Armed with overwhelming voter support in this summer’s primaries, the Georgia Alliance for Ethics Reform is optimistic that 2013 might be the last year legislators get a free pass on the free dinners, sports tickets and junkets they receive from lobbyists.
The alliance on Wednesday held the last in a series of town-hall-style meetings across the state to build support and solicit ideas for reform in Atlanta, including a proposed $100 cap on gifts. William Perry, executive director of alliance member Common Cause Georgia, said the coming legislative session will be the culmination of years of hard work.
“After getting beat up for so long we’re going for broke,” he said. “We are going to get significant ethics reform in this state if it kills us.”
The reformers are an unusual collection of groups from across the political spectrum. Along with Common Cause, the group includes the Georgia Tea Party Patriots, the League of Women Voters, Georgia Conservatives in Action and Georgia Watch, a consumer watchdog group.
For years, legislators largely ignored calls to rein in the gifts they receive, but reformers got a boost when voters in both parties voted for a cap in a non-binding question on the primary ballots. Democrats favored an end to unlimited lobbyist spending by a 73 percent margin, while 87 percent of Republicans voted for a $100 cap on spending.
The questions were among the top vote-getters on either ballot, with 1.25 million Georgians signaling their distrust of the current system. While massive voter support assured lobby reform would be up for debate in 2013, how seriously it will be considered remains to be seen.
For example, Perry said the alliance’s meeting Monday in Athens was a bit of a disappointment.
The meeting had been timed to coincide with a three-day legislative conference at the University of Georgia attended by most state legislators. Organizers had encouraged legislators to attend and provided a free shuttle to ferry lawmakers from the conference to the meeting. But Perry said the only lawmakers who came were state Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus, who was on the panel, and incoming Rep. Regina Quick, R-Athens, who used ethics reform as one of her campaign issues.
The meeting Wednesday drew a crowd of about two dozen people, more than half of whom were from the media.
Tom Tortorici, a Web designer from Atlanta, attended as one of the few people not covering the meeting or organizing it. He said he is cautiously optimistic the Legislature will pass some type of ethics reform in the coming session.
“Ethics is probably the most important issue, because it affects every other issue,” he said.
McKoon, who spoke at Wednesday’s meeting, said Georgia has a lot of tough problems to address, but the state cannot move forward without trust in government.
“We need to do everything we can to restore that confidence,” said Sen. Steve Henson, D-Tucker, who also spoke.
Study committees in both the House and Senate are working on their ethics proposals, but there is general agreement among the reformers that passage is going to be toughest in the House. Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, opposed a cap on gifts to lawmakers, but changed his tune after the primary vote, voicing support for an outright ban.
If the House does not act, McKoon said Senate leaders have discussed capping gifts in their chamber by rule. That wouldn’t require cooperation from the House, but it would only apply to senators.
Georgia is one of three states with no cap or ban on the amount lobbyists can spend on gifts, meals, entertainment and trips for public officials. So far this year, lobbyists have reported spending $1.3 million on public officials, according to the ethics commission.
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