Missouri lets local officials take unlimited gifts from lobbyists. Senators move to ban
The Missouri Senate voted Thursday to ban mayors, city council members, county commissioners and other local government officials from accepting lobbyist gifts, years after voters approved eliminating gifts for state legislators.
The Republican-controlled Senate passed the ban, which also applies to employees of local elected officials, in a 33-1 bipartisan vote as part of a larger ethics bill. The legislation now heads to the Missouri House.
“I think everybody should live under the same rules,” Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, a Columbia Republican who is sponsoring the bill, told The Star.
“We were exploring changes to how lobbyists report gifts in conjunction with a bunch of other clean up stuff and it just made sense for this to be the time that we fix the other problem.”
The bill would close a gap left by the 2018 Clean Missouri state constitutional amendment, which greatly restricted lobbyist gifts to lawmakers, and a subsequent 2020 amendment that eliminated them altogether. Both measures focused on the General Assembly, while leaving local officials free to continue accepting gifts.
The Star reported in February how local officials have continued to accept concert tickets, meals and other largesse from lobbyists — including tickets to Chiefs games. Since January 2019, shortly after the passage of Clean Missouri, individual local elected officials have accepted about $53,600 in gifts from lobbyists, according to data from the Missouri Ethics Commission.
State Sen. Barbara Washington, a Kansas City Democrat, said she didn’t believe lobbyist gifts influence officials’ decisions. However, she said other lawmakers have argued that local officials should have to follow the same rules as state lawmakers.
“It has not been my experience that lobbying gifts are going to influence our positions as much as the public has been led to believe. I would hope that the same is for local elected persons,” Washington said. “However, many people would say what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
Washington said the bill could place “severe restrictions” on local officials, including Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, depending on how it’s interpreted.
“Will this type of ban affect my mayor being able to promote Kansas City and the World Cup? Then, for those reasons, it’s something that probably should be further investigated,” she said.
The mayor’s office didn’t immediately comment on Thursday.
Lucas and his staff have accepted about $9,600 in lobbyist gifts since 2019, according to the Missouri Ethics Commission, including at least $4,000 in Chiefs-related gifts. Lucas became mayor in August 2019.
The previous mayor, Sly James, also accepted thousands of dollars in tickets to the Chiefs, Royals and other events. St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, who has been in office since April 2021, along with members of her staff have also accepted hundreds of dollars in Cardinals tickets, food and drink.
The lobbyist gifts reported to the Missouri Ethics Commission may not reflect the entire universe of gifts that Kansas City officials are accepting. The city’s municipal code requires officials to self-report all gifts greater than $200 from individuals or entities with “a substantial interest in any legislative or administrative action of the city” — with some exceptions, such as tickets to city facilities like the T-Mobile Center.
The reporting required by the code isn’t limited to registered lobbyists, unlike the disclosures to the Missouri Ethics Commission. In theory, that means more gifts may be reported to the city than to the commission. In practice, the city gift reports aren’t immediately accessible — The Star requested copies in February under the Missouri Sunshine Law but has yet to receive them.
The original purpose of Rowden’s bill was to make changes to how the Missouri Ethics Commission handles campaign finance disclosure deadlines. The bill would allow officials to use campaign funds to pay for legal fees and would require lobbyists to report expenditures annually, instead of monthly under current law.
Rowden offered a new version of the bill on the Senate floor Tuesday that included the lobbyist ban.
State Sen. Mike Moon, an Ash Grove Republican, was the sole Missouri senator to vote against the bill on Thursday. Moon said in a text message that he opposed it because the bill’s intended purpose was changed and he felt that violated the state constitution.
