It doesn’t take too much time lurking around the Missouri Capitol to notice gobs and gobs of food at almost every turn. It’s type of thing that would make Oliver Twist faint with pleasure.
OK, that analogy may be hyperbolic. But on an almost daily basis while the General Assembly is in session, lobbyists and interest groups provide a cavalcade of consumption for lawmakers, their staff and perhaps the general public.
And that’s only scratching the surface.
Lobbyists regularly provide meals, entertainment and travel to lawmakers, which is currently legal under Missouri law as long as it is disclosed to the Missouri Ethics Commission. But while some lawmakers have been criticizing this practice for years, curtailing the freebies hasn’t gained serious attention
That might have changed this week. House Majority Leader Steve Tilley – one of the most powerful lawmakers in the General Assembly – announced he would include a lobbyist gift ban in his ethics proposal.
For years, lawmakers have been essentially split into two camps about whether a lobbyist gift practice is appropriate. And it’s not necessarily on partisan lines.
There are some lawmakers – such as Rep. Rachel Storch, D-St. Louis, and Sen. Joan Bray, D-St. Louis County – who proposed bills to curb the amount of lobbyist gifts that a lawmaker can take. There are also some Republicans who have made it a practice to either refuse or reimburse lobbyists for trinkets.
But there are also lawmakers who argue that meals and trinkets make little difference in their decision-making. I recall Rep. Steve Hobbs telling me a few years ago that a dinner “doesn’t mean diddly.” And some prominent Democrats – such as House Minority Leader Paul LeVota, D-Independence – are arguing that while banning lobbyist gifts might be admirable, it would make more sense to curtail big campaign finance donations.
George Connor, a political science professor at Missouri State University, said all sides of the issue are being “disingenuous.” For one thing, Connor said Tilley is closely tied with former House Speaker Rod Jetton, a Marble Hill Republican who exiled himself from politics after being hit with felony assault charges. Proposing ethics legislation, Connor said, is a good way for Tilley to distance himself from Jetton on a political and personal basis.
But Connor also said that Democratic reaction to Tilley’s proposal is telling. He noted that Democrats can propose a gift ban “til they’re blue in the face knowing full well that it’s not going to pass.”
“And now that it seems like it might pass, the Republicans will do it, the Republicans will get credit for it, and they’ll lose any political angle that might have had before,” said Connor, adding that a number of Democratic lawmakers have taken a significant amount of lobbyist freebies.
While he said that curtailing meals and trinkets could complicate how lobbyists get access to lawmakers, Dave Robertson, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said that banning gifts might not have a revolutionary effect on how legislators conduct business.
“The sort of big picture is that there’s a whole lot of money in politics,” Robertson said. “And that money helps fuel elections and re-elections and political careers. And efforts to cut a meal here or there are not going to change that big picture problem.”
Even if lobbyists are no longer allowed to bequeath food, entertainment or travel anymore, they’ll still be able to provide potentially important information to lawmakers. They could also be gatekeepers of sorts to a significant amount of campaign money.
Given that lobbyists would still have those types of powers, I asked Tilley whether a gift ban would reduce influence. While he said the “overwhelming majority” of legislators are honest and hard-working, the ban would help erase negative perceptions of Missouri politics.
“I think the perception is always going to be there and you can’t eliminate every perception,” Tilley said. “But I think my bill goes a long way toward structurally changing the way things are done in Jefferson City – and at the same time improving the perception.”
Tags: campaign finance reform, gifts, lobbyists, meals, missouri politics, rod jetton, steve tilleyCategories: Business, Politics, State Politics.
