Lobbying for less
Some of the state’s most powerful special interests (though not all) have dramatically reduced their lobbyist spending so far this session. Here’s a selection of heavy hitters:
Lobby 2012 2013
Georgia Chamber of Commerce $4,434 $2,666
Delta Air Lines $1,598 $718
Georgia Hospital Association $3,404 $1,449
Georgia Oilmen’s Association $4,368 $2,619
McKenna, Long and Aldridge $1,719 $938
Georgia Bankers Association $7,833 $10,853 *
AT&T $9,516 $3,825
Georgia Power $10,449 $6,683
University System of Georgia $44,418 $21,002
Georgia EMC $4,730 $17,011 **
* Includes a $10,337 reception to which all of the legislators were invited.
**Includes a $12,456 reception for the entire General Assembly. Georgia EMC had no such large reception in 2012.
Cleaning House (and Senate)
As both houses debated ways to limit the influence of special interests this year, many lobbyists cut back considerably on the flow of gifts. And many lawmakers, though not all, received quite a bit less from the lobby. The totals below reflect lobbyist reports for January and February. Stacey Abrams and Steve Henson are the only Democrats listed here, and their totals are comparatively small. That’s because lobbyists tend to favor memnbers of the party in power.
Elected official 2012 2013
Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge $2,007 $28
Rep. Jan Jones, R-Alpharetta $2,092 $312
Rep. Larry O’Neal, R-Bonaire $2,288 $70
Rep. Mickey Channell, R-Greensboro $2,952 $1,751
Rep. Butch Parrish, R-Swainsboro $2,160 $1,432
Sen. Don Balfour, R-Snellville $1,542 $328
Rep. Ben Harbin, R-Evans $1,584 $744
Sen. Buddy Carter, R-Pooler $1,566 $948
Sen. Tommie Williams, R-Lyons $1,050 $505
Rep. Stacey Abrams, D-Atlanta $443 $583
Sen. Steve Henson, D-Tucker $180 $112
Source: Lobbyist disclosures to the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission
State representatives voted overwhelmingly Feb. 25 to pass an outright ban on lobbyist gifts. That day, the same representatives accepted $1,588 in free lunches and dinners that would be outlawed by the bill they just approved.
Lobbyists reported spending a little more than $206,000 on public officials last month, the vast majority of it on state lawmakers. That is a lot of money, but the total is down by a third from last year and by even more from the year before. Amid heightened attention to the dinners, receptions and trinkets lavished on lawmakers, the show of lobbyist love has decidedly toned down.
Indeed, lobbyists in past years have treated a handful of legislators and their wives to expensive dinners on Valentine’s Day — what could be more romantic than an intimate dinner with your spouse and an industry association lobbyist? But the talk of lobbying reform chilled hearts all over the Capitol this year: no one reported paying for a couple’s dinner on Feb. 14.
Kennesaw State University Political Science Professor Robert Smith, who has studied government ethics at the state level, said the general decline in spending in advance of an expected reform is somewhat surprising.
“Often you see a blip up in terms of spending because some lobbyists are trying to get in before some restraints are imposed,” he said. “In this case they may be reading the writing on the walls.”
Last month’s lower spending occurred amid passage of House Bill 142, a bill sponsored by House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, which would ban some forms of lobbying spending, including the one-on-one dining and entertainment between a registered lobbyist and a lawmaker. Prior to passage, Ralston warned his colleagues in the House the bill would change the culture of the General Assembly.
Yet, there is a deep-seated reluctance on the part of legislators toward reform – or, at the very least, a lingering appetite for a free meal.
House Higher Education Committee Chairman Carl Rogers, R-Gainesville, was party to a catered dinner the evening following the vote paid for by the lobbyist for an association of 25 private colleges in the state. Rogers said the meal, which cost $317 for him, his wife and two guests, had been planned for weeks.
“Most of the time we stay up on West Peachtree in a condo and 99.9 percent of the time we buy our food at Publix, but that was a standing education dinner,” he said.
Rogers, who is in his 19th year at the Capitol, said dinners like these are about building business relationships with lobbyists.
“You get to know people; get to know about their families, their children,” he said. “It wasn’t an issue until the last three or four years and now it’s an issue.”
Rogers voted for the bill that would likely ban such dinners in the future. He said he understands the public wants the change.
“I understand that totally. No free golf, no free tickets,” he said. “I buy my stuff 90 percent of the time. … I buy lobbyists’ lunches. I’ve done it every year I’ve been down here. You do build a relationship with them. They are Georgians, they pay taxes. It’s all about business.”
Along with the individual meals, lobbyists spent thousands more in the hours after HB 142 passed that would continue to be legal under the bill. Such allowed spending includes a $1,267 dinner paid for by the lobbyist for the State Bar of Georgia for the House Juvenile Justice Committee and the $757 spent on travel mugs for lawmakers by a non-profit advocating for a long list of bills.
Smith, the Kennesaw State professor, said legislatures in many states allow larger gatherings sponsored by special interests. But he said the intent of those events is to influence lawmakers, just as with any other expense.
Still, Smith said the overall drop in spending is evidence that both lawmakers and lobbyists are thinking about how their encounters look to the public.
“The coverage and some of the attention being paid to that has sensitized special interests and caused them to back away from that one-on-one spending,” he said.
Expenditures on meals, tickets and other gifts for individual members of the House and Senate were down almost evenly — 42 and 44 percent, respectively, but those expenditures make up a relatively small portion of the overall spending picture. Much more is spent on group functions, from committee dinners to receptions for the entire General Assembly.
The reform bill now is in the Senate, which adopted its own version of reform on the session’s first day in January when senators overwhelmingly agreed to a rule limiting their own lobbying gifts to no more than $100. Ralston has belittled the Senate cap as little more of a “visor,” since lobbyists can shower senators with as many $100 gifts as they want, as long as no single gift exceeds that amount.
For example, Sen. Buddy Carter, R-Pooler, received at $13.50 necktie from the lobbyist for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta on Feb. 4 and a $92.71 dinner from the Georgia Board of Regents lobbyist later that day. Similarly on Feb. 13, Sen. Cecil Staton, R-Macon, accepted an $84.75 dinner from the Georgia Research Alliance and $60 in tickets to the circus.
Neither senator violated the chamber rules because they are separate gifts, despite the fact that they total more than $100.
That wasn’t the case for Sen. Emanuel Jones, D-Decatur, when a lobbyist for the firm McGuire Woods Consulting bought $200 worth of Chick-fil-a sandwiches for a group of high school students visiting Jones at the Capitol last month. Jones said he has hosted students from his district every year he has been in office and a lobbyist has always picked up the meal, so it did not occur to him that it would violate the Senate’s new rule.
“The reason I didn’t check is that I knew it was not for me,” he said.
When the AJC informed him of the violation, Jones checked and confirmed it broke the new rule. The rule has a forgiveness clause that allows senators to refund the gift within 30 days of notice of a violation and escape any further sanction.
“I am reimbursing them for that $200 out of my Senate expense account,” he said. “I didn’t know. Now that we’ve got a ruling on it, I do now.”
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