Progress made, more needed

I won't be able to post tomorrow (my usual day), so I'll take this opportunity to refer you to today's NYTimes article about states taking the lead in lobbying reform.

Last week I suggested that Southern statehouses are desperately crying out for new ethics laws that include restrictions on lobbyist-funded meals and travel.

Little did I know that Georgia, Florida and Tennessee already are making progress:

State officials and lawmakers in Georgia began operating this month under new ethics guidelines signed into law last year by Gov. Sonny Perdue. The governor, a Republican, said the measures were needed because of the relationship between lobbyists and lawmakers that had developed over 130 years of Democratic control of the statehouse.

In Florida, there are new laws banning gifts from lobbyists and requiring extensive reports on lobbyists' spending, rules the Legislature enacted after revelations that three lawmakers flew to a golf outing on a corporate jet owned by a company seeking slot machine licenses. ...

"States are doing this for two reasons," said Peggy Kerns, director of the ethics center at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "They want to be ethical institutions, and they want the skeptical public to view them as ethical institutions."

That seems to be the case in Tennessee, where Gov. Phil Bredesen, a first-term Democrat seeking re-election this year, convened a special session to address what he called a culture of corruption in Nashville. Mr. Bredesen is asking for a ban on most gifts by lobbyists to government employees and elected officials, disclosure of spending by lobbyists, new limits on cash campaign contributions and the creation of an independent ethics commission with broad enforcement power. The package is similar to what many are calling for in Washington in reaction to the Jack Abramoff scandal.

Southern progressives need to continue to push for this kind of reform.