Do outgoing legislators ‘shop’ for lobbying jobs in final weeks of the session?

Watch as the retiring legislators vote till the end of session.  Are they voting their constituents, their conscious or their next employer?

“If past experience is any guide, at least one in five departing lawmakers will end up working for companies or organizations trying to influence state government. In all, 20 incumbents are leaving elected office this year and another 15 are running for other seats.

“August is kind of … the interview period,” departing Visalia Republican Assemblymember Devon Mathis told CalMatters. “You see people that are trying to shop, you know, for a third-house gig or something like that,” he said, referring to lobbying organizations.

This is Democracy in California.  Sick.

Do outgoing legislators ‘shop’ for lobbying jobs in final weeks of the session?

by Ryan Sabalow, CalMatters,  8/15/24   https://calmatters.org/politics/2024/08/california-legislators-job-hunt-conflicts-ethics/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=When%20does%20job-hunting%20by%20CA%20lawmakers%20raise%20questions%3F&utm_campaign=WhatMatters

In summary

Departing California lawmakers don’t have to disclose that they’re looking for a new job. Ethics experts say that’s a problem.

With some of the year’s biggest decisions still pending, nearly a quarter of California’s 120 lawmakers may soon be unemployed. Many of them are thinking about their next job as the Legislature wraps up this month.

If past experience is any guide, at least one in five departing lawmakers will end up working for companies or organizations trying to influence state government. In all, 20 incumbents are leaving elected office this year and another 15 are running for other seats.

“August is kind of … the interview period,” departing Visalia Republican Assemblymember Devon Mathis told CalMatters. “You see people that are trying to shop, you know, for a third-house gig or something like that,” he said, referring to lobbying organizations.

A CalMatters review of the 180 lawmakers who left office since 2012 reveals that around 40 of them registered as lobbyists, worked as political consultants or took executive-level jobs with companies or organizations actively lobbying at the Capitol. 

Ethics experts say the prospect of current lawmakers job hunting as they’re voting on bills raises concerns that their future employers could influence their votes in the final weeks of the session.

A legislative ethics committee handout given to departing lawmakers outlines the stakes. It warns that they could face criminal charges if they “take official action in exchange for a promise of future employment (this is bribery).” It’s also illegal if they “use state resources to search for or secure outside or prospective employment.”

No disclosure requirements for job-hunting legislators

Despite the potential criminal consequences, there are no requirements for lawmakers to tell the public if they’re negotiating or actually have a new employment agreement with an outside organization trying to influence state policy.

That’s a problem, said Sean McMorris, the transparency, ethics and accountability program manager for California Common Cause. 

He said powerful and wealthy industries and advocacy organizations love hiring former lawmakers “because they already know the system, and they have access and influence to other politicians there at the Capitol.” 

He said it’s also why California, like nearly every other state, has “revolving door” rules intended to keep companies and organizations from dangling future salaries in front of lawmakers in exchange for legislative favors or state contracts.

The rules include a “cooling-off period” preventing lawmakers from directly lobbying the Legislature for at least a year after leaving office. These restrictions are intended to prevent lawmakers from using fresh insider knowledge to help their new employer game the system. 

But there’s nothing preventing a former lawmaker from taking a job at a company that’s lobbying the Legislature during their cooling-off period as long as he or she is not the one directly discussing policy with their former colleagues. 

“Providing compensated advice to a client, including a lobbyist, lobbying firm or lobbyist employer, is not prohibited so long as the former Assemblymember does not communicate with sitting legislators or legislative staff,” according to the ethics committee handout.

Plus, they can still lobby the governor’s administration and local agencies.

McMorris said it’s time to update the laws to require that lawmakers at the very least disclose when they have a new job lined up while they’re still casting votes.

“Not only would that help the public, just for transparency’s sake,” he said, “but it would also help … just to keep them honest.”

Dan Schnur, the former chairperson of the state’s ethics watchdog agency, the Fair Political Practices Commission, agreed that more transparency is needed.

“You’d hope,” he said, “there would be a way to make sure that the public did have an understanding if these types of (future employment) conversations were (happening) while the legislator was still casting votes.” 

Are outgoing lawmakers job hunting?

There are 20 incumbent legislators who will be out of a job this year because they are termed out of office, they are not seeking re-election or they ran for another office this year and lost in the March primary. Another 15 legislators are candidates for local, state or federal office including 13 on the ballot this November and two seeking statewide office in 2026.

Some might retire from public life, go back to their old careers or consider a 2026  run for another state office. Those who aren’t are probably looking for work.

Mathis is not shy about his career plans when he leaves office this year. Last month, he started a public relations firm, and he agreed to work for an energy company, Origyn International, as a “public benefit project specialist.” He said he checked with state ethics officials to make sure he wasn’t violating state laws. 

Mathis said that as a combat veteran, whose military service included logistical planning, he is a natural fit for the company that works in multiple states to build and finance infrastructure, including for public agencies. As for any potential conflicts with his current job, Mathis says there aren’t any, and there won’t be.

“My work with Origyn is more about helping communities and kind of filling in the gaps where the government doesn’t have the ability,” Mathis said. “So I don’t foresee any, you know, direct impact that would affect their business or help them.”

Origyn hasn’t taken a position on any legislation since the start of the 2023-24 legislative session, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database.

Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a Democrat from Los Angeles, also is in need of a job after he lost a bid for an LA City Council seat in the March primary.

Jones-Sawyer told CalMatters he’s not going to discuss his career with potential employers until he casts the final vote of the session.

He said his personal attorney advised him not to job hunt while still casting votes. Jones-Sawyer said it didn’t take much convincing, given what happened to Curren Price. The Los Angeles City Council member and former state senator has pleaded not guilty to corruption charges in a case that included allegations Price voted for measures before the council that financially benefited his wife.

Jones-Sawyer said he could see how easily a lawmaker could get themselves in similar trouble.

“All of a sudden, they have a half-million dollar job in September,” he said. “And … the press is … speculating, ‘Well, that looks a little hinky and suspicious.’ ”

Lawmakers earn $128,215 a year, plus per diem and benefits. Lawmakers will receive their final state paycheck in late December.

CalMatters reached out to other lawmakers who don’t have active campaigns to ask them about their career plans and how they are balancing a potential job hunt with the demands during the final weeks of the session. Here are the responses for some of them:

• A spokesperson for former Democratic Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon said he has no plans to lobby and wants to spend more time with his young daughter, but didn’t go into details about Rendon’s future career aspirations.
• Ukiah Democratic Assemblymember Jim Wood “does not have any plans for what he will do after he leaves office and has postponed any discussions of that until later this fall,” said his spokesperson, Cathy Mudge.
• Republican Sen. Brian Dahle said in an interview he’s not job hunting and plans to go back to his family farm in Lassen County. But he said he was open to the eventual possibility of working for an organization that could help small businesses benefit from state policy.
• Napa Democratic Sen. Bill Dodd “plans to remain active, and expects to serve the public and his community in some way. For the remainder of his term, he’s focused on his work as a senator and delivering results for his district and California,” said spokesperson Paul Payne.
• Los Angeles Democratic Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo said in an email she hopes “to transition what I’ve learned in the Legislature as a visiting lecturer or professor in a public policy class at the university level, continue to advocate for the issues I am passionate about, and if my local state Senate office were to become available in 2026, I’m all in.” 
• Glendale Democratic Sen. Anthony Portantino “has not made future plans,” said his spokesperson Lerna Kayserian Shirinian. 
• Assemblymember Freddie Rodriguez, a Democrat from Chino who’s a former emergency medical technician, suggests he may take an advocacy gig. “Assemblymember Rodriguez … looks forward to using his legislative experience and chairmanship of the Assembly Emergency Management Committee to help Californians better prepare for climate change-related emergencies in any way he can,” his spokesperson, Gibson Martucci, said in an email.

How lawmakers can keep voting

Lawmakers are supposed to recuse themselves from any official actions that have “‘direct and significant’ financial impact on an entity with whom they are negotiating employment or who has made them an employment offer,” according to the ethics committee handout.

But state ethics guidelines still allow voting on bills that could benefit a prospective employer. The guidelines say lawmakers can discuss — and vote on — bills that would benefit a “significant segment” of an industry. It’s only a problem if the bill deals specifically with their would-be employer. 

So a lawmaker with a job pending at, say, a major tech company can continue to vote on legislation if it impacts all tech companies — and not just the one that’s going to be paying them.

“Not only would that help the public, just for transparency’s sake, but it would also help … just to keep them honest.”

Sean McMorris, California Common Cause

No California lawmaker has been charged in recent memory with violating the rules, according to a CalMatters review. 

Still, Jones-Sawyer said the risks just aren’t worth it for him as a Black man who’s visited prisons as part of his efforts to change the justice system that disproportionately penalizes men like him.

“I don’t want to be that first one,” he said.

California’s recent lobbying defections

In 2017, the Legislature changed the one-year cooling-off period rules to also prohibit lawmakers who leave office during the middle of a two-year legislative session from lobbying the Legislature while the session is ongoing — and for a year after. 

The rule change happened after a couple of high-profile lobbying defections. 

Kern County Democrat Michael Rubio abruptly quit the state Senate in 2013 to work for Chevron, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. He later became a lobbyist for the oil company.

In 2015, Henry Perea, a Fresno Democrat, quit the Legislature to work for a pharmaceutical trade association. He went on to lobby for the Western States Petroleum Association.

More recently, Jim Frazier, a Fairfield Democrat, resigned in 2021 to take a job in the transportation sector after he served as chairperson of the Assembly Transportation Committee. He’s now a lobbyist for the Arc of California, a group that advocates for disabled people.

The most recent mid-term defection was Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, a longtime labor advocate. She left mid-session in 2022 to become the head of the California Labor Federation, one of the most influential groups in the union-friendly, Democrat-controlled Legislature. 

Gonzalez never registered as a lobbyist, and she said she never needed to.

State lobbying rules say that a legislator-turned-advocate only needs to register as a lobbyist if they “spend at least one-third of his or her compensated time in a calendar month engaging in direct communication” with legislators and their staff. Gonzalez told CalMatters she doesn’t spend nearly that much time talking to her former colleagues about policy.

She said that she also made sure not to discuss specific bills with her recent colleagues during her mandatory cooling-off period. 

“Legislators would call me and they’d be like, ‘Can I talk to you about this?’” she told Calmatters. “And I’m like, ‘Well, you can talk to me, but I can’t respond.’ ”

Gonzalez said that after the Labor Federation offered her a job, she knew she was going to leave the Assembly in July 2022, so she decided to resign in January of that year to avoid spending six months recusing herself on bills that she cared passionately about. 

Voting rules obscure formal recusals

When lawmakers do actually recuse themselves because of a conflict of interest from a potential employer — or any other reason —  there’s no easy way for the public to determine if they did.

As CalMatters reported in multiple stories this year, lawmakers regularly stay silent when it’s time to vote on bills. Not voting counts the same as a “no” vote, and lawmakers dodge thousands of controversial votes each year to avoid accountability and avoid angering colleagues or influential lobbying organizations.

The state’s official bill-tracking website only records a non-vote as “NVR,” short for “No Vote Recorded.” It’s recorded the same if a lawmaker had an excused absence or if they recuse themselves because of a conflict of interest. That includes pending job offers. 

California’s 120 legislators have recorded more than 17,000 non-votes so far this year, according to the Digital Democracy database. 

The Digital Democracy database, which uses artificial intelligence to record every word spoken in legislative hearings, could only find two examples of members discussing recusing themselves from votes on bills since 2023.

Republican Sen. Roger Niello, whose family owns car dealerships in the Sacramento area, recused himself on a 2023 bill that dealt with car dealerships. 

Assemblymember Joe Patterson, another Republican from the Sacramento region, recused himself from voting on a 2023 bill dealing with charging ports for portable electronic devices such as smartphones. Patterson’s wife works for Apple.

In both cases, the state’s official bill-tracking website recorded the recusals as NVRs.

Government ethics experts say Californians deserve more transparency. 

They argue that the public has a right to know whether their lawmakers’ non-votes represented legitimate absences, were abstentions, or they were formal recusals due to conflicts of interests, including from pending job offers.

“If they conflicted out, it should be noted,” said McMorris of California Common Cause. 

Jessica Levinson, founding director of Loyola Law School’s Public Service Institute, said the public has a right to know “why their representatives aren’t weighing in.”

“Is it because they have something to do that day, because they don’t want to take a position,” she said, “or because, under the rules, they couldn’t?