Ex-Officials Jumping Through Ethics Loophole

Sometimes the Legislature has hunkered down and enacted legislation that can legitimately be called self-reform.

That can certainly be said about a sweeping ethics-in-government measure passed two years ago.

Like most such changes, the 1990 ethics bill was accomplished only under duress.

That is what lawmakers were feeling two years ago, when federal prosecutors released a secret videotape of Sen. Joseph B. Montoya as he took a $3,000 payoff from an undercover FBI agent and joked that it was really $30,000.

By the time Montoya was convicted of selling his vote and was on his way to prison, his former colleagues had passed an ethics bill that for the first time stops state elected officials from collecting honorariums and puts a $250 limit on the gifts that politicians can take from any source in a single year.

The measure--ratified by voters in 1990--put a stop to practices that were as corrupting as they were commonplace. No longer could state elected officials accept free trips to Europe and Asia at corporate expense. No longer could a lawmaker take a check for $3,000 just for showing up at a meeting with a business executive--a practice that was legal as long as the legislator did not promise a vote in return.

But now it is clear that there is a disfiguring flaw in that well-intentioned piece of legislation.

Less heralded at the time but no less important were “revolving door” provisions that required legislators and top executive branch employees to wait 12 months after leaving government before lobbying their former colleagues--and that is where a crack in the ethics measure appears.

Authored by Sen. Milton Marks (D-San Francisco), those sections of the law were intended to keep officials from leaving public life, only to return immediately to their former offices as highly paid representatives of special interests.

Ruth Holton, executive director of California Common Cause, said: “One day a person’s a supervisor, the next day they are asking their employees for a favor. There needs to be a cooling-down period.”

Holton and Marks now agree that the measure was inadvertently drafted in a way that allows top executive branch employees, including the governor’s staff, to begin lobbying their old agencies without any delay as long as they discuss bills and not administrative rules or government contracts.

The mistake means that “members of the governor’s staff are free to quit their posts and immediately return to lobby the governor on legislative matters,” Marks said.

Two of Gov. Pete Wilson’s top staff members, both lawyers, have left their government jobs to become lobbyists.

Last October, Wilson’s appointments secretary, Terrance W. Flanigan, became a contract lobbyist, picking up such clients as Mobil Oil Corp. and R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.

In January, Wilson’s legislative secretary, Allan S. Zaremberg, became top lobbyist for the California Chamber of Commerce.

Flanigan said he has decided not to lobby Wilson and the governor’s staff until he has been out of office for a year--leaving the lobbying of the Administration to his brother and partner, Timothy.

“Certainly, I’m well within my legal rights. . . . but I’ve chosen not to do that,” Terrance Flanigan said.

On the other hand, Zaremberg, who as legislative secretary was the governor’s lobbyist in the Legislature, said he has been lobbying his former executive branch colleagues on legislation, but not Wilson.

In particular, Zaremberg has been representing the chamber in negotiations on the state’s troubled workers’ compensation system. A year ago, while a public servant working for Wilson, he was at the center of negotiations on the same issue.

Zaremberg knows he is well within his legal rights. In January, after taking his chamber job, he asked the enforcer of the new statute--the Fair Political Practices Commission--to clarify what he could and could not do in his first 12 months as a lobbyist. The commission’s legal counsel made it plain that he was free to return to the Capitol in his new role and try to persuade his former boss and co-workers to produce a bill that is to the chamber’s liking.

Marks has vowed to correct the mistake. “This is clearly a violation of the spirit of the revolving door laws and I will introduce legislation to rectify this loophole,” he said.

But there is not enough time left in this year’s legislative session to pass a corrective measure. And until that happens, Wilson Administration officials will continue to be able to leave government and, without any delay, begin lobbying their former cohorts.