Ethics reform: reboot, revisit, rehash

Now: Governor

Pete Robinson

Then: Assistant floor leader for Gov. Zell Miller

Now: Lobbyist, managing partner of Troutman Sanders Atlanta office, chairman of Troutman Sanders Strategies

Jack Hill

Then: Member of the Senate Ethics Committee

Now: Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee

Charles Thomas

Then: Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee

Now: Former lawyer, served time in prison on 57 counts of theft and forgery, paroled 2011.

Tommy Chambless

Then: Vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee

Now: Lobbyist/Executive for Phoebe Putney Health System

Boyd Pettit

Then: Secretary of the House Judiciary Committee

Now: Lobbyist, general counsel for GeorgiaLink Public Affairs Group

The road to ethics reform in the Georgia General Assembly has always been paved with good intentions, potholes, blind alleys and exit ramps.

The Legislature passed its first cap on campaign contributions during its 1990 session, but before the bill could be signed into law, Zell Miller’s campaign for governor nailed a check for $100,000 from the doctors lobby. The governor’s race that year set records for campaign spending.

Two years later, reform-minded lawmakers took a double shot at lobbyists with a bill that limited gifts to legislators and required lobbyists to report what they did spend. The disclosure portion passed. Of the House-Senate conference committee that wrote the final bill, one member today is governor of Georgia, one is a senior state senator, three are lobbyists and one went to prison. Meanwhile, lobbyist spending kept rising, covering everything from an island golf outing with strippers to European trips and Sugar Bowl excursions.

Such is the checkered history of ethics legislation in Georgia. For the past quarter century, ethics reform has been a nearly annual battle cry at the statehouse. Governors and backbenchers, good-government types and outraged citizens have demanded changes to blunt the power of money and special-interests. Lobbyist gift bans and limits, like those being debated this year in the House and Senate, have been filed over and over again, only to fail.

Now, a decade after the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction vowed to “change the culture” of the statehouse, longtime lobbyists, lawmakers and activists wonder how much the annual spasm of ethics legislation has really changed how things work at the Capitol.

“The culture of this institution is such that it doesn’t matter what the law or the rules say,” said Neill Herring, a longtime statehouse lobbyist for the Sierra Club who worked on amendments to the 1992 ethics bill. “They are going to do what they want to do and they will do what is necessary to ensure that their ordinary behavior will continue untrammeled.”

Pierre Howard, who was lieutenant governor during the 1990s and championed good-government legislation, said, “There is a certain way of getting things done. It’s hard to break that.”

But Howard, like advocates pushing the lobbyist gift bills, hopes the General Assembly gives ethics reform another shot this year. “A step forward would be a step forward. It’s not going to solve the whole problem, but it could make things better.”

An election-year issue

The General Assembly is a place of constant turnover. All 236 lawmakers have to run for re-election every two years, and some of those debating whether to limit or outlaw lobbyist gifts this year were in high school, if that, when their predecessors first fought ethics reform battles.

In general, the Senate was the place where ethics bills had life. Former longtime House Speaker Tom Murphy was quoted as saying the only people interested in ethics legislation were “the newspapers and those folks running for governor.”

He was right, in a sense. The first big successful push for change in 1990 came out of the gubernatorial elections, along with down-ballot state races that were filled with state lawmakers hoping to move up.

The gubernatorial lineup that year included Miller, former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, state senator and future governor Roy Barnes, House Appropriations Chairman Lauren “Bubba” McDonald and House minority leader and future U.S. senator Johnny Isakson.

Many of the candidates pushed campaign finance plans, and it became one of the hottest topics of the session. Lawmakers eventually agreed to a cap of $3,500 per election — primary, runoff and general election — and new disclosure requirements for candidates and contributors. It also prohibited contributions during the legislative session so lobbyists couldn’t hand checks to lawmakers while they were considering the donor’s legislation.

The last change helped bring about a General Assembly tradition: lawmakers holding dozens of early January campaign fundraisers the week before each session, where lobbyists shuttle from place to place, handing out checks.

It’s worth noting that the limits on campaign contributions have risen to the point that married couples can give more to a campaign than many Georgians earn in a year.

‘Not a friendly climate’

The next year, then-Secretary of State Max Cleland and reform-minded Democrats began pushing for more extensive changes, from gift limits and lobbyist disclosures to closer policing of conflicts of interest.

In the General Assembly, Rep. McCracken Poston led the charge, but he’d long ago had a falling out with the already skeptical House leadership. House members even put out the word that lobbyists had helped pay for Poston’s honeymoon in Mexico, calling his reform efforts “hypocritical.”

Poston said recently, “When somebody gets elected on ethics reform, they immediately get marginalized.”

Poston’s measure was watered down and got through the House after two months in early 1992.

“I know the speaker had a problem with Poston, and Poston was very outspoken in his criticism of the speaker,” Gov. Nathan Deal, then a Senate leader, said in an interview last week. “So the climate in which this came across from the House was not a very friendly climate.”

The Senate strengthened it and quickly passed it. Once the negotiating between chambers ended and a compromise measure won the approval of both chambers, the state had its first lobbyist disclosure law, but nothing to limit the most common spending, such as high-priced dinners, beach/golf trips and ballgame tickets.

Nonetheless, some of those involved in the final product said its passage was significant.

“This was the first time people had to register and say, ‘This is what I’m doing,’ and the public had a chance to look at it and say, ‘Is it good policy or bad policy,’” said Pete Robinson, a former Senate leader-turned lobbyist who helped negotiate the final bill that passed in 1992.

Deal, then a Senate leader, said, “I think it made a difference. It was a point of demarcation on the issue to make significant steps toward ethics reform.”

Three years later, reporters learned that lobbyists had taken five lawmakers and strippers on a golf outing to Daufuskie Island, S.C., and the issue of gift bans or limits resurfaced. But it went nowhere, again frustrating reform supporters in both parties.

‘Eel-skinned briefcases’

After Roy Barnes was elected governor in 1998, he warned lawmakers to “watch those eel-skinned briefcases and alligator shoes,” his description of lobbyists. “It’s their job to put a wedge between us and what the people want and demand and deserve.”

He voiced support for ethics reform and banned employees in his administration from taking gifts. But the major bill that passed during his tenure doubled campaign contribution limits, helping Barnes break records by raising $20 million for his unsuccessful re-election campaign in 2002. It also increased disclosure requirements, a theme throughout the 2000s.

Sonny Perdue beat Barnes in 2002 vowing to “change the culture” at the statehouse. He filed extensive ethics reform measures during his first term, although many of the strongest provisions didn’t survive. Lawmakers eventually passed laws requiring lobbyists to disclose more information about their clients and preventing former lawmakers and other officials from becoming lobbyists right after leaving office. He also beefed up the State Ethics Commission.

This year, lawmakers are back tackling issues that have been debated since Deal and other legislative leaders tried to write a comprehensive ethics bill in 1992.

“Are gifts appropriate, should they be banned, who should register, who is a lobbyist?” Robinson, the former Senate leader, said. “It’s the same issues, the lines just seem to move some.”

Steve Anthony, a former top aide to Murphy who teaches politics at Georgia State University, said for a long time, lawmakers didn't think basic things like disclosing lobbyist spending were necessary.

“They really thought it was a solution without a problem,” he said.

Even now, some lawmakers consider the call for lobbyist spending limits a media-driven issue.

‘It’s human nature’

Democrats say they kept lobbyists more at arms length, and the money being spent wasn’t as great, when they were in charge. Republicans say that’s baloney, and that, because of the ability of the public to view lobbyist spending and campaign reports online, the whole process is much more transparent. Regardless of whether the system of lawmaking has changed, the public gets a better view of what’s happening, they argue.

Robert Highsmith, a lobbyist who was a Perdue legal counselor, said while the issues are much the same, this year’s ethics fight is unusual because it follows neither a big political scandal nor a regime change. Highsmith, a former member of the State Ethics Commission who helped draw up Perdue’s ethics bills, argues that this year’s debate is the cumulative effect of the years of the public being able to see and read about lobbyist or campaign spending.

“I don’t think there is anything new under the sun,” Highsmith said. “Three thousand dollars in dinners over the course of six months is not the end of the world. But it underscores the disconnect between that and the way people are living.”

Melissa Metcalfe, who led Common Cause’s effort in Georgia during the 1990s, said the 1992 disclosure law was a start, something activists hoped they could build on. While good government groups say there have been some limited successes since then, they don’t think the changes have gone far enough.

“When something (legislation) gets through, it immediately is under assault to get whittled away,” she said. “You can’t expect people to police themselves. It’s human nature to rationalize behavior.”