• By MARK BALLARD
• Advocate Capitol news bureau editor
• Published: Dec 21, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Conversations in the halls of the Louisiana State Capitol this past week voiced how irked state officials were about the gratuitous references about Louisiana in reporting about bad behavior in Illinois.

The dialogue has raised interest in adopting across state government a proposal the state Public Service Commission has been flirting with but so far has not passed. The PSC is debating whether to become the state’s first agency to forbid its officials and staff from eating and drinking on the dime of the companies they regulate.

Three of the five-elected regulators whose decisions determine what a couple of million households and businesses pay for electricity each month say their majority ensures an outright ban on lobbyist wining and dining’s passage when the PSC meets again on Jan. 14. Proponents criticize the existing rules on how lobbyists can entertain public officials as difficult to understand with their limits for this kind of meal and exceptions.

Both of the announced candidates to replace the interim commissioner for PSC District 4 — Pat Manuel of Eunice, who twice has opposed the proposal — announced unwavering support for the ban.

Last week both made part of their campaigns a call for expanding the restriction to cover all state officials.

One of the candidates, state Sen. Joe McPherson, D-Woodworth, said, “The public would like to believe that you’re representing them as opposed to the corporations and special interest groups that can afford to hire lobbyists and give them a credit card.” Earlier this year, he sponsored unsuccessful legislation to ban lobbyist-paid wining and dining for state government officials across the board.

“What it buys is relationships which is exactly the same thing as buying influence,” said McPherson.

The other candidate, former state Rep. Gil Pinac, a Republican from Crowley, agrees the ban should apply to all elected officials. “The Legislature just came through an ethics session, per se, and they made some good changes. But there’s still a perception. Why not just end the perception that are some type of irregularities by just not allowing elected officials to accept it?” Pinac said.

PSC Commissioner Foster Campbell of Bossier Parish said he finds the rules passed by legislators in February and amended this past spring to be very confusing.

“The clean way to do it is to say, ‘You can’t do it.’ Bingo, it’s over,” Campbell said. “Doesn’t say you can’t go out to eat. You just have to pay for your own meal.”

Lobbyist Jim Harris, who does not represent clients before the PSC, said special interests are not just the big insurance companies that are among his clients.

They are everyday people, everyday voters. They are communities of people — from neighborhoods, workplaces, churches — who share similar interests and band together to pursue those goals.

Legislators spend their days meeting with those groups and that’s how they get the pulse of what is going on, what people want and what they need, Harris argues.