In the insular state legislative culture, especially in the term-limits era, members come to rely heavily on their leadership.
So it happens that the House speaker's ball and Senate president pro tem's ball, biennial formal dinners, have become social staples and traditional feel-good affairs.
At the speaker's ball last week, or so I'm told, Speaker Jeremy Gillam got roasted as the second-best Democratic speaker since Davy Carter. He's actually moderate Republican, of course, a bit less a Democrat in disguise than Carter.
At the president pro tem's ball, or so I'm told, Sen. Jim Hendren, the Republican leader and sometimes sourpuss, dedicated an original poem to Pro Tem Jonathan Dismang.
Fun times. Good times. Bonding.
But thanks to the obsessive blog work of the Arkansas Times, which keeps a running roundup of lobbyists' feting of legislators, the events have become wrapped up in this whole sad matter of Amendment 94.
The voters approved the amendment in November, presumably banning lobbyists' gifts to legislators. But some lobbyists and legislators have found a way around it.
Basically, it's this way: You as voters directed that lobbyists stop favoring people you elect with wining and dining or other gifts. Or, more to the point, you directed that people you elect not take such favors. And now some legislators and lobbyists are paying you and the state Constitution no attention.
And that's just not right.
It used to be--before Amendment 94--that the state Chamber of Commerce would do the banking for these formal dinners in honor of the speaker and president pro tem late in session. It would collect the money from corporate and lobbying sources.
That was bad practice. The leading ethical purist of the Legislature, former state Rep. Duncan Baird of Lowell, now budget director for Gov. Asa Hutchinson, always wrote a hundred-dollar check to cover his part.
Amendment 94 rather clearly banned the chamber-coordinated process.
While it's true that the big loophole driven through by some lobbyists and legislators is that lobbyists or their organizations may feed and lubricate legislators under Amendment 94 if they invite entire committees or the entire General Assembly to a "planned event," the speaker's ball and the president pro tem's ball were mainly for those two individuals. Or at least it could be argued that way.
So to the rescue came the proud Arkansas Republican Party, which is not a lobbyist, oddly, and which said it would raise the money to honor these two fine Republican legislative leaders, Gillam and Dismang.
So it turned out that the Republican Party prevailed on two leading business lobbyists, Ted and Julie Mullenix, to hit up other lobbyists to cover sponsorships for the dinners.
I hesitate to use the word laundering. Let's call the Republican subcontracting to lobbyists merely offensive, both on principle and as an affront to the voter dictates of Amendment 94.
So I went on Twitter and used the word cesspool for the culture allowing such a process.
So then Gillam and Dismang wondered if I could come out to see them at 2 p.m. Friday.
I could and did.
They said (1) this is the same process governors have always used to raise money for their inaugural balls and (2) they didn't know about any outside services the Republican Party was using and (3) they were not beholden in any way to the Mullenixes or any other lobbyists.
Both said they weren't much for parties, but that these affairs had offered such vital stretch-run bonding among legislators that they were worthy of retaining. Things will go smoother from here to session's end because of the good will of those events, they said.
But they acknowledged that, yes, there might be a better way to underwrite these affairs in the future.
I'd have members ante up to a dinner fund, especially now that they are getting significant pay increases.
But Gillam and Dismang might not be in positions of authority after this session. The dinners might not be theirs to plan.
In that regard, I can now relate that I've buried the lead.
Gillam told me he pretty much had decided to seek re-election as speaker.
Dismang? He says no to re-election as president pro tem, although he knows of no percolating candidacies as yet to succeed him.
Gillam wondered if Dismang might accept a draft. The two good ol' boys from White County have a good working relationship, which has enhanced the orderliness of the session.
Oh, and one other thing: Some lobbying cabals have kept open certain rooms for entertaining legislators in cynical finesses of Amendment 94. They've done so by inviting all legislators to these standing "planned events."
Gillam and Dismang said those events have been so poorly attended that they can't imagine they would be continued.
We can hope.
Well, we could demand, but we already tried that with Amendment 94.
------------v------------
John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 03/24/2015