House Speaker Calvin Say’s office responded quickly to the State Ethics Commission’s request for further information about meetings with representatives of Hollywood movie company, Relativity Media, during which gift sets of DVDs were distributed, but his response provided little information.
Say told the commission he does not recall any details of his meetings with representatives of the movie company, which spent over $200,000 lobbying for a bill that would have substantially increased tax credits for movie productions in the state.
Say’s letter to the commission, dated yesterday, was emailed to all legislators and House office managers with the suggestion that it might help shape their own responses to the commission’s inquiry. “Please feel free to use the responses as guidance,” the email said. It directed further questions to Say’s Chief of Staff, Calvin Azama.
Say acknowledged attending a meeting with representatives of Relativity Media on February 1, 2011.
• The Speaker said he did not recall the names of any other company representatives present at the meeting other than CEO Ryan Kavanaugh.
• He declined to name any other House members present, saying he does “not have a definitive recollection of who was or was not present at the meeting or who stayed for a few minutes only or longer.”
Consequently, I do not feel comfortable responding to this question because of the possibility of misidentification or misrepresentation.
• He does not recall any legislative staff members who were present.
• No one from the Speaker’s office staff attended the meeting or received gift DVDs.
• Say told the commission he does not know what movies were in the boxed set of 24 DVD or Blu-Ray discs he received from the company because he did not look in the box. Further, Say wrote: “My staff member who counted the DVDs for valuation purpose does not recall any of the titles.”
Say’s carefully written letter strikes me as an invitation for legislators to sidestep the commission’s investigation into potential ethics violations through equally guarded replies, and a veiled challenge to the commission’s inquiry.
On the other hand, a more “balanced” analysis would note that the Speaker is trying to shield his members from what many see as one of a series of recent moves by the ethics commission that together are unreasonably restrictive. In some ways, trying to slow the process works in favor of the commission by removing it from the crosshairs of prospective anti-ethics legislation.
Just a thought.
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There is an appearance of cover up and lack of integrity in regards to Say.
Oh, Ian, say it ain’t so!
🙂
N
Now cometh the Reagan defense…
Now cometh the Clinton defense . . . I did not inhale.
Calvin’s lasting legacy-no memory of anything ever.
Wow, nothing like issuing an invitation to forget! Other legislators might just as well say “See Speajker’s response.” In court, they have something called the exclusionary rule: witnesses are prohibited from sitting in on the trial to prevent them from tailoring their testimony to that of previous witnesses. The legislature ain’t court and one reason is that there are no rules, or at least none anyone seems to respect.
I wonder if similar examples might be mined from lobbying disclosure forms . You’ve written before about the discrpancies between disclosures by the lobbyists (that include gifts to legislators) and disclosures by legislators (who seem to “forget” those gifts).
Not that you have a life of your own or anything . . . .
One question never asked or information that was disclosed is, “What were the exact movies that were in the DVDs given to the Legislators?”. Value is determined on the content, not the number of DVD discs.
If the movies were all Academy Award Best Picture winners, then I can see putting a significant value on the DVD set given. However, if the movies were of the B-movies that were products of Relativity Media, then I would value the set the same as the bargain bin at Walmart.
The question was asked. The speaker’s response was that he didn’t look in the box.
Since the DVD set was given to other legislators, why was the information not found from other sources or directly from Relativity Media? Reporters seem to be getting really lazy, now days. My old journalism professor, Bonnie Wiley, would have given them poor grades for not trying hard enough to “get the story”.
Ok, so a bunch of guys dressed like pirages wheel in a huge wooden box with brass hinges and all that — imagine the kind of box that pirates store their pieces of eight in on all those pirate movies. In fact, the box does contain piles of gold. All for the Speaker.
So the Speaker accepts the box but doesn’t look in it.
How does that fly? Whatever it is, chances are that it costs more than $25, or that it has “eBay value” as Les Kondo has said. Not looking at it does not make the value go away.
It seems to me that if a gift is left that may have significant value, the Speaker or his staff is obligated to look at it. He could return it if he is unsure of the value, with a simple note saying that he is prohibited from receiving such gifts.