Fitzsimon File

Thursday brought some progress on lobbying and ethics reform…sort of.  The House passed legislation that would ban politicians from using campaign money for personal expenses.  That bill now goes to Governor Mike Easley.  That’s a welcome change in the law that closes a troubling loophole.

Maybe more importantly, a Senate Judiciary Committee unveiled its latest version of comprehensive reform legislation early in the afternoon. That’s good news too. The Senate leadership does seem committed to passing a bill before the session adjourns, which could come as early as next week.

The new bill rolls ethics and lobbying reform into one package, something that had been expected for a couple of weeks. It includes some changes to ethics legislation passed by the House, not a surprise either. A subcommittee had been working on refining the House ethics package and requirements for the statement of economic interests that lawmakers and other public officials must file.

That’s where the good news stops. The ethics reforms still fall well short of what reformers and Governor Mike Easley are seeking, so far short that former Judge Robert Farmer, Chairman of the Board of Ethics, called them “pretend ethics.” 

Farmer and Easley both support an independent ethics commission that oversees both the legislative and executive branches of government. Many states use that approach that lawmakers in both the House and Senate have refused to endorse.

But that’s not the worst of it. The Senate bill unveiled Thursday drops a provision that limits how much money lobbyists can contribute to legislators’ campaigns and also does not include a provision that bans lobbyists from raising money for legislators.

The Senate proposals were presented as a substitute for a bill that passed the House, meaning that it’s likely the House will never have to vote on an amendment to restore the lobbying ban from the bill.

The fundraising ban was approved by the House Select Committee on Ethics and Government Reform and both House Speaker Jim Black and Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight say they want to end the practice of lobbyists raising money for lawmakers.

The Senate bill does require lobbyists to report money that they contribute to lawmakers campaigns. That’s not much help, since that information is already available at the Board of Elections. We know lobbyists are giving money to lawmakers and raising money for them. We don’t need to know it again, we need it to stop so people without access to wealth don’t start out behind when trying to take part in the legislative debate.

The new Senate bill also waters down the ban on lobbyists’ gifts approved by the House Select Committee and continues the bizarre approach to a no gift registry that allows lawmakers to sign the registry but still receive large gifts, like hockey tickets and trips.  The registry only applies to gifts worth less than $10.

If you are keeping score, that’s backward progress on the three essential parts of meaningful reform; banning gifts from lobbyists, forbidding lobbyists from raising money and limiting how much they can contribute, and establishing an independent ethics commission.

It seems like every time a new version of the bill emerges, it is weaker than the version before.  Senator Dan Clodfelter, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told spectators that it was all part of the legislative process.

Then he told reformers not to be worried, referring to them as “you Chicken Littles out there.” The sky may not be falling, but unless things change soon, it’s hard not to think that hopes for meaningful reform are.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 13th, 2006 at 4:36 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.