Ethics overhaul moves forward in Salem.

Byline: David Steves The Register-Guard

SALEM - Lawmakers made lobby reform the topic of their first bill hearing Thursday, taking up a Senate bill that includes restrictions on lobbyist-paid trips, entertainment, meals and drinks.

The hearing on Senate Bill 10 came a few days after the House took its own get-tough-on-lobby-spending action, banning such spending on members by those trying to influence legislation. The rules also set a $10 limit on gifts to lawmakers from lobbyists.

But with nearly a quarter-million dollars flowing into lawmakers' campaign coffers since the start of the year, campaign finance reform advocates want lawmakers to crack down on contributions, too.

In both chambers, lawmakers see their actions as big steps to limit the influence of special interest dollars on the legislative process.

For years, the Legislature has steered clear of such reforms, despite news reports and ethics investigations exposing how lobbyists lavished lawmakers with free trips, meals and entertainment. But the issue came to a head last year, said Senate Majority Leader Kate Brown, D-Portland.

She said the Abramoff lobbyist scandal in Congress raised the issue's national profile. And news reports in The Oregonian newspaper last fall about legislators who failed to disclose trips to Hawaii paid for by beer and wine distributors turned up the heat at the state level.

"Times have changed, and we need to take a look at this," Brown said. As chairwoman of the Senate Rules Committee, she presided over Thursday's hearing on SB 10. Among other things, it limits to $50 the combined annual value of gifts, including entertainment, that a lobbyist can provide to a public official or member of his or her family.

Russ Kelley, a spokesman for House Speaker Jeff Merkley, D-Portland, said he was hopeful that the public would applaud efforts by legislators to impose a "change in the culture" marked by decades in which lobbyists cozied up to legislators by flying them to resorts and treating them to afternoons on golf courses and nights out on the town.

But the activists behind the latest push to crack down on the influence of special-interest money on politics aren't giving Oregon legislators much credit.

Harry Lonsdale, who co-sponsored a pair of campaign finance reform initiatives on the November ballot, said the crackdown on lobbyist spending on legislators' behalf was fine by him.

"But that's not the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is those campaign contributions," he said. "Once you know who sent you that $10,000 check, you don't forget it."

Dan Meek, who led the campaign with Lonsdale, said lawmakers will have solved about 2 percent of the problem if they manage to completely shut down lobbyist gifts and close loopholes letting them make personal use of campaign contributions. That's because lobbyist freebies are a small part of the influence game played by interest groups trying to sway lawmakers.

"Once the corporations have contributed lots of money to a candidate and gotten that person elected to office, that person doesn't need to be given a trip to Hawaii, or a commemorative sweater or something else," he said.

Past analyses of lobbyist spending have found they put about a quarter-million dollars into wining and dining, entertainment and travel for legislators. That's roughly equivalent to the $238,538 that state lawmakers and their caucus leaders reported collecting in the first nine days of this year in campaign contributions, according to reports filed with the state Elections Division as of Thursday.

Lonsdale and Meek won a split decision from voters on their twin initiatives. Measure 47, which set strict limits on contribution amounts to candidates, passed. But the companion initiative, Measure 46, failed. It would have amended the Oregon Constitution to allow such limits without running afoul of Oregon's free-expression protections. That prompted the state attorney general to rule that the campaign finance limits could not be implemented.

Meek filed a lawsuit challenging the decision. It has yet to be scheduled for court arguments.

Even if they can't be implemented, Brown said voters' approval of the limits on contributions may prompt legislators to take the issue up this session. However, Brown said, so far she wasn't "feeling any consensus" among lawmakers about how or whether to address the issue.

Kelley said lawmakers would have difficulty taking on campaign finance reform - not because they were averse to such an effort but because the voters had just rejected the constitutional change to Oregon's free-expression protections required to move ahead.

"Can or will we do anything to limit campaign contributions? Basically the answer is, we can't do it," he said.