Thank you for this opportunity to offer comments regarding HB2180. The Kansas Society of Association Executives is an organization consisting of a diverse membership of professionals who are responsible for management of trade groups, associations of businesses, or associations of individual professionals. Almost without exception, our memberships include part of your constituency.
Because many of our members are appointed by their associations to communicate their public policy positions, we are required by law to be registered as lobbyists. This means we are subject to all the lobbying restrictions and reporting requirements.
Most of our organizations publish newsletters, journals, membership directories, and other documents which provide contemporary facts about the industry or profession we serve. These publications can be extremely valuable sources of information to legislators who want to be knowledgeable about an important sector of their local economy. It is not uncommon for a legislator to contact an association and request information that is already in one of our publications.
Unfortunately, the cost of preparing and printing our publications has gradually increased such that oftentimes, the value exceeds $39.99. If we were to provide a publication that has a value of $40 or more to a legislator, we would be in violation of K.S.A. 46-271. We do not believe that the intent of K.S.A. 46-271 has ever been to deprive legislators of valuable information. It was designed to make it unlawful for lobbyists to provide expensive gifts to legislators with the intent of influencing their position on legislative matters.
House Bill 2180 would ostensibly address the dilemma I have described. We are, however, concerned about the language in the bill because it would define our publications as hospitality, and create an exception to the limit only if the publication is provided as hospitality. Our publications are not a form of hospitality; nor are they ever provided with a caveat that a legislator must assure that he or she will follow a particular course of official action. For this reason, we respectfully request that HB2180 be amended or substituted to clearly reflect that our publications may be provided to legislators even if a publication has a value that exceeds the $40 limit. We have drafted a proposed substitute bill that we believe would accomplish this objective.
In the process of discussing our proposed language with the Executive Director of the Governmental Ethics Commission we learned that this same section of law should be further amended to reflect the $100 aggregate limit on expenditures for recreation. It was also pointed out that we should probably make a distinction that these rules apply to officers and employees of the legislative branch of government only; again to reflect a policy decision made by previous Legislatures. These amendments have also been incorporated in section two of our proposed substitute bill. In other words our version would make K.S.A. 46-271 consistent with other sections of the ethics and reporting laws, as well as create an exception for trade publications.
Page 2, KSAE Testimony, HB2180, Feb. 5, 2001
House Ethics and Elections Committee
Section one of our proposed substitute bill would address a separate problem. It would amend K.S.A. 46-269 to clarify that if anyone provides a gift valued at less than $40 (or gifts with an aggregate annual value less than $40) to each member of the Legislature, each member of either the House or Senate, or each member of a Caucus, it would not be necessary to report names of individual legislators. The cost of the gifts would still be reportable, but not itemized by name. This is consistent with the established policy regarding hospitality and would not rescind the requirement that lobbyists report the names of legislators who receive a gift that other legislators did not receive.
The KSAE Government Relations Committee has agreed that these amendments in our proposed substitute for HB2180 would address important concerns expressed by many legislators as well as our members. We urge your favorable consideration of these amendments.
We are also cognizant of concerns expressed by legislators as well as some of our own members regarding the itemized reporting of hospitality. There appears to be growing consensus that itemized reporting of hospitality creates a distorted picture of actual events instead of giving the general public a more accurate depiction of your interactions with representatives of various organizations and businesses.
We recognize that legislators want their constituents to have access to information about their activities. While this is a laudable goal, the itemized reporting requirement adopted by the 2000 Legislature fails to achieve that goal. If a constituent wanted to identify the activities of his or her legislator, he or she would have to spend countless hours analyzing every single lobbyist report for several different reporting periods. Furthermore, the actual expenditure reported could have been affected by extraordinary circumstances that are not reflected in the report. Thus the constituent can be misled rather than properly informed.
Those legislators who desire to inform their constituents of their activities could keep track of their legislative social calendar and provide it upon request, publish it in their newsletter, or post it on their website. Thus the interested constituent could readily identify the extent to which a legislator attended luncheons, receptions, or other functions and could readily identify the lobbyists who sponsored those events. This would provide a far more accurate picture of the extent to which a legislator interacts with representatives of organizations and businesses. With this in mind, I have also drafted an alternative substitute version of HB2180 for your consideration.
In closing we wish to reiterate what our members have said many times over the years. We believe that in our State public policy decisions are based principally on the facts pertaining to an issue and communications from constituents. Any notion that legislators can be persuaded to exchange votes for meals or gifts is sadly misguided. There is no evidence or other reason to believe that members of the Legislature or members of our organization are unethical. KSAE members take pride in our standards of ethical conduct and Kansas legislators take pride in their standards of ethical conduct.
For those reasons, we respectfully request that you take favorable action on either of the two substitute bills. Thank you for considering our testimony.
<< Back to KSAE Legislative Issues