“Out in Harrisburg, it’s fairly common,” said state Rep. Tim O’Neal of swanky, invitation-only, off-the-books gatherings of lobbyists and legislators. The South Strabane Republican was admirably candid in his remarks about Pennsylvania’s lobbying culture in a report by the Post-Gazette’s Mike Wereschagin.
Our reporter uncovered an exclusive Christmastime bash at the Bella Sera event venue in Canonsburg. The shindig featured GOP legislators from this corner of the state and was grandly named “Southwest Society.”
You didn’t know about it. You weren’t meant to know about it. Pennsylvania’s lax legislator gift laws require little reporting and include loopholes that let lobbyists report even less. But the public needs to know that their representatives are being convinced by arguments, not by expensive meals and tickets and trips.
“Lobbying … can help educate members,” Mr. O’Neal explained. “We have to vote on literally every issue there is. You can’t be an expert in all of them.”
This is a fair description of the value of lobbying and lobbyists. Legislators must vote as if they were experts on innumerable matters of public policy, and they can’t afford to hire subject matter experts on all the issues. Nonprofit, nonpartisan organizations can’t fill the gap. Lobbyists serve a public purpose by bringing private sector expertise to public sector officials.
The problem is that they do so for the benefit of their clients. When legislators learn about energy policy from an oil industry lobbyist, or tort law from a trial bar lobbyist, or abortion law from a Planned Parenthood lobbyist, they’re getting one side of a complex issue. They’re getting an education, but they’re also getting a case.
The best legislators understand this and listen to representatives of all sides of the issues. The worst form quid pro quo relationships with favored groups, accepting lavish gifts (often disguised, even to themselves, as “friendship”) in return for doing that special interest’s bidding.
This is the nature of legislating. But the law can help more legislators be good ones. Right now, lobbyists must only report gifts to individual legislators of more than $250 per year per client. Lobbyists can avoid reporting requirements by divvying up their costs among several clients at once, keeping them below the threshold. A lobbyist who takes a legislator for a $500 meal but lobbies for 10 clients has spent only $50 per client and doesn’t have to report it. As a result, only about 1% of all influence spending by lobbyists is reported in an itemized way.
Reform bills would ban gifts over $250 per year per legislator and tighten wine-and-dine reporting requirements. They have languished in legislative committees for many years.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP
