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Alabama should pass a law forbidding legislators (or other public office holders) from becoming lobbyists (and vice versa) for at least five years after they leave public office.

Influence peddlers
Lobby reform involves more than setting new rules for ex-legislators

Sunday, December 10, 2006
Huntsville Times
page B2
http://www.al.com/opinion/huntsvilletimes/editorials.ss...147121170.xml&coll=1

If you are a legislator who has retired from the House or Senate or been dismissed from office by the voters, your days in politics in Montgomery need not be over. In fact, your power and your money may be just beginning.

Like every state in the union, Alabama lets former legislators lobby the government, including their former colleagues in the two houses. Records show that 31 former legislators are serving in such capacity now.

Hired by a variety of interests, they advocate for their clients and make tidy sums doing it. Exactly how tidy isn't known. Unlike some other states, Alabama doesn't require lobbyists' salaries to go public. Texas does. And records show that in 2005, legislators-turned-lobbyists were raking in from $256,000 to $494,000 in client fees.

The money is nice, and so is the power. Lobbyists in Montgomery, like lobbyists in Washington, play major roles in making laws. When legislation affecting their clients is being conceived, they are at the ready with advice that benefits those who pay them.

Some - even legislators themselves - say lobbyists play too large a role. A recent study by the state chapter of the League of Women Voters found legislators saying lobbyists too often were the only ones supplying information about proposed legislation and that less biased sources of information are needed.

And it's obvious that Jim Sumner, the director of the Alabama Ethics Commission, is correct in saying former lawmakers have "a distinct leg up" when it comes to lobbying effectiveness. They know the people and the process better than any outsider can.

So is the issue of legislators who lobby as important as the power of lobbyists per se? Is this a problem that needs to be fixed?

Well, the good news is that Alabama does put a mini-bridle on legislators who want to lobby. A former House member has to wait two years after leaving that body before he can lobby its members. But, in defiance of logic, that same former House member can immediately lobby members of the Senate. Similarly, former senators face the two-year moratorium in the Senate, but can immediately lobby the House.

Alabama should extend the two-year moratorium against former legislators to include both houses, or maybe extend to three or more years. Similarly, the state should also require, as states like Texas do, that lobbyists' compensation gets some public scrutiny.

Free-enterprise purists may find both rules not to their tastes. After all, people have a right to make living. But in this case we are talking about jobs that affect the laws that we all must obey, not the sale of merchandise or services in private business. A little more scrutiny can't hurt.

As to the degree of influence former legislators are bringing to the legislative process, Alabama, fortunately, is not on the bottom of the scale on this issue as it so often is. Alabama is tied with Arizona for the 14th-highest number of ex-legislators turned lobbyists, which is at the high end of the middle of the pack.

And ex-legislators make up only 5.4 per cent of 569 people who are registered to lobby the statehouse. While they may wield more clout than their mere numbers would indicate, please note that everybody's choice for the most powerful lobbyist in Montgomery, Paul Hubbert of the Alabama Education Association, is not a former legislator.

In sum, the problem of ex-legislators acting as lobbyists is a smaller part of a bigger problem: the power of lobbyists as such. And part of that problem lies with the fact that a lobbyist can spend $249 a day, every day, on wining and dining a legislator and not have to report one dime of the expense.

Lobbying reform as a whole needs more scrutiny, and more action. If the laws can address that issue, the matter of whether a lobbyist is a former legislator or not won't be an overwhelming issue.

By David Prather, for the Huntsville Times editorial board. E-mail: david.prather@htimes.com
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