A Missouri legislator has been getting a lot of media attention for introducing a bill that would require a lobbyist who has sex with a legislator or staff member to include the act on the lobbyist’s required gift disclosure form.

According to a report in the Kansas City Star:

From the bill: “For purposes of subdivision (2) of this subsection, the term ‘gift’ shall include sexual relations between a registered lobbyist and a member of the general assembly or his or her staff. Relations between married persons or between persons who entered into a relationship prior to the registration of the lobbyist, the election of the member to the general assembly, or the employment of the staff person shall not be reportable under this subdivision. The reporting of sexual relations for purposes of this subdivision shall not require a dollar valuation.”

It’s really not an off-the-wall bit of legislation.

I suspect this could be, at least in part, a reaction to a February 2015 opinion by North Carolina’s State Ethics Commission, which ruled that consensual sexual relationships between a lobbyist and a legislator do not constitute a reportable gift under the state’s ethics law.

According to the commission opinion:

Section 120C-303(a)(1) of the Lobbying Law restricts a registered lobbyist from giving a gift to a designated individual unless a gift ban exception applies. “Gift” is defined as “[a]nything of monetary value given or received without valuable consideration….” G.S. 138A-3(15). A lobbyist must report certain “reportable expenditures,” defined to include gifts and “things of value” greater than $10 per day given to a designated individual or immediate family member.

Consensual sexual relationships do not have monetary value and therefore are not reportable as gifts or “reportable expenditures made for lobbying” for purposes of the Lobbying Law’s expenditure reporting provisions. See G.S. 120C-402 and G.S. 120C-403.2

The commission did note, however, that providing paid prostitution services could be considered a gift, “depending on the particular facts.”

The prompts me to wonder how the Hawaii State Ethics Commission would view the same issue. I’m aware of several situations here in the past where a lobbyist allegedly engaged in sex with a legislator, or paid for someone else to have sex with the lawmaker. But the issue has never reached the commission, as far as I know.

Hawaii’s gift statute seems to be a bit broader than the North Carolina law, and may get around the problem of placing a dollar value on consensual sex.

Section 84-11 HRS provides:

§84-11 Gifts. No legislator or employee shall solicit, accept, or receive, directly or indirectly, any gift, whether in the form of money, service, loan, travel, entertainment, hospitality, thing, or promise, or in any other form, under circumstances in which it can reasonably be inferred that the gift is intended to influence the legislator or employee in the performance of the legislator’s or employee’s official duties or is intended as a reward for any official action on the legislator’s or employee’s part.

That’s a definition that seems extremely broad, applying to a range of types of gifts, including services, entertainment, hospitality, “or in any other form,” in addition to simpler things like money, travel, etc.

Would the commission include sex? I think there’s a good chance they would, but of course that’s just a prediction, not a reality.

Should Hawaii clarify the gift law in the same way this Missouri legislator is proposing?