The gift: in an effort to show they mean business when it comes to ethics, legislatures continue to shore up laws that limit gifts from lobbyists.

• Author: Kerns, Peggy
• Position: ETHICS

Representative Brent Yonts (D) operated just fine for years under Kentucky's ethics law, reputedly one of the most restrictive among the states. The law was passed in 1993 in the wake of an 18-month FBI sting investigation, Boptrot, that resulted in 15 legislators and several lobbyists being convicted of crimes ranging from extortion and racketeering to accepting bribes and lying.

A major component of the law was that it drew a bright line between legislators and lobbyists by prohibiting legislators from receiving anything of value from lobbyists or their employers. The law allowed lobbyists to pay up to $100 in food and beverages for each lawmaker, but lobbyists were required to report the spending and the name of the legislator.

Representative Yonts came to believe that even more could be done, however. "The public thinks there is so much corruption in politics. Perceived or not, this is what people believe," he says.

With this in mind, Yonts, who chairs the House State Government Committee, became the primary House sponsor of a bill developed by the state's Legislative Ethics Commission. It passed last year, giving Kentucky the strongest and most comprehensive ethics law in the nation, according to Yonts.

The new law prohibits lobbyists and their employers from giving anything of value, including food and beverages, to individual legislators and their families. This makes Kentucky one of 10 states with bans on gifts from lobbyists, often called "no-cup-of-coffee" laws.

"This legislation is very important in today's culture," Yonts says. "Our focus is to make the legislative body function without the belief or suspicion that we are bought and paid for--because we are NOT," he says. And with a chuckle, he adds, "In practice, no one bought anyone a cup of coffee anyway."

States have reformed and re-reformed gift laws numerous times in the nearly 16 years that NCSL's Center for Ethics in Government has tracked the issue, making it a perennial hot topic. And it remains hot because legislators like Yonts say, "We try to make our behavior as pristine as we can--even if the public does not agree."

The late Alan Rosenthal, professor of public policy at Rutgers University, was less concerned about lawmakers' and lobbyists' misuse of gifts than he was by the public's perception of gift giving. He used standards of appearance, fairness and responsibility to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate legislative behavior.

"According to the appearance standard, there can be no question as to the propriety of lobbyists' gifts to legislators. It is improper... because it gives people an impression of being so," he wrote in his book, "Drawing the Line."

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