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Perdue pushes ethics on firm lawmaker revolving door Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Perdue pushes bill on ethics
Published on: 02/13/05
A year ago they would have made a formidable legislative caucus: the chairman of the House Budget Committee, the House majority leader, a floor leader for Gov. Sonny Perdue and two Senate committee chairmen.
But weeks after leaving office, they're now on the lobbyist side of the velvet rope that separates lawmakers and the people paid to influence them at the Capitol. They represent cities, hospitals, gas companies, high-tech firms, bikers and pay-day loan businesses.
The revolving door of ex-lawmakers immediately becoming lobbyists has long been criticized in Atlanta, as it has been in Washington, where former Georgia Sen. Zell Miller announced even before he left office that he was joining a law firm with extensive lobbying interests.
But this year, with his fellow Republicans in charge of the Legislature, Perdue is convinced that the climate is finally right to require a cooling-off period for lawmakers wanting to become lobbyists. The governor is pushing an ethics bill that would make legislators wait at least a year before returning to the Capitol as lobbyists.
Government watchdog groups such as Common Cause prefer two years. About half the states have such waiting periods.
Perdue's proposal also would make lobbyists disclose how much they are paid, in what is presumed to be a big-bucks industry.
"The transition from legislator to lobbyist is just too cozy right now," said Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver of Decatur, who has authored several Democratic ethics-in-government bills this year. "To use your public service job to further your post-legislative opportunities for financial gain is not in the public's interest."
The revolving door has been spinning for years, and it was no different after last November's elections.
Former Sen. Dan Lee of LaGrange, who pushed Perdue's ethics package last year as his Senate floor leader, was invited to become a lobbyist about a month after losing his Republican primary race in July. Now Lee and the law firm he joined represent Corrections Corporation of America, which builds and leases prisons to government; the Georgia Academy of Family Physicians; Infrastructure Corporation of America, which maintains highways; Motorola; and MHM Services, which provides mental health services to Georgia prison inmates.
"I personally don't see anything wrong with it," said Lee, who added that most of his law practice over the years has involved doing work for governments. "I know the process; I know the procedures involved. It's hard to say a person can't make use of that capability."
Former Sen. Charles Tanksley, a Cobb County Republican, was approached about a lobbying job long before he left office last month. He doesn't think the one-year waiting period would make much difference.
"Inherent in these bills is an underlying presumption that lobbying is a nefarious enterprise. I don't feel that way," said Tanksley, who represents Blue Bird Corp., which builds school buses; Enterprise Rent-a-Car; and WellCare of Georgia, which hopes to get a piece of Medicaid's managed care business.
Almost as long as there has been money to be made lobbying, every Georgia legislative session has brought a homecoming of sorts for ex-legislators. Every year, many of those who quit or have been defeated at the polls come back to the Capitol to be with old friends and earn a paycheck promoting legislation or seeking funding. About 50 former legislators or other top state officials are registered as lobbyists this year, up from about 30 five years ago.
Successful longtime lawmakers-turned-lobbyists such as former Senate Majority Leader Pete Robinson and former Senate Republican Leader Arthur "Skin" Edge have been joined this year by former Rep. Tom Buck of Columbus, who served as House budget chairman last year before retiring after nearly 40 years in the Legislature. Buck, a Democrat, now represents the city of Columbus, which he looked after each year at budget time when he served in the House, and also lobbies for St. Francis Hospital of Columbus.
Jimmy Skipper of Americus served as House majority leader until he quit the Legislature at the end of last year. He now represents the Georgia Electric Membership Corp. and Scana Energy Corp. Skipper co-sponsored the natural gas deregulation bill that allowed Scana to enter the gas market in Georgia. He could not be reached for comment late last week.
It's not just legislators. Perdue's former chief of staff, Eric Tanenblatt, is registered to lobby for Georgia-Pacific and the Columbus Chamber of Commerce. Perdue's former point man on ethics, Robert Highsmith, is lobbying for Georgia chiropractors and a credit card company. Perdue's legislation wouldn't affect former staffers such as Highsmith; it would keep only former lawmakers, state elected officials and agency heads from immediately returning as lobbyists.
At the federal level, members of Congress are supposed to wait at least a year before returning to lobby Congress. But that hasn't kept them from joining lobbying firms and lobbying the government. The Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-based watchdog group, found last summer that 90 former members of Congress had been hired to lobby for the top 20 government contractors since 1997.
Miller confirmed last year, a month before he left office, that he was joining the government affairs practice of Atlanta-
based law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge. The former Georgia governor, a critic of lobbyists when he was in office, said he wouldn't be "walking the halls or taking folks out to big steak dinners" in his new role.
Rep. Rich Golick (R-Smyrna), who is sponsoring Perdue's ethics bill, said, "The public perception of the practice is that it may provide unequal access to decision-makers. The overall intent of the legislation is to reinstate some of the public trust as we read every six months headlines above the fold about someone being indicted."
But Tanksley said some career lobbyists have more access to the power brokers in state government than ex-lawmakers do.
"The advantage a former legislator has is understanding the process and how it works, how a bill gets done," Tanksley said. "A lot of it is just good horse sense, but it's a horse sense based on experience."
Bill Bozarth, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, called it "a little bit tawdry" for lawmakers to switch to lobbying so quickly after leaving office. He agrees with key legislators who say that other aspects of Perdue's ethics bills, not the revolving-door provision, have kept them from passing.
"I think we are going to get an ethics bill in 2005," said Oliver, the Decatur Democrat. "I am working to make sure it's a strong and meaningful reform. One year or even a two-year provision is not going to end the practice, but it does create some distance."
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