Lobbyist gift-giving at issue in more states
WASHINGTON — Two months after demonstrators demanding greater accountability from state legislators were arrested at the Pennsylvania Capitol, a bill to ban gifts from lobbyists to officials remains stuck in committee without a hearing.
The laws that govern giftgiving from lobbyists to public officials vary widely from state to state. In Pennsylvania and other states with relatively lenient laws, good-government activists and some elected officials have been working to impose tougher restrictions on gift-giving by lobbyists. They argue that gifts from lobbyists may corrupt elected officials’ decision-making and cause them to stray from the best interests of their constituents.
“We have a deep, deep culture of corruption in Harrisburg, and gifts from lobbyists are one manifestation of that,” said Michael Pollack, who helped organize the May protests.
But Pollack and other activists have met resistance from lawmakers who say lobbyists offer informed perspectives on key issues — and that these exchanges often happen over meals or at concerts and sporting events that lobbyists pay for. And in a recent ruling, a federal judge said a Kentucky law banning gifts from lobbyists to legislators violates lobbyists’ First Amendment rights.
In Missouri, where lobbyists can give unlimited gifts to lawmakers, Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, made the issue a pillar of his 2016 campaign and signed an executive order on his first day banning employees in his office from accepting gifts from lobbyists. The state House of Representatives in January passed a bill to ban lobbyists from giving gifts to elected officials, though it died in the Senate.
“If you have a system that allows for unlimited amounts of gifts, it lends itself to the appearance of impropriety,” said state Rep. Justin Alferman, a Republican, who introduced the Missouri bill. In certain cases, he added, “It definitely levies some influence on lawmakers.”
And in South Dakota, a new law signed in March sets an annual $100 limit on gifts from lobbyists to legislators and other public officials. The law came after the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature repealed a sweeping voter-approved ethics mandate earlier in the year.
In other states, officials are aiming to address loopholes in existing lobbying laws. Earlier this year in Virginia, a law went into effect that eliminated a provision that had allowed lawmakers to accept unlimited gifts from lobbyists if the gift was connected to a “common interest” of theirs.
However, an exemption that allows “personal friends” to give unlimited gifts to public officials remains on the books in the state. In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the felony conviction of former Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell for accepting thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts from a Virginia-based businessman, ruling that his actions were covered by the personal friend exemption.
In 2014, after a scandal involving several state representatives who allegedly accepted cash from a lobbyist working undercover for the state’s attorney general, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives imposed a ban on cash gifts from lobbyists to its members. But lobbyists can still give virtually unlimited non-cash gifts to legislators.
Legislators in Pennsylvania are required to report gifts worth more than $250, as well as hospitality or lodging valued at over $650. But there is no cap on the total number or value of gifts or services legislators can accept from lobbyists.
In 2016, one state legislator accepted a trip to New Zealand worth nearly $6,000; another accepted a gift from a Nigerian king worth $750. Lawmakers assert that these kinds of gifts are associated with official state business, but critics argue the gifts benefit the lawmaker and are not related to legislating.