No more free booze, fancy dinners or sports tickets. Missouri lawmakers must pass gift ban
Lawmakers keep talking about finally banning lobbyist gifts, including fancy dinners, tickets to sporting events and free booze. But talk is cheap. This week, legislators can take a huge step toward cleaning up their justifiably dirty images by finally passing a gift ban.
The problem is in the Senate. For the third year in a row, the House passed a ban with an overwhelming majority — 134-12 in favor of reform.
In the category of nothing-is-easy in the Missouri Capitol, lawmakers have complicated things by tinkering with a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban lobbyist gifts and make a key change to term limits.
Legislators should keep things simple. They should pass a no-frills gift ban. If they don’t, voters are expected to get a chance later this year to pass judgment on a proposed series of ethics reforms known as “Clean Missouri.”
More work to be done
The Missouri General Assembly has a number of other issues on its last-week to-do list. Lawmakers understand the stakes, and should be able to move quickly to address these lingering concerns:
This story was originally published May 14, 2018 at 6:52 PM with the headline "No more free booze, fancy dinners or sports tickets. Missouri lawmakers must pass gift ban."