University Dally Kansan
Thursday, May 4. 1978
13
Lobbyists compete for time of legislators
By DIRCK STEIMEL
Staff Writer
Special interest groups spent at least $0,000 buying food or drink for members of the team.
These special interest groups spent enough to buy each of the 16 state senates and representatives a $6.75 steak each day of the 90-day session.
There are more than 500 lobbyists registered in the secretary of state's office in Topeka, each of them represents a special organization. You can work full-time throughout the 90-day session.
Each of these 500 lobystaffs is employed to provide information and to try to influence behavior.
To provide information, the lobbyist may appear before a committee or he may talk with the legislator in the official's office or catch him in the ball of the statehouse.
A LOBBYIST can take legislators out to
a nightclub or maybe
eaggle take him to play in
All legislators will say that their vote cannot be bought by a lobbyist, but Richard Larrime, a legislative assistant to a state representative in Topeka, said recently that he thought that some lobbyists might be coming close to buying votes.
"It is difficult to keep your constituent's interests in mind when the lobbyists keep coming up with these steak dinners," Larimore said.
Harold Stones, lobbyist for the Kansas Bankers Association, said the main reason that lobbyists took legislators out for an afternoon of chance to talk to the legislator face to face.
"There is tremendous competition for the legislators' time and many times you can't catch them in their offices or in the hall." Stones said. "You have to take a person out to dinner to get an opportunity to give the legislator your information."
STONES SAID going out with a legislator after working hours also helped set up good human relations between the lobbyist and the legislator.
Stones said one objective for a lobbyist was to set up a good relationship with the legislator and to establish credibility with the legislator. The legislator would believe the lobbyist's information.
Edwin J. W. Walbourn, lobbyist for the Kansas Association of Community Collegees, said the idea of taking the legislator out to talk about education would get a personal contact with the legislator.
"Many times a restaurant or a club is the only place a lobbyist is able to talk personally to a legislator," Walburn said, "but I don't know any legislator that would vote for your bill just because you bought them a drink or a meal."
HOWEVER, STATE Rep. Robert Miller, R-Wellington, said it was not realistic to think that special interest groups are allowed to vote. And the legislators understand the legislation.
"I find it hard to believe that these profit-minded interests are dumping tons of money into Topaka just because they think we're nice people," Miller said.
This does not mean that a legislator's vote is for sale for a drink or a drink, Miller said, but that the lobbyist knows that by getting legislators he can get votes when he needs them.
"After all," Miller said, "who wants to vote against someone you like?"
Lairmore, legislative assistant to Miller, said the usual approach of powerful亿客to try to get big bills through in a single season, but rather to get small bills passed that
AN EXAMPLE of the chipping away at the law approach was done by small loan companies when they were trying to get interest rate limits un. Larimore said.
"The small loan companies used to be known as Mr. Steak in the statehouse," Llarmore said. "They just kept chipping away at it until they got there where they wanted them."
Larimore said another example of the power of lobbying groups was the endowment of the National Geographic Society.
Between brewers lobbying against non-throwaway bread, feedlot people lobbying against controls on manure runoff and power companies lobbying against environmental controls on water use, Kansas laws and laws are in shameless, Laramie said.
EVEN WITH THE questionable conduct of some lobbyists, Larimore said that lobbying still was necessary to provide information to the legislators. Lobbing is needed unless the state employs a huge research staff to do the lobbyists work, he said.
One of the worries that both Larimore and Miller have with the lobbies is the lenency of the players.
Kansas law requires lobbyists to report to the secretary of state's office in each reporting period expenditures of more than $50 in any one club or restaurant. The law requires lobbyists to report gifts of more than $10 to any public official for any one reporting period.
The reporting periods for lobbyists are once a month during the legislative session, from mid-January to mid-April, and once three months during the remainder of the year.
A REPORT released by the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission last September indicated that lobbyists had made a demand for buying food and drinks for legislators in the past three years. That averages to more than 125 Kansas representatives and 40 senators.
"The underlying principle of the law is that the public needs to know what groups are willing to spend and to show the public much lobbyists are spending." Harper said.
Jerry Harper, executive director of the Governmental Ethics Commission, said the commission's report did not show the actual spending because the figures included only costs charged to the agency and exclude theJobbists who did not exceed the $50 food and drink limit or the $10 gift limit.
report his expenses. Harper said there was no limit for spending by lobbyists.
INSTEAD OF reporting expenses of more than $50, Harper said he would like the laws to require each lobbyist to report everything he spent.
The Ethics Commission has no authority to penalize a jobless listen he fails to
With the present laws a lobbyist could spend $49.99 on food or drink for legislators at 20 different clubs and he wouldn't have to report anything, Harper said.
"The lobbyists argue that reporting all expenditures would be too cumbersome," Harper said, "but they must have to keep records for their employers anyway."
Miller introduced a bill in the 1978 session of the Legislature that would have required lobbyists to report everything spent on food and drink, more than $1 and all gifts of more
This bill, Miller said, would let the public know how much money is actually being spent by lobbyists in Topeka and show who is spending the money.
"IF THERE is nothing wrong with all this spending by the lobbyists, who could object to putting a little sunshine in the practice," Miller said.
Miller's bill, however, never got past the first step of the legislative process this session, dying in the House Election Committee it wean.
Stones was in favor of changing the law so that almost everything would be reported.
"I think the $00 threshold is ridiculous. I run a clean operation and always file my expenditures. That's why I always look like the biggest smender in Teopha." Stones said.
There was not a lot of actual abuse of the reporting expenditures law. Stones said, but a lot of groups are careful not to go over the report limit.
"There is actually nothing wrong with being careful not spend the $00 limit," Stones said. "But those people were told the letter instead of the spirit of the law."
LARMORE SAID that even though Stones was in favor of the bill to lower the
State Rep. John Vogel, R-Lawrence, said he thought the bill requiring the reporting of almost all lobbying expenses probably would get too bogged down in paper work.
lobbyst's reporting threshold, Stones had called Miller's banker in Wellington and told the banker he did not like Miller's attitude, even though the billboarding bill had nothing to
"I think the lobystaff ought to file and keep his own expense accounts; then it would not have to be all reported and someone would still be able to check it." Vogel said.
Another, disputed lobbying practice, the Capitol Hospitality ranks in hotels near the state Capitol.
Harper said that when he was a state representative six years ago there were probably 20 rooms in the Jayhawk Hotel and Ramada hotel up as hospitality rooms for
THESE ROOMS, Harper said, were open to the legislators in the late afternoon after noon.
The hospitality rooms were all closed in 1973 when Gov. Robert F. Bennett, who was then majority leader of the Senate, asked the lobbyists to close them, and the lobbyists agreed, even though the rooms were not illegal.
would meet at these rooms after the session.
Vogel said that in many ways the hospitality rooms were good for the Legislature, because they gave one a chance to meet one other.
"Nowadays often times you never really get to know the legislators because everyone is spread out over town," Vogel said.
Vogel said daily caucuses have helped to take the place of the hospital rooms:
However, Stones has opened 8 hospitality rooms in the Merchants National Bank in New York and 4 other locations.
South Korean pilot denies allegations of poker game
SEOUL, South Korea (UPI)—The pilot of a South Korean jetliner forced down in Russia denied reports yesterday that the crew was playing poker while the plane did not bid they tried to communicate with the Russian MIG before it opened fire on his Boeing 707.
Kim Chang-kyu blamed mechanical trouble in his Korean Airbases 707 for its straying April 20 into Soviet airspace, where MIG warjets fired on it -killing two passengers—and forced it to land on a frozen lake.
The 95 passengers and 11 crewmembers were freed three days after the shooting, but the Soviets detained Kim and navigator Lee Kun-sik for nine more days and they returned to Seoul yesterday for a tearful reunion with their families.
At an airport news conference, Kim indignantly denied newspaper reports his
SKY DIVING Come Fly With Us
"It is ridiculous," Kim said, almost shouting. "I really wondered who could have said that and how such reports could get printed."
"All the four cockpit crewmen were attending their duty when the copilot reported to me that there was an unidentified jet fighter to the right of our plane," he said, adding this was just before meals were to be served.
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Even though many people think that Kansas lobbying laws are not strict enough in requiring expenditures, the lobbying has been relatively free of corruption.
Larimore said that when compared to most other state legislatures, such as Missouri's, Kansas was like a "Sunday school" when it comes to lobbies practices.
Miller, in a report written last January urging the legislators to vote for his lobbying bill, said he would rather see a appeal of all lobbying laws, instead of trying to fool the public into thinking it could keep track of what was going on in Topeka.
"You should realize, though, that passing my bill might be the worst thing you could do for the state beef and booze industries," Miller said.
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