Legislative efforts rarely concentrate on requiring paid lobbyists to maintain even minimal ethical standards. Lobbyists traditionally fight any efforts to control their activities, limit their influence or monitor their legislative contacts. C urrent efforts aimed at legislative cures or controls upon the lobbying industry are failing. Each year, numerous state legislatures struggle with the issue of regulating lobbyists and the special interests they represent. Of equal importance is that few of the measures passed into law regulate the actions and ethics of lobbyists.
T here is little or no incentive for the system to reform itself from the inside.
The power and influence of lobbyists will continue to thwart legislative attempts to regulate the lobbying industry. To help lobbyists recognize it is to their economic and professional advantage to declare voluntary participation in, and compliance with, the nationally uniform CELA pledge. The lobbyist community, like the legislative community, should take responsibility for the ethical conduct of its members. Model lobbyist codes should be identified and promoted to encourage further professionalization of the lobby corps. That development could include training, establishing codes of conduct and voluntary certification programs, encouraging lobbyists to develop a code of conduct in each state and publicizing in journals examples of codes of ethics.