Whitmire: Alabama lawmakers want to legalize gifts to lawmakers
This is an opinion column.
In politics, friendship can mean a lot — a medium of exchange where no one keeps a ledger and everyone knows who looks out for whom when they need it most.
Years ago, when the FBI tried to trap Alabama gambling magnate Milton McGregor, he spoke carefully to the state lawmaker across from him wearing a wire.
“You need some new friends,” McGregor said to then-state Sen. Scott Beason. “We all need all the friends we can get, and Ronnie and I have a bad habit of supporting our friends.”
McGregor died six years ago, a free man until the end. For the jury, the recording wasn’t proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It was doubt. You see, McGregor was just being friendly and was suggesting he might help Beason’s political future.
You know, friends.
Fast forward to 2024. Today, a bill before the Alabama Legislature, sponsored by state Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, could open the doors for many more friendships by removing restrictions on gifts from lobbyists and special interests to lawmakers.
As long as they’re friends.
In a memo to lawmakers distributed Monday, the Alabama Ethics Commission warned that the bill would make it legal for lobbyists and the clients who employ them to ply lawmakers and their families with unrestricted gifts, as long a prosecutor couldn’t prove there was a clear quid-pro-quo.
“A lobbyist can claim to be a ‘friend’ of a public servant and then give unlimited gifts without disclosure, even during session, unless someone can prove that the gift is NOT motivated by friendship AND that it is intended to substantially influence the recipient’s official activities,” the commission staff wrote in the memo.
I’m not sure if that’s a warning or an advertisement.
What’s a little gift-giving between friends in Montgomery today?
Under the current Alabama ethics law, if those friends are a lobbyist and a lawmaker, a gift over $25 could mean time behind bars. Same for gifts between principles — those who employ lobbyists — and lawmakers.
Just ask former Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard, who did time for something like that, although for a lot more than $25.
However, Simpson’s bill could make such exchanges legal, as long as both sides of the exchange are friends and agree it’s not a bribe. Also, there would be no cap on value.
Lobbyists could give away vacation cruises, skybox tickets to Braves games, or flights to the Grand Canyon. Under the new law, and it would pass muster, as long as they’re friends. And what better demonstration of friendship is there than coming through for a buddy in bad need of a five-night vacation?
Under the current law, lawmakers may accept gifts only if there was a pre-existing friendship with the gift-giver before they took office.
If you’re a lawmaker and your lobbyist uncle gives you a fancy rifle for Christmas and takes you on a family hunting trip, that’s fine as long as it’s typical of what you’ve always done.
But if the lobbyist is someone you made “friends” with after getting elected, that’s trouble.
It wasn’t always this way.
In 2010, Alabama Republicans won control of both houses of the Alabama Legislature and swiftly delivered on a campaign promise to tighten the state’s ethics laws. In a special session weeks after the election, they passed some of the toughest ethics laws in the country.
But ever since Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard got arrested and convicted for breaking those ethics laws, there have been several attempts to loosen the grip.
Simpson’s bill would undo much of what those reforms put into place.
And then some.
In addition to loosening the legislative gift ban, the bill would remove ethics crimes from the criminal code and make them civil offenses.
PREVIOUS: Here we go again. Ethics ‘reform’ bill legalizes Alabama corruption.
Let’s repeat that so we’re clear: It would make ethics crimes — not crimes.
Rather than referring ethics scofflaws for prosecution, the Alabama Ethics Commission would give lawmakers reprimands and light civil fines for repeat offenses.
In addition to opposition from the Ethics Commission, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, former federal corruption prosecutor Matt Hart, and former House Ethics Committee chairman Mike Ball have all gone on record against it, although each for his own reasons.
But none of those folks have a vote on the bill, which could go before the Alabama House as early as this week. And with a flurry of proposed gambling bills riding the same tracks through the Legislature, who knows how friendly it could get?
Simpson insists the bill would make the state law tougher, but in reality, it could make Montgomery the friendliest city in Alabama.
And lawmakers and lobbyists what they always wanted to be — friends with benefits.
Kyle Whitmire is the 2023 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. You can follow him on Threads here and subscribe to his weekly newsletter, Alabamafication.
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