Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
NRA lobbyist deserves investigation
Perhaps the Florida Senate wanted to get back in Marion Hammer’s good graces.
The National Rifle Association’s Florida lobbyist became apoplectic after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting last year when a few Senate Republicans briefly grew spines and voted to raise the minimum age for purchasing a firearm to 21, extend the waiting period to three days and ban bump stocks that let rifles fire faster.
It was the first major defeat in four decades for Hammer, a former NRA president who introduced Florida to concealed weapons, the stand-your-ground law and its unflattering nickname: “The Gunshine State.”
Despite her long record of lobbying, however, when it came time to disclose how much money she’s made lobbying state lawmakers in recent years, Hammer has tried to pretend she isn’t really a lobbyist.
Worse, the Florida Senate bought her excuse and gave her a pass on failing to accurately file quarterly compensation reports.
The Florida Bulldog reported in May that the National Rifle Association paid Hammer roughly $500,000 just between 2014 and 2018 for lobbying work. Minutes of its 2019 annual meeting, obtained by the website, show she received another $270,000 last year for “consulting services and legislative lobbying in Florida.”
Hammer is registered to lobby for both the NRA and its affiliate, Unified Sportsmen of Florida, which pays her as an inhouse employee. State rules do not require additional disclosure from in-house employees who lobby the Legislature.
After the Bulldog report, Sen. Perry Thurston, D-Fort Lauderdale, and Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, filed an ethics complaint against Hammer for failing to disclose her NRA compensation.
That’s when the special treatment started.
As the Bulldog further reported, the rules say a select committee of the Senate should have handled the investigation. That way, there might have been a public hearing and testimony.
Instead, Rules Committee Chairwoman Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers — who has received the NRA’s A-plus grade — referred the complaint to the Office of Legislative Services, an obscure agency within the Senate president’s office. It concluded that Hammer should simply amend her compensation disclosure forms from 2016 to 2019.
Hammer could have faced a fine of $5,000 per inaccurate report. The total fine could have exceeded $200,000. But Senate President Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, considers the matter “closed.”
The acerbic Hammer couldn’t even accept her kid gloves graciously. She claimed a Senate lawyer told her she didn’t need to update the forms. While “pleased that this matter has been concluded,” she said, “I am less than happy that the officials handling and commenting on these matters did not highlight the important point that I did not do anything wrong except rely on the advice of counsel.”
Now comes a second financial issue with Hammer. The Tallahassee Democrat and Florida Bulldog reported this month that she also has received nearly $300,000 in low-interest loans from United Sportsmen of Florida, the organization she founded in 1977 that employs only her.
State law prohibits nonprofit organizations from making loans to directors or officers.
Hammer said she simply borrowed the money from her retirement account.
The Washington Post asked five lawyers about the loans, which Hammer used to buy or help buy Tallahassee properties. Several said the affiliate’s tax filings appear to be inconsistent with her explanation. They said the filings describe the arrangement as “a loan from the organization” and that the interest Hammer paid was reported as revenue to the affiliate — not reimbursement to a retirement plan.
“Both the procedure for making the loans and the method of reporting them look slipshod at best, and, in all fairness, suspicious,” Robert Atkinson, a Florida State University law professor, told the Post.
The Hammer revelations come amid allegations of financial improprieties by the NRA’s chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, who earns a seven-figure salary, spends lavishly on luxury clothing and reportedly tried to have the NRA buy him a $6-million mansion. The group’s nonprofit status is threatened by an investigation by the attorney general of New York, where it is chartered.
The Florida organization run by Hammer, who sits on the NRA’s board, deserves similar scrutiny by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and the Legislature.
But that will never happen because Hammer enjoys most-favored-nation status in Tallahassee.
Her latest crusade is to kill a proposed state constitutional amendment that would ban civilians from buying military-style assault weapons. If the proposal makes the 2020 ballot, she will lead the campaign against it. She will do so as a well-compensated lobbyist who displays contempt for the rules because Florida’s political leaders let her get away with it.