A pair of bills designed to reform the state’s ethics laws received key committee approval Thursday and will likely be voted on by the full House on Monday.
House Bill 142, sponsored by Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, would ban all lobbyist spending on individual lawmakers, return the ability of the state ethics commission to adopt regulations and require citizen activists who represent an organization to register as lobbyists.
Ralston spoke to the Rules Committee and said ethics reform is a complex issue that takes serious study.
“It’s a complex issue and an issue you can’t solve with a rally in the rotunda,” Ralston said. “It’s an issue you can’t solve with a sound bite.”
The speaker also responded to critics who claim his bill would require average citizens to register as lobbyists. Those charges are “absurd,” Ralston said. His goal, he said, is to make sure individuals who come to the Capitol and advocate for or against legislation on behalf of a group register as lobbyists.
That proposal had drawn the ire of some, especially tea party leaders, who said it infringed on their First Amendment rights. Those tea party leaders declined comment Thursday.
But Ralston was unmoved.
“We’re not asking people here to drink poison,” Ralston said. “We’re asking them to wear a (lobbyist) badge. That’s all we’re asking them to do. You have to draw a line.”
HB 142 also places some limits on lobbyist-funded travel for legislators. The bill would prevent lawmakers from taking flights on a lobbyist’s dime but would continue to allow special interest groups to pay for legislators to attend conferences or events out of town.
The bill also provides an exemption to the gift ban for lobbyists who want to purchase meals for entire committees, or caucuses, or other recognized groups of lawmakers.
That’s too much of a loophole, William Perry, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, said. Perry’s group and others have fought for a $100 cap on lobbyist gifts, a concept voters in nonbinding referendums last summer supported.
“We’re disappointed the will of the voters this summer wasn’t met,” Perry said. “This gift ban still allows unlimited lobbyist spending by high-dollar lobbyists because of exemptions for group expenditures and official travel.”
But Rep. Rich Golick, R-Smyrna, who has shepherded the bills through the committee process, said Perry is wrong.
“The $100 cap advocated by Common Cause and some others will actually result in significantly more lobbying expenditures on legislators,” he said. “It’s baffling to me that Common Cause would be advocating a position that results in more lobbyist spending and therefore weaker ethics laws.”
Meanwhile, House Bill 143, also sponsored by Ralston, would require lawmakers to file a report early in the legislative session detailing campaign money raised and spent in the days before the Legislature convenes.
State law bars elected officials from raising money during the legislative session, which typically leads to a rush of fundraisers before the gavel falls on a new session at the Gold Dome. Ralston’s bill would require legislators to report money raised and spent within the first five days of the legislative session.
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