By Reuben Guttman

Ken Feinberg, who has been tasked to administer British Petroleum's $20 billion cleanup fund, may be one of the nation's great problem solvers, and by all accounts he is a decent guy. He took on the task of administering a 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund and he served as "Pay Czar," overseeing the salaries of Wall Street executives whose firms received bailout monies.

In contrast to the work he did with the 9/11 Fund, Mr. Feinberg recently announced that his foray into the Gulf is not free of charge. Aside from being compensated for his work in the Gulf, the New York Times has reported that he is flying around in a plane owned by British Petroleum.

Clearly, Mr. Feinberg deserves to be paid a handsome fee, and because his time is precious these days, it is understandable that he is not using commercial planes to ferry him from meeting to meeting. This does not mean that victims of the disaster do not need to know the score. How much is Ken Feinberg being paid and who is paying him? What is the deal he has with regard to the use of BP's aircraft?

Disclosing this information is really not about exposing a scandal as much as it is about creating the transparency that gives oil spill victims confidence in an individual who claims he is not beholden to BP or the White House.

The alternative to Mr. Feinberg's processes is a court system that is over-burdened in such a way that justice for the spill victims will not be swift. Despite its inefficiencies, however, our nation's judicial system was established to be open and impartial. It is designed this way because we recognize that the matter of due process and process devoid of conflicts of interest leads to results that are easier to accept. If Mr. Feinberg wants to convince spill victims that his processes have the same if not greater integrity than the judicial system he needs to makes some disclosures. If he does not make these disclosures, at some point he will lose the trust of the very victims he hopes to help. Mr. Feinberg has a lot to offer. He needs to make the right decision. 
 

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