Trying to legislate morality is often a challenge, and even more often a great way to exempt yourself from moral edicts while imposing them on everyone else.
Case in point: Georgia’s new lobbying rules, intended to limit the “freebies” that lawmakers and public officials can accept, don’t cover everyone with business before the state, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:
The reforms took effect this year, banning free tickets, golf games and anything of value over $75. But the same bill changed the definition of lobbyist to exclude public employees, including university system lobbyists who are among of the most generous at the Capitol.
As a result, lawmakers got prime seats to watch the Bulldogs hammer Auburn, the Yellow Jackets scrape by Georgia Southern and the Georgia State Panthers manage their only win this fall, free of charge.
There’s a black hole around what college officials are doing to influence policy:
Even though the total is down from last year, colleges remain the biggest spenders on lawmakers among the State Capitol’s lobbying corps.
Because they don’t have to register as lobbyists, they also don’t have to report to the state what they spend. And they don’t have to abide by the ban on game tickets and the $75 limit on meals, which they exceeded about 20 times during 2014, according to school records. Some schools, such as UGA, handed out more free football tickets than they did last year, when they had to report.
The university system is saying it didn’t ask for the exemption, while some lawmakers said “their colleagues simply got tired of showing up on ethics commission reports showing they received ballgame tickets and pricey meals.”
Well, that settles that. Surprisingly, the “top schools” gave the Journal-Constitution their spending figures on lobbying (only Kennesaw State billed the paper), so you can actually see what they’re spending and who their “best customers” in the statehouse are.
Greg Piper is an assistant editor at The College Fix. (@GregPiper)
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