Lobbyist reforms proposed

Concerned with conflicts in the current Utah lobbying law, GOP House leaders proposed a bill Tuesday that would require registered lobbyists to report some gifts to legislators more openly.

But the bill that leaders passed out to the House GOP caucus would also change current law so that most meals legislators accept from lobbyists, now listed in gross numbers, would go completely unreported — drastically reducing the overall public accounting of lobbyists' gifts to lawmakers.

The Republicans' two-steps-forward, one-step-back approach to disclosing lobbyists' gifts to legislators tells Democratic leaders that their minority party's "more broad approach" to legislative reform is needed, House Democrats said.

Meanwhile, a new Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll shows that leaders' concern that citizens believe — perhaps wrongly — that state government may be for sale is a serious consideration.

Pollster Dan Jones & Associates found in an early January survey that more than 75 percent of Utahns want to ban, not just see disclosure of, all but the smallest gifts to legislators.

Failing an all-out ban, more than two-thirds of citizens favor disclosure of all gifts to legislators valued at $10 or more, Jones found.

And lobbyists have more of an impact on lawmaking, citizens believe, than do lawmakers' own constituents, the new survey shows. Nearly 60 percent of Utahns say lobbyists representing special interests have "a great deal" of influence on lawmakers' votes.

Only 24 percent of citizens say legislators' own constituents have "a great deal" of influence on legislative decision-making, Jones found in a Dec. 26-Jan. 3 survey.

At first blush, a draft bill sponsored by House Majority Leader Jeff Alexander, R-Provo, would bring "new transparency" to the kinds of gifts individual legislators are accepting, or not accepting, from the 450-plus registered lobbyists.

Alexander missed the caucus, and contacted Tuesday night he said it was not his intention to remove less-expensive meals from the gross lobbyist-spending totals. "I'll have to fix that," he said.

Even changed, however, the House leadership bill would not go as far as one sponsored by Sen. Greg Bell, R-Fruit Heights, which would lower the threshold where a gift-accepting legislator would be named in lobbyist reports. Bell, who says his bill has Senate GOP leadership support, would lower the naming threshold from $50 to $10.