{"id":3139,"date":"2010-03-30T10:04:43","date_gmt":"2010-03-30T15:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thedustininmansociety.com\/blog\/?p=3139"},"modified":"2010-03-30T10:29:14","modified_gmt":"2010-03-30T15:29:14","slug":"want-to-speak-with-your-legislator-320-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/2010\/03\/30\/want-to-speak-with-your-legislator-320-please\/","title":{"rendered":"Want to speak with your legislator?  $320 please!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, David Ralston, introduced ethics reform legislation in response to a scandal involving the former Speaker Glenn Richardson.  To make a very long story short, Richardson had an affair with an Atlanta Gas Light lobbyist in 2006 while the company was seeking approval to build a $300 million pipeline across the state.  He denied the allegations and was re-elected Speaker of the House in 2007. Fast forward to 2008.  The former Speaker&#8217;s ex-wife filed for divorce because of allegations of spousal abuse, mental illness and adultery.  In November 2009, Richardson attempted suicide due to &#8220;depression.&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>According to the current Speaker, this is why<a href=\"http:\/\/www.legis.ga.gov\/legis\/2009_10\/fulltext\/hb1473.htm\"> HB1473 <\/a>was crafted.  The bill expands the powers of the State Ethics Commission (&#038; renames it), imposes burdensome fines, expands ethics investigations to all public officials, etc.  The bill, at 38 pages, is much too lengthy to go into detail here, so I&#8217;ll highlight those things that may affect you immediately &#038; directly: <\/p>\n<p><strong>Section 19 is the section that &#8220;sticks it to&#8221; those &#8220;evil&#8221; lobbyists:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>* You cannot lobby your legislator unless you register as a lobbyist.  So, if you would like to continually speak to your legislator about an issue of concern to you, you must be a registered lobbyist.<\/p>\n<p>* To register as a lobbyist, you must pay $320 ($300 for the registration &#038; $20 for the badge).<br \/>\n* If you file your lobbyist report late, there is the potential to be fined up to $10,000.<br \/>\n* Lobbyist reports must be filed every 15 days instead of every 30 days.<br \/>\n* If you, as a volunteer lobbyist, are successful in your lobbying endeavors, &#8220;no person, firm, corporation or association shall retain or employ you for compensation.&#8221;<br \/>\n* Lobbyists cannot &#8220;initiate contact with a Senator or Rep while the body is in session or attending a committee or subcommittee meeting.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Speaker Ralston has kicked the &#8220;Regular Joe&#8221; out of the Capitol by charging $320 speaking fees on behalf of the legislators (btw, legislators can only charge $100 in speaking fees), enacted guidelines on when &#038; how to communicate with those you elected to represent you and told business who they can and cannot hire.  <\/p>\n<p>Our Republican-controlled House leadership seems to be optioning a tactic from the Obama playbook of centralized government control and power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, David Ralston, introduced ethics reform legislation in response to a scandal involving the former Speaker Glenn Richardson. To make a very long story short, Richardson had an affair with an Atlanta Gas Light lobbyist in 2006 while the company was seeking approval to build a $300 million [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}