we’ve seen in Birmingham, what they’re really arguing for is a place where politicians and special interests can trade bribes in secret.

A new administration could mean new rules from the Treasury Department and the IRS, just as recent Supreme Court appointments could take a harsher view of dark money. It’s possible but not probable.

We need sunlight in our politics again, but I’m not so hopeful anymore.

If the sun does break through those clouds again, I’ll buy you a Coke.