Another IM22 replacement bill, Senate Bill 131, made it through Senate State Affairs unanimously yesterday.
IM22 Section 65 would have toughened the revolving-door restriction on lobbying by extending the period that elected officials must wait between the end of their elected term and the beginning of their work as paid lobbyists from one year to two years. IM 22 Section 65 also added appointed officers, state agency and division directors, and the single highest-paid aides/staffers to those officials to the revolving-door restriction.
The wimpy original draft of SB 131 from Senator R. Blake Curd struck most of the new people IM22 targeted from the restriction and, oddly, reworded the sit-out period from two years to twenty-four months. The revised version approved by Senate State Affairs applies the revolving-door restriction to every “department or agency head, or division director, or the highest paid employee reporting to such person” along with elected officials. It also restores the two-year sit-out period that the Curd-led repeal of IM22 reduced back to one year.
As with HB 1073, the only reason to oppose SB 131 is that you are so upset over the Republican Legislature’s affront to the voters in repealing IM22 that you won’t stand for any replacement bills. But SB 131 restores almost exactly what IM22 Section 65 would have achieved. (Passing SB 131 separately also shows that Judge Barnett’s argument that a revolving-door ban was practically inseverable from the other provisions of IM22 was nonsense!)
Go ahead, IM22 supporters, tell your legislators that SB 131 is fine. Then give them a chance to try out SB 131 in 2019 and 2020 by voting them out and making them wait to lobby until 2021!
So, are they going to add an emergency clause on the bill?
Apparently, the only thing really wrong with IM22 was that if came from a Democrat group. If changing a few words around makes the majority feel powerful then they need to be replaced with a new mindset about public service and who’s their boss.
Porter hits the nail on the head. Now these losers will take full credit
We will see, Messrs. reitzel and Lansing, if when they bring a bill to take public taxpayer dollars and pay for politician’s ads. It will be interesting to see if that little turd floats all by itself or sinks like a scorched biscuit from Parker’s Bistro.
Public funding for campaigns removes big donations, saves taxpayers money, is a tax write off and is liked everywhere it’s used … like Minnesota.
Shame on you Porter for being logical.
Now pass me the taters and gravy
@Porter Lansing: Political contributions are not deductible. And public financing of political campaigns (at least Presedential) has turned into a flop. During the last campaign the only candidate to take public funds was O’Malley who then withdrew. McCain partially blames his loss to Obama on his taking public funds while Obama didn’t .
Voters in MN can deduct the money donated to a public financed campaign , I’m told.
We’re rebuilding transparency and ethics one step at a time thanks to supporters of IM 22. Keep the pressure up!
Thank you, Mr. Winegar. Restrictions on the initiative process are no better than gerrymandering districts. Unfair attempts at stifling the voice of Democracy!!
Public funding of campaigns has worked in MN since 1974 and in the 2014 election, over 88 percents of state candidates used it. I don’t think that’s a flop, Coyote.
In MN, if a candidate agrees to be partially funded by the state, they also have to agree to a spending limit. How is that a bad thing?