Says Chairman James Lynch Sr.: "I don't believe anybody should get anything for doing their job" as a public official.

09:20 AM EST on Friday, January 7, 2005

BY BRUCE LANDIS
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- The state Ethics Commission yesterday moved toward tighter, simpler restrictions on gifts to legislators and other public officials by lobbyists and others with an interest in the officials' decisions.

The commission told its staff lawyers to draft a variety of amended regulations for possible adoption; all of them would involve a substantial tightening of the rules. The existing regulation allows legislators and other officials to take gifts worth $150, or a total of $450 per year, from anyone, including lobbyists with an interest in the decisions they make.

Chairman James Lynch Sr. said he plans to press for a complete ban on gifts to public officials.

"I don't believe anybody should get anything for doing their job" as a public official, Lynch said.

He argued against making a variety of exceptions commission members talked about yesterday, like letting legislators accept tickets to events where they are speakers.

"The more exceptions you've got, the more problems you've got," Lynch said, like deciding whether or not an official's standing up at a gathering and greeting everybody amounts to a "speech" and thus an exemption.

Advocacy groups have harshly criticized the present system as, among other things, "legalized bribery." The groups have pointed out that if one lobbyist can give $450 per year in gifts to one legislator, 10 lobbyists can together give $4,500 per year to each of 10 legislators.

Yesterday's meeting amounted to a step toward reversing the commission's controversial 2000 rollback of a brief period of tighter gift restrictions.

Any of the four versions of draft regulations the commission requested yesterday would largely or completely reverse the May 2000 vote where the commission decided, 5-4, to relax a two-year-old ban on gifts to legislators and other officials.

The rollback meant that legislators, and state and municipal employees, have been free to accept meals and liquor, sports tickets, golf outings and other gifts, so long as they do not exceed $450 from a single source in a calendar year.

Most of the five commission members who repealed the gift ban have since left the commission. The departed include Thomas D. Goldberg, who attracted attention when he voted to relax the gift ban because his brother and law partner, Robert D. Goldberg, a former Senate minority leader, was a prominent State House lobbyist.

The different versions the commissioners said they want to examine would limit gifts to public officials or their family members from "interested parties," or persons or companies with a financial interest in decisions the official can make.

Members said the commission will hold public hearings on one or more of the proposals, then adopt one. They include:

A strict, "zero tolerance" ban on gifts.

Going back to a gift rule similar to the one the commission rolled back in 2000, which banned gifts but allowed "services of insignificant monetary value." Some commission members said that if they use that approach, they want to define a dollar figure that is "insignificant."

Continuing to allow gifts within monetary limits, such as those in the existing rule, but reducing the limits. Where the rule now allows single gifts valued at up to $150, with an annual limit of $450, commission members discussed limits of $20 per gift and $40 per year.

Commission members also said they want to avoid reporting requirements, another option but one they felt is complicated to enforce, in favor of a simple ban or limitation on gifts.

Lynch said the previous gift ban, while it lasted, worked.

"We were getting complaints," Lynch said, "but they were from people who were causing the problems."

Late in the meeting, Lynch attributed the demise of the gift ban at least partly to public officials' taste for golf. Golf outings don't fit under a low gift limit.

"The golfers got to us, and we went for that $450," said Lynch, who voted to keep the gift ban.