Bill Engle, writing for the Palladium-Item has an article with Richmond-area lawmakers reacting to a newspaper sponsored proposal concerning lobbying reform (Speaker of the House, Pat Bauer had some lobbying reform proposals recently as well, I’m not sure if that’s related to this newspaper push):
# Prohibit legislators from accepting any gift more than $50 in value from a registered lobbyist;
# Require that lobbyists disclose the value of all goods and services offered to individual legislators or groups of lawmaker;
# Prohibit legislators from accepting gifts from businesses, organizations or individuals who do business with the state;
# Prohibit legislators from accepting meals, tickets to athletic games or other events or other gifts valued at more than $50 from state universities or colleges.
The Star also advocates that former legislators may not work for a registered lobbyist until one year after they leave office.
I don’t have a problem with any of these proposals, but I also am not convinced that our State House is rife with any great deal of corruption. Lawmakers do themselves no favors when they take personal offense at lobbying reform suggestions. Getting prickly about proposed reforms just lends to the perception that there is a problem.
Of these proposed reforms, I think the “cooling off” period is probably the most important. Making legislators go do something else before they get into the lobbying business would reduce the incentive to go easy on an industry for whom a legislator hopes to lobby. (Our of concern for allowing former legislators to make a living after their out of office, perhaps there could be an exemption for individuals who were lobbyists immediately before they became members of the General Assembly.) I would also suggest some sort of requirement that lawmakers recuse themselves on issues directly related to their employers. The article mentions Tom Saunders being employed by Manatron, a vendor of tax assessment software. (You might remember Manatron as being one of the players in the lawsuit against Rep. Jacque Clements.) I also seem to recall several highly placed legislators being associated with Ivy Tech which has a fair amount of business before the General Assembly.
“do business?” Is there a legal definition for that?
When IU football went to their 2007 Insight bowl game, Daniels was on the team plane with them to Arizona and the hotel stay for him in Phoenix area was paid for by IU. There were also legislators who had their trip paid for to that game.
And, quite a few legislators and Daniels went on the Colts Super Bowl trip, gratis. I do hope that none of the legislators scalped their ticket to the Super Bowl.
# Make paid lobbying a criminal offense.
I was reading some of the legislator comments in the Star this morning and wondered if we were concentrating on the wrong thing.
A couple of comments were to the effect that the lobbyist largesse wasn’t influencing anybody’s votes. Well OK, let’s take that at face value.
So, what exactly is the justification for the legislators in taking these perks then? Do they think they somehow “deserve” lobbyist perks as an additional bonus to being a legislator (or other elected official)? Have they somehow “earned” these perks by suffering the indiginity of being forced to take their families to pro-sporting events or conferences in balmy, beach-y locales?
If there is really no quid quo pro to these perks, then whatever possesses these people to accept them? Obviously, they have a rationalized justification for whatever it is that seems to compel them to use and abuse the lobbyist system (in my opinion). But, why do their rationalizations have to be shrouded in the fog of misdirection? Why do they have to dismiss our (valid) concerns by using arguments that should self evident?
Lobby efforts raise the costs of those companies doing “business” with our government. Those costs are simply passed on to the taxpayers in the form of higher prices. Why should we allow government to raise their own standard of living in such a sneaky, under-handed manner? If they were as ethical as they seem to think they are, we wouldn’t even have to be having this discussion.
Shame on them for abusing our trust, and shame on us for allowing it.
2 Words:
Interesting tidbit: I doubt they were able to scalp the SuperBowl tix. The last bank I worked for was the Official Bank of the Bengals ™. No it was not a terribly useful relationship. But part of that relationship guaranteed us a certain number of SB tickets each year. We have to report to the NFL who is getting the ticket and they match it to a serial number on the ticket.
If that ticket is found on eBay or another ticket sales site, the company responsible for the ticket will lose future ticket preferences. Our hypothesis at the time is that the corporate ticket allocations are in the same seating areas, and since most of these tickets go to C-level executives, they want to control the population in those areas and limit it to successful business types. I don’t have proof of the motivation, but it seems reasonable.
So you could scalp them at the gate, but that would be a VERY risky maneuver, and for a legislator it would be foolish to risk it.
Just to be clear, I am just posting off-topic, not trying to read anything into the OP.
Just thought it was interesting how scripted the SB is, to the point where seating populations are controlled.