Confusion surrounding the state’s new law on lobbyists’ gifts to public officials likely will continue through the rest of the 2014 legislative session, if not longer.
A joint meeting Tuesday of the House and Senate ethics committees was billed as a Q&A, but while lawmakers had plenty of Q’s, the sole representative from the state ethics commission had no A’s to offer.
“I did get your questions,” Holly LaBerge, the commission’s executive director, told the lawmakers. “I don’t have any good answers.”
LaBerge said commissioners and their lawyer are working on rules clarifying the law, but those likely will not be ready until after the Legislature adjourns in March.
Last year, after years of pressure from good government groups, constituents and the media, Republican legislative leaders made a last-minute deal to pass the first-ever limits on lobbying spending. House Bill 142 put a $75 cap on most gifts to individual lawmakers and banned some pure entertainment spending altogether, but it contains a number of exemptions and confusing language.
For instance, the new law exempts caucuses from the $75 cap but requires the ethics committees in the Legislature to formally recognize the caucuses first. The House committee tried that last month, but the meeting dissolved when lawmakers could not define a caucus, even though they all belong to at least one.
Senate Ethics Committee Chairman Rick Jeffares, R-McDonough, promised that existing, well-established caucuses eventually would be recognized.
“There have been several caucuses that have been meeting throughout the year” without formal recognition, he said.
The uncertainty was troubling to Sen. Gloria Butler, D-Stone Mountain. Butler is a member of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus, which has its annual Heritage Dinner scheduled for Thursday at the Georgia World Congress Center. The dinner is underwritten by lobbyists and likely will overcome the $75-per-lawmaker cap.
Butler said lobbyists will want to know how to report the expenditure.
“If there is some answer other than what we have always done, I think we need to have that answer today,” she said.
After LaBerge said she could not help, some lobbyists expressed concern that funding the annual dinner could open them up to charges that they violated the law. House Ethics Committee Chairman Joe Wilkinson, R-Sandy Springs, said Tuesday that he would try to expedite approval for the caucus with a quick meeting of his committee later this week.
Lawmakers also posed questions on whether lobbyists can buy gifts for legislative staff or the family members of lawmakers. Those questions went unanswered.
That the ethics commission has yet to provide lawmakers with clear direction on the new lobbying rules is hardly surprising. The commission has been busy dealing with its own messes.
The commission is the target of two whistle-blower lawsuits filed by its former director and top deputy who claim they were forced out amid an investigation into Gov. Nathan Deal’s 2010 campaign. Statements taken for the suits claim LaBerge bragged she scuttled the investigation and that the governor now “owed” her, a charge LaBerge denies.
The commission last month fired one of LaBerge’s accusers, staff attorney Elisabeth Murray-Obertein, after a Capitol police officer said she appeared intoxicated at work. Murray-Obertein is considered a key witness in the lawsuits.
In another shakeup, the commission last week cut ties with Robert Constantine, a former administrative law judge with the Workers’ Compensation Board they hired last month as a “receiver” to help bring order out of the chaos.
Commissioners voted in January to hire Constantine to work four months for $16,000 without providing a job description saying what, exactly, he would do. Some commissioners had not even seen a resume from him at the time of the vote.
Commissioners did not say why they cut his service short, but they agreed to pay him the full amount anyway.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported after Constantine’s hire that he had been fired from the Workers’ Compensation Board for poor job performance. Documents claimed Constantine lacked “a basic ‘awareness’ of what he is doing” and was unable “to handle complex legal issues.”
But LaBerge said the commission delayed writing rules because the bill did not become law until Jan. 1. Along with setting limits on lobbying gifts, the bill restored rule-making authority to the commission, and LaBerge said the commission did not want to jump the gun and start work on rules when it did not technically have the power to do so.
“At this point as far as you’re aware, there is no real timeline for the promulgation of rules?” asked Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus, who pushed last session for lobbying reform.
LaBerge said the commission has a meeting scheduled for March, but “I don’t expect we’ll see anything come out of that.”
"I'm just curious what the way forward is here," said Rep. Matt Ramsey, R-Peachtree City.
LaBerge said she would listen to questions from lawmakers and could attempt to give guidance, “but it would not necessarily be official.” She also said the ethics committees could do the same, but their advice could be countermanded when the commission finally releases its rules.
Leaving lawmakers, lobbyists and those watching them exactly where they were before the meeting — confused.
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