ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Slow the Revolving Door

Perhaps it is the growing discrepancy between salaries in the public and private sectors. But it seems that government at all levels must increasingly deal with the issue of elected officials and public servants who quit and turn right around to lobby their former colleagues.

These people offer their new employers an inside knowledge of projects and how things get done in government. More important, they offer contacts. Although this is not inherently a bad thing, we have learned from harsh experience that there is a danger of abuse. Lobbying for special favors from these contacts can spill over into actions that, if not illegal, are certainly unethical uses of influence.

At present, Orange County only superficially regulates lobbying by its former officials. It is time for the Board of Supervisors to adopt an ethics code prohibiting those who leave the county’s employ from returning to lobby during a cooling-off period of at least one year.

As a recent Times Orange County Edition story pointed out, there are about 20 former county employees, including several former elected officials, who have stepped through the so-called “revolving door.”

There are many more at the state and federal levels. Among them will be state Sen. William Campbell (R-Hacienda Heights), who represents large portions of Orange County. He will leave office in January to become president of the California Manufacturers Assn., a powerful trade group that spent $2.2 million lobbying in Sacramento last year.

No one is saying that there should not be free movement between the public and private sectors. But the public needs assurance that decisions to spend tax dollars are made free of influence.

One person interviewed for The Times’ revolving-door story asked how can one know when a job offer was first made or whether the offer greased approval of a project. We agree that it is unseemly for county employees to negotiate for new jobs while working on projects that might involve potential new employers.

A waiting period of a year would, at least, go a long way toward removing this danger. People of evil intent always will find ways around laws intended to prevent illegal profiting from government. But a policy banning former public officials from lobbying the county for a year would put all on notice that the supervisors will not tolerate influence peddling.