If we’ve ever had lunch to discuss an issue, you’ll know that when a bill comes, I insist on paying.
It’s not because I’m generous; it’s because as a journalist I have to live by a moral code. It’s a personal one, and it is also spelled out in The Denver Post’s strict, 15-page ethics policy.
So lunch or breakfast meetings with sources are paid for by The Post. I decline tickets to plays and sporting events unless they are from a friend. I can’t sit on local boards. I don’t give to charities in town that I may write about and never give to political candidates.
At The Post, books and other inexpensive gifts sent our way are put in a pile with other freebies that The Post sells; proceeds go to various charities.
It’s a no-brainer. If someone who is not family or a friend gives a gift, it’s because something in return is expected.
Even if we aren’t bought off, we don’t want the appearance of being influenced.
You’d think politicians – those who make the laws the rest of us live by – would want to live by that same standard.
Yet, some politicians in our state don’t get it. They don’t think they are being bought off by a free round of golf, a fancy dinner, or a cash donation to their “office account.”
Efforts to pass legislation that would bar state legislators from accepting tickets to games and other freebies have repeatedly failed. That’s because the ones who have voted on it are legislators.
This year, the Senate passed a bill that would prohibit legislators from accepting cash for their “office accounts” – money that essentially can be used for almost anything since they are not required to disclose how they have spent that money. It has a good chance of passing in the House. Gov. Bill Owens supports the bill.
It will close a loophole that has allowed lobbyists and corporations to dole out money to legislators in the hope of trying to influence them.
What else can explain R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. giving a $500 honorarium to Sen. Ron Teck (R-Grand Junction) for participating on a “tobacco dialogue” panel in Dallas on June 16, 2005? Thirty-six days later, the cigarette maker gave him $361; Teck said the money paid for an airline ticket-change fee.
Will that money sway him from voting for a public smoking ban when it comes up for a vote in the Senate?
Teck told me he has consistently voted against smoking bans because he doesn’t think government should mandate how businesses are run, especially because cigarettes are legal. He said the market, not the legislature, should determine whether a restaurant or bar allows smoking.
Does the appearance of impropriety worry him?
“People who know me know I have integrity,” he said.
(Teck, incidentally, voted against the measure that would prohibit lobbyists from giving donations to office accounts. He said rural legislators need to take such donations to pay for travel throughout the state.)
Pete Maysmith, executive director of Colorado Common Cause, is hopeful the practice of giving cash gifts for legislators’ office accounts will end, though he wishes legislators would also stop taking freebies from lobbyists.
Legislators received more than $174,000 in cash and in-kind contributions to their office accounts last year and more than $29,000 in freebies.
“If it doesn’t influence them, why are the lobbyists giving it to them?” Maysmith asked. “If someone gives you something you enjoy and value, it creates a set of feelings and expectations that aren’t there otherwise.”
It also makes constituents wonder: Who is buying whom?
Cindy Rodríguez’s column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays in Scene. Contact her at 303-820-1211 or crodriguez@denverpost.com.
