Lobbyists not banned in Georgia from holding office as local elected officials | Georgia

(The Center Square) — Georgia it sounds as if has no wide-reaching law that bars lobbyists from serving as elected officials.

While there’s no prohibition on the local stage, the State Ethics Commission informed The Center Square that elected state officials — statewide constitutional officials and General Assembly participants — can’t be lobbyists.

“The Georgia Municipal Association does not track ‘public officials’ by private sector occupation and would not have a database of such a broad category,” the Georgia Municipal Association mentioned in a commentary to The Center Square.

“While GMA does not have a perspective on this, we believe advocacy is a part of public service,” the GMA added. “We agree that there is no law or statute that would prohibit a local elected official from employment as a lobbyist.”

Similarly, the Association County Commissioners of Georgia does not monitor information about what number of elected officials are lobbyists.

“Lobbyists have no business holding political offices. Not only is it a conflict of interest, but it’s a direct line to corruption,” Amani Wells-Onyioha, a political strategist, informed The Center Square by the use of e-mail. “They cannot serve the needs of their community while explicitly being on the payroll of the same corporations and causes that harm said communities.

“This is one thing we proceed to combat with in our govt in basic,” Wells-Onyioha, spouse and operations director at Sole Strategies, added. “So a lot of our flesh pressers are making choices in response to the place their cash is coming from relatively than that specialize in the wishes of the folk they serve. We want to to find techniques to cut back and take away this kind of interference in govt so citizens could have extra accept as true with in the folk representing them.”

John P. Pelissero, a senior scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University and a professor emeritus of political science at Loyola University Chicago, told The Center Square the situation isn’t unique to Georgia.

“One of the moral problems is this query of equity. That’s one of the vital lenses we oftentimes use,” Pelissero said. “Can anyone who’s a lobbyist moderately constitute their constituents when one among their jobs is to take a look at to get issues from govt — favorable regulation as an instance — for his or her shoppers? That’s at all times going to be in battle with the general public pastime. And public officials desire a stage of consciousness, moral consciousness in specific, about how this seems to the general public.

“It can breed some cynicism on the part of the public if they come to believe that, whether it’s happening or not, the lobbyist is using their position as a public official to take care of their lobbying business,” Pelissero added. “Trust is an important virtue to have operating between public officials and their constituents.

“And accept as true with in govt and its elected officials oftentimes erodes if in case you have those appearances of battle of pastime that make the general public query whether or not the precise results are being served.”