Let me quote from Susan Redden's Joplin Globe article on the pernicious effect that lobbyists are having on our state legislature:
"Hunter, a former pharmaceutical salesman, said lobbyists' expenditures 'are no different than the dinners and gifts I used to buy for doctors and their staffs." Hunter, of course, is Rep. Steve Hunter, R-Joplin, who has received more gifts from lobbyists than any other state representative this year. It was the next phrase from Hunter that spells out why the Globe story and the articles I have been posting on lobbyists' expenditures are so important.
"All it does is get you in the door," he said.
If that is all it does, and I don't believe it is, that would still make it a serious problem.
Most taxpayers do not have the ability to go to Jefferson City, knock on a legislator's door, buy him dinner and a drink and try to have their problems handled. Quite frankly, most of us believe that paying more than $30,000 a year to legislators to spend five months in Jefferson City is plenty of money to take care of their meals. We don't spend our time asking other people to foot the bill for us.
"All it does is get you in the door," Hunter said. It gets them in the door and makes sure that someone is listening to them. If it all it did was get them in the door, then you would not be seeing so much money spent on lobbying and you would not see so much money contributed to political campaigns.
If all it did was get them in the door and they didn't see any results from it, they wouldn't be doing it.
If lobbying didn't pay off for the special interests who engage in it, then why on earth does the Missouri Hospital Association, which hit a home run with the legislation to limit the awards in medical malpractice lawsuits, have 21 registered lobbyists, including the governor's brother Andrew Blunt. Not all of them recorded expenditures to lawmakers during the 2005 session, but they spent money, primarily on large gatherings of Republicans, and they got exactly what they wanted. As for Andrew Blunt, he may not have had any expenditures recorded, but if the governor's brother places a phone call to you, you're going to listen carefully to what he has to say.
I am skeptical of Rep. Hunter's claim that those $300 meals are for food eaten by several legislators and not just him. Listen to what he said, "A lot of legislators don't like having that many people through their offices, or don't want that kind of expenditure showing up on their reports."
In other words, if Hunter is telling the truth, then he is helping other legislators to commit fraud, by not being truthful with their constituents about what they are receiving from lobbyists. If that's not the case, then Rep. Hunter is simply lying.
If you have ever read individual lobbyist's disclosure forms, not all of the expenditures are for individual legislators. You will see expenditures for committees or caucuses or sometimes even the entire General Assembly. Those gifts do not go on individual legislators' forms, though they are still receiving something of value.
The Globe article was a strong first strike, but if it is left at that, it really won't mean anything. I hope the Globe plans to follow up and maybe use some of the same kind of hard hitting editorials and columns it has used with situations concerning the Joplin Police Department and the death of eight-year-old Braxton Wooden.
The effect of lobbyists on state and federal lawmakers has been spelled out time after time by investigative reporters who have uncovered instances in which lobbyists sometimes contribute key wording and phrases to bills...and sometimes write the entire bill and hand it over to the legislator to rubber stamp it and send it on its way.
That may not be the situation with Rep. Steve Hunter, but as I noted last month in The Turner Report, Hunter has done a 360-degree turnaround in the type of bills he has sponsored since his first term in the House.
During his first three years as a representative, Hunter did not sponsor any business legislation. Then three weeks after the end of the 2003 General Assembly, he found a new job as a membership recruiter for Associated Industries of Missouri, a powerful pro-business lobbying organization. And that is not just my term for it. As Susan Redden's Globe article noted, AIM spells out exactly what it does on its website. It represents the "interests of Missouri employers before the General Assembly, state agencies, the courts, and the public."
Financial disclosure forms filed by Hunter with the Missouri Ethics Commission indicate that he was employed by Associated Industries of Missouri in 2003 and 2004 and received at least $1,000 from it in both years. Unfortunately, all officeholders are required to state on these forms is if they received $1,000, they do not have to be specific.
It would be safe to speculate that if Steve Hunter was not the chairman of the House Workforce Development and Workplace Safety Committee he would not have been the first person AIM would have thought about hiring. That committee, of course, deals with the workers compensation legislation that AIM and Missouri businesses have been pushing and finally succeeded in passing.
Perhaps Hunter wrote every word of that bill himself. He is certainly an intelligent man. But it would not be a stretch of the imagination to believe that AIM staff could have been very helpful in constructing the pro-business legislation.
Hunter sponsored that bill as a representative for this area, then put on his other hat after the end of the legislative session and spoke at eight "Lunch and Learn" presentations put on by Associated Industries across the state, speaking as an AIM employee to explain what he had done for the organization as a legislator.
Hunter sponsored three other bills designed to cripple labor unions in the state, which did not get anywhere.
Let me repeat what I wrote last month. According to the Missouri State Manual, state representatives, including Steve Hunter, "receive a salary of $31,351 per year, a weekly allowance for miles traveled going to and returning from their place of meeting and expenses for each day the General Assembly is in session."
Legally, Hunter has no obligation to tell Missourians how much money he receives annually from Associated Industries of Missouri. Morally, he owes us that information.
4 comments:
Randy, you may recall that in the late 80's and early 90's a movement swept across Missouri and other states to limit the terms of elected officials. In Missouri this effort was spearheaded by Missourians for Limited Terms(MLT), a Marshfield, Missouri based organization,with Joe Muller as its treasurer. Their main thrust was to end "careerism" in the legislature, which in their view led to "pork barrel" special interests at the expense of the greater good. They believed that limiting terms would lead to better government and that term limited legislators would work better in leading us to bold and innovative solutions to the serious problems facing our society. When asked if term limits would increase the power of lobbiests and the bureaucrats, Missourians for Limited Terms flatly stated:"that is a common fear, which is completely unfounded. Given limited terms, legislators will be more likely to draft laws which ordinary people can understand and live by, since the legislators will know they will soon be operating under those same laws in private life."
One other point worth mentioning, when asked if term limits will disrupt the way state government does business MLT again firmly stated "Yes, and that is one of the best arguments in favor of limited terms. By limiting terms we are taking control of the government and giving it back to the people where it belongs. Term limitation would create a climate in which talented men and women from all walks of life would be able to run for office and be effective, without having to make a career of politics.Citizen legislators would come to government briefly, them would return home to live under the consequences of the laws they have passed."
2005 brings us to the reality of term limits. Are we as citizens of Missouri better off with limited term legislators? Is the institutional memory of the legislature, the whys and hows and reasons of procedures, laws,and regulations; the long forgotten debates on legislative intent of those items; are these items passed from legislator to new legislator so that continunity is maintained? Or does each new legislator wake up in a new world, each without a clue as to what items, procedures, debates etc.
came before him. Ideally, term limits work in a world shielded from reality, where everyone plays by the rules and politics is simply something with parttime importance. Term limits have emboldeded lobbiests and bureaucrats. With a swinging door in the state legislature, with senators and representatives coming and going, the only ones with the memory are the lobbiests, who can always tell a freshman legislator " This is how things work here, just watch and listen to me and I'll help you out." Why not choke down the lobbiests? End the insanity of term limits and zero in on lobbying. Why in the world would we place limits on the public's right to be represented by someone doing a job they approve of?
Information contained here comes from MISSOURIANS FOR LIMITED TERMS, in their Q & A phamplet "The toughest questions provide the best reasons.", published in the effort to place term limits on the Missouri ballot in 1992. The effort was successful.
I definitely recall those times. I wrote several columns at The Carthage Press criticizing term limits. It sounds fine and good to say that implementing term limits puts a brake on professional politicians who get further and further out of touch with the people. In reality, what term limits says is that people cannot be trusted to choose who their elected representatives should be. Term limits is a lazy way of handling the situation. True reform should involve eliminating the gerrymandering that protects incumbents, and finding ways to encourage competition in elections and eliminate the advantages that are held by incumbents. When term limits were put in, all it did was to increase the power of lobbyists and bureaucrats at the expense of the people.
Randy, Do you think we are just now beginning to witness the folly of limiting terms? Clearly the issue is important. The promises of the term advocacy movement may have come up a little short under implementation, as the ideology doesn't appear to hold up to weathering. I question if this issue would receive much legislative attention and if the public in general even cares.
Randy, I just opened today's Joplin Globe Sunday, July 17, 2005 to read the lead editorial point out that lobbiests have become even more influential under a constitutional amendment designed specifically to diminish their influence. What do think the Globe is trying to say with the us eof this editorial?
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