When I was drafting bills for the legislature, one of the most important lessons I learned is that few of the ideas for legislation are truly original. A big chunk of them had been introduced at some point in the past. So, before drafting on a bill request, one of the first steps was to go looking for prior legislative efforts before recreating the wheel. This was easier for some bills than others. The “cooling off” legislation reported by Mike Smith for the Associated Press would be one of the easier ones to locate since it was introduced just last year.
Sen. Pat Miller and some others will apparently be introducing legislation that would require a cooling off period period before former lawmakers can lobby the General Assembly. This sort of legislation has been resisted, ostensibly because legislators don’t want to create a perception that they need to be regulated by such things as a “cooling-off” legislator-to-lobbyist period.
Guess what? That perception is already out there. Most, if not all, legislators are acting in the best interests of their constituents and are not being corrupted by the chance to become a lobbyist after they leave the General Assembly. But the perception of lobbyist-induced corruption is out there, and a cooling off period would do a lot to combat that perception.
But some lawmakers bristled at testimony that hinted at perceptions of shady politics. Sen. Brent Steele, R-Bedford, was among them and still opposes a one-year waiting period.
“If a person has spent 20 years in the legislature and is well thought of by colleagues both in the hallway and the legislature, is a year going to mean anything?” Steele said. “Is he or she suddenly going to have less influence than 360 days ago?”
That pretty deliberately misses the point, I think. The point is not how much influence the legislator has when he or she does become a lobbyist. The point is that the legislator would have to figure out something else to do for a living for a year. Current legislators would know that there is a year long barrier between them and easy lobbyist money. (Assuming for the sake of argument that money for lobbying is easy and significant — probably one of those things that is more myth than reality in most cases.) More importantly, citizens would know there is a barrier between their elected officials and easy lobbyist money.
Senator Miller says she believes that one of the reasons that the bill died last year is because the testimony in committee was accusatory. That’s sad if it’s true. (See this entry from last year, suggesting that was in fact the case.) Our legislators have a pretty big responsibility; a responsibility for which they actively campaigned. Their tender feelings should not get in the way. That said, anyone testifying in committee pointing fingers at the legislators or impugning their integrity is remarkably stupid.
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