The entire trip – the private flight, food and drink after the game, and tickets to see the St. Louis Rams lose on a last-second field goal – was worth $4,136.61, as reported by two lobbyists who picked up the tab. The trip came to light two years later, after The Kansas City Star launched a series of articles about lobbyist spending in the Missouri statehouse. The series is based on the analysis of data about more than 20,000 gifts from January 2001 through July 2003.
The value of the gifts totaled $2.4 million. The analysis found the major difference was that new members under term limits tried harder to cover up the gifts they received from lobbyists. Work on the project began in September 2003, when I requested the entire database of lobbyist gifts from the Missouri Ethics Commission. The number of ways a single name could be entered was astounding. Michael Gibbons, the Senate majority leader, was entered as Mike Gibbons, Sen.
Michael Gibbons, Senator Gibbons, and more. All those had to be standardized because the computer sees each variation as a different person. I spent parts of three weeks cleaning up the data and putting it into usable formats. I divided the data into four broad areas: individual elected officials; groups of lawmakers; staff, family and friends; and lobbyists. Once the data was cleaned up, I used Excel to perform calculations and exported the information into Access to aggregate the gifts.
After Republicans took control of the House in January 2003, lobbyist spending on the Social Services Appropriation Committee fell 90 percent, while spending on tax- and business-related panels rose 141 percent. In 2003, lawmakers expanded the use of caucuses as a way to disguise their sponging off of lobbyists. While spending on individual lawmakers fell 34 percent, spending on private caucuses rose 80 percent.
The total numbers give backbone to a project like this. But what riles readers is the nature of individual gifts. The database, however, described most gifts vaguely as food or beverage, travel, lodging or entertainment. Armed with my results, I was able to approach lobbyists and lawmakers from a position of strength. The closest I came involved a Harvard seminar. Of the 10 lobbyists who paid for the legislator to attend, eight were insurance lobbyists.
The lawmaker happened to be vice chairman of the House Insurance Committee.