GOLF OUTING RAISES ETHICS ISSUES : HEAD OF COMMITTEE TO OVERSEE PHONE CONTRACTS PLAYS A ROUND WITH AT&T LEADER.

Byline: Don Van Natta Jr. and Christopher Drew The New York Times

Ever since he was a boy, Rep. Dan Burton dreamed of playing golf in the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am Tournament in California. After 16 years in Congress, Burton finally got his wish in January, thanks to an invitation from its sponsor, AT&T, which also sponsored a fund-raising dinner for the Indiana Republican at a Pebble Beach restaurant.

The golf outing came three weeks after Burton became chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, which has jurisdiction over the agency that will soon award at least $5 billion in long-distance and local telephone and telecommunications contracts with the federal government.

It also happens to be the committee that is leading the House investigation into Democratic fund-raising practices in 1996, to determine whether the Clinton administration took favors and money from big donors who stood to profit from federal policy-making.

Burton acknowledged that his golf outing left him open to criticism and that his hosts might have been interested in his influential position. But he said, ``I tell you right now, I would not sell my vote for anything and second, I would not sell it for a couple rounds of golf.''

But advocates of reducing the role of campaign contributions in elections criticized Burton's participation in the tournament, saying it raised questions about his judgment while his committee is leading that inquiry. They characterized it as a particularly jarring example of how corporations curry favor with congressional committee chairmen, whose decisions can affect millions of dollars in revenue.

More than once, Burton said, he sought an invitation from AT&T, the sponsor of the celebrity-studded tournament since 1986. Burton, who has served on the committee since early 1995, said the corporation finally invited him in August.

``Over the past several years, whenever I talked to anybody at AT&T, I told them that if they ever had a chance, I'd like to play in that tournament,'' said Burton, who was the only congressman to participate in the tournament this year. ``Since I was a kid, I've always watched it and wanted to play in it.''

On the eve of the tournament, Burton also played a practice round with AT&T chairman and chief executive Robert Allen at the nearby Monterey Country Club.

The golf invitation to Burton was part of a larger effort by AT&T to cultivate an array of government officials involved in controlling the phone contracts, including top officials of the General Services Administration, according to interviews and internal AT&T documents obtained by The New York Times.

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a public policy group and a leading advocate for change in campaign financing, said, ``Representative Burton is supposed to be investigating the use of political money to buy White House access and influence, and at the same time, he is out playing the influence-money game himself.

``This not only undermines his credibility,'' he said, but it also may explain why the Republican leadership is opposing investigations into congressional uses of political money.

Burton defended his participation in the tournament, saying it would not affect his objectivity when dealing with telecommunications issues. AT&T has 60 percent of the current long-distance contracts with the government, which expire in December 1998, and are worth an estimated $500 million a year. Sprint Corp. has the other 40 percent.

In the next round of phone contracts, AT&T, the Baby Bell regional telephone companies, Sprint, MCI Communications Corp. and other companies will compete for the federal phone contracts into the next century.

But at the same time, Burton acknowledged that some might raise questions about his participation, particularly because he has been a vocal and frequent critic of President Clinton, accusing him and other Democrats of brazenly selling access to the White House in exchange for campaign contributions.

Burton said that AT&T did not pay for his trip to the golf tournament, which ran from Jan. 29 to Feb. 2. He said he personally split the total cost with his re-election campaign funds. He used some campaign funds to pay for his trip because he attended three fund-raising events while in California, he said.

Because AT&T did not pay his air fare, Burton insisted that his participation in the tournament did not violate the 14-month-old House rules that ban representatives and their staffs from accepting any gifts, including invitations to lunch or dinner at someone else's expense.

An AT&T spokesman, Jim McGann, said the company invited Burton before he became chairman of the committee overseeing the phone contracts. ``He made it known that he wanted to play and asked us to play, and we said sure,'' McGann said. ``The idea that he was a late entry and we threw him in there after we learned of his chairmanship - that is just not true.''

Burton said that he and Allen did not discuss telecommunications policy while playing golf at Monterey, nor did he discuss it with anyone at the AT&T fund-raiser.

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Photo

Photo: Rep. Dan Burton

Indiana Republican in Congress