The ethics are coming, maybe
Speaker Benny Petrus has in mind his own ethics bill, something more far-reaching than Sen. Robert Thompson's now-amended bill that, in the House version, simply bars all current and future legislators from becoming lobbyists for a year after their service. Petrus is fine with Thompson's amended bill, and wants it to come out of the Rules Committee and get passed on the House floor. But he is amenable as well to a two-year ban, which he might propose in his still-formulating measure. He'll probably be joined in this legislation by his best legislative pal, Rep. Chris Thyer of Jonesboro. So far they've mostly compiled drafts and encountered complication. What they probably will wind up proposing is a "hard cap" on the $100 gift limit, meaning no gift above that for a state public official from anyone other than a family member. Over time, this gift cap has come to mean you can take more than a hundred bucks so long as no one can prove it's a direct bribe for a direct action. Beebe has endorsed the hard-cap. Petrus and Thyer also may wind up proposing full disclosure of lobbyists' expenditures on legislators, down to a cup of coffee. This is the "do what you want, up to a hundred bucks, just tell everything" philosophy. Its premise is that disclosure is better than prohibition.