Panel backs easing wine, dine limit

• By MARSHA SHULER
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: May 6, 2009 - Page: 6A

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A House panel endorsed two measures Tuesday that would allow legislators and other public officials to be wined and dined with no spending limit while they are attending state, regional and national conferences.

The Louisiana Board of Ethics had advised that a $50 per event spending limit could only be exceeded for official events of the meetings.

But lawmakers said that’s not what they intended when they passed the new law last year.

The House and Governmental Affairs Committee approved a resolution and a bill “clarifying” that the limit could be exceeded for any event or gathering held while the meeting was going on.

House Concurrent Resolution 7 and House Bill 591, both by state Rep. Noble Ellington, D-Winnsboro, now head to the House floor for further action.

Ellington called the disagreement over interpretation “a little bit of a hiccup with the Ethics Board.”

Council for A Better Louisiana president Barry Erwin opposed the legislation, saying, “It seems like it is fairly broad in what it would allow.”

It flies in the face of the policy public officials must follow in their normal dealings with lobbyists and others in-state, he said.

Erwin said he — like the Ethics Board — thought that the exception applied only to “an official function of the event.”

But Ellington said it was always intended to apply to events going on during the same time as the conference or meeting. “It’s not necessarily a part of it,” Ellington said.

At National Conference of State Legislatures and American Legislative Exchange Council meetings, there are often “state nights” where all of those attending from a specific state get together and have an event, Ellington said. The events are usually paid for by lobbyists.

“That’s what this is all about,” Ellington said. “It’s not trying to circumvent anything.”

“It opens it up to things further than that,” said Erwin, responding to Ellington’s example. “It’s anything held simultaneously, any other type of circumstance.”