The discussion can’t ‘remain about limits’

House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, in an interview Jan. 19 with AJC columnist Kyle Wingfield:

● On lobbyist gift limits: “I don’t think the discussion can remain about limits. I think the discussion’s going to be, do we have a ban or do we trust people to make decisions? [With a limits bill], Everybody’s going to try to one-up everybody. You’re going to go quickly to zero. ... If you go to zero, I don’t think anybody thinks those people in the hall are going to disappear. They’re going to continue lobbying, advocating for or against measures. Then how will the public know where the intensity of the lobbying effort is?”

● About states that have lobbyist gift bans and why he instead favors disclosing lobbyist spending: “If you go talk to them, it hasn’t stopped. It’s gone underground. Which I think is more toxic than disclosing it.”

“Part of my feeling on this issue is that it seems to suggest that people can be bought. ... Ninety-eight percent of those people in that House chamber are good, honorable people, and we were getting bloodied because of the actions of a very few. ... To suggest that they can be bought, I find it very offensive. ... Anybody that can be bought for a $100 meal, that’s a cheap sale.”

“Ultimately, they’re [the public] going to know who the bad actors are, if they’re given that information. I trust people with that information. ...

Rick Thompson, former executive director of the State Ethics Commission who now does ethics and governmental compliance consulting, in an AJC op-ed Jan. 15: “Though no one has ever been able to actually identify what benefit would come from limiting lobbyist expenditures, the standard answer I often hear is that capping lobbyist expenditures ‘will decrease the perception of influence.’ This response has never really made much sense to me. Lobbyists are an important informational part of our legislative process. Limiting expenditures will not limit influence, it will only hide it.

Georgia lawmakers 
interviewed in the AJC 
at a Jan. 25 lobbyist-paid 
dinner:

● Rep. Tom McCall, R-Elberton, “Whoever we eat supper with, it doesn’t influence my decision one way or the other.”

“At the end of the day 
there is nothing wrong with it. Nothing.”

● Rep. Ralph Long, D-Atlanta: “I’m wondering what everybody is getting at, to be honest with you.”

“I know there are some egregious violations and stuff like that, but these are some good folks down here serving.”

House Majority Leader Larry O’Neal, R-Bonaire, in the AJC Jan. 25, on how only one House Republican had sponsored an ethics 
reform bill:

“It would certainly dissuade me,” he said. “It might mean there’s some particular part of it [the bill] or portion of it that is objectionable or impossible to accomplish.”