More views on ethics legislation

Georgia’s current ethics laws put no limit on the value of gifts from lobbyists to legislators. Last year, an attempt to cap the value of gifts failed, but the issue was renewed this legislative session with bills from state Rep. Tommy Smith, R-Nicholls, and Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus.

The measures, among other tenets, would put a $100 limit on the value of gifts that legislators can accept from lobbyists. “We need to take this issue off the table,” Mc-Koon has said. “We don’t need to make this about personalities. We don’t even need to make this about what was reported in the past under the current law.”

Smith has said he wants to help “make Georgia a state where the people out there who elect us have more influence than these lobbyists [who] walk the floor everyday.”

Other views

House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, has downplayed the necessity of ethics legislation, saying lawmakers must report gifts quickly and that voters can tracks gifts with the click of a mouse.

“Ninety-eight percent of those people in that House chamber are good, honorable people,” Ralston said. “To suggest that they can be bought, I find it very offensive.”

Ralston chooses which proposed laws to call to his chamber floor for a debate and vote. He has sent the House version of the ethics reform bill to the House Rules Committee.

Poll results

In December, a poll by the AJC and the Georgia Newspaper Partnership found that 72 percent of the 625 registered voters surveyed supported “placing a limit or cap on the value of gifts” by lobbyists to state officials. Georgia is one of the few states with no limits on lobbyist gifts.

Ethics reform supporters

Common Cause Georgia, League of Women Voters, Georgia Tea Party groups, Georgia Christian Coalition, Georgia Right to Life, Georgia Conservatives in Action, Georgia Watch, Georgia Taxpayers Association, Georgia Federation of Teachers, the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta Public Policy Advocacy Partnership.