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California Common Cause Calls for Further Ethics Safeguards

 California Common Cause Calls for Further Ethics Safeguards in Light of Duvall Scandal

California Common Cause called today for both a private lobbyist association and state legislators to take swift action in light of recent allegations by Assemblymember Michael Duvall that he engaged in a sexual affair a Sempra Energy lobbyist with at the same time she was lobbying him to oppose renewable energy legislation.

 

“It is important that the Assembly Ethics Committee continue to investigate this sordid affair,” said Derek Cressman, Regional Director of State Operations for Common Cause’s Western States. “The public needs to know if this relationship took place, if Sempra Energy knew about it and encouraged it as part of a lobbying strategy, if Sempra provided any gifts or things of value to legislators, and if other lobbyists are engaging in sexual relations with legislators.”

 

Common Cause called for the following steps:

 

1)      The Institute of Government Advocates, a trade association of lobbyists, should revoke the membership of any lobbyist who has engaged in sexual relations with an official they are lobbying.

 

2)      The IGA should adopt new ethical guidelines that prohibit lobbyists from engaging in sexual relations, or arranging sexual encounters, with officials they are lobbying.

 

3)      The legislature should adopt new lobby reform policies that require more detailed reporting of payments to individual lobbyists and disclosure of who lobbyists meet with and the matters they discuss.

 

Heidi DeJong Barsuglia, who Duvall apparently bragged about having an affair with, is a registered lobbyist for Sempra Energy. Lobby report forms indicate that Sempra spent $786,851.85 lobbying the California government from January to June of 2009.   These payments included $88,766 in payments to Ms. Barsuglia and her supervisor Cynthia Howell from April to June. Howell was paid $40,393.85 from January to March, before Barsuglia was on staff. This would suggest that Sempra paid Barsuglia approximately $48,000 from April to June, although the lobby reporting does not provide this level of detail.

 

“Improved lobby reporting would allow us to assess if this lobbyist was paid more then her supervisor, and what work she did to earn that salary,” said Kathay Feng, Executive Director of California Common Cause. “The public’s trust is severely eroded and can only be restored with detailed disclosures of every contact that a lobbyist makes with a lawmaker, including who, what, where, and why the meeting took place.”

 

Sempra was lobbying on at least 170 different bills in the legislature, including AB 64 which called for greater use of renewable energy in California. Duvall sided with Sempra in voting against AB 64 in two different committees and on the floor of the Assembly during the same time period that Barsuglia was lobbying the bill.

 

This issue concerns Common Cause because there is a track record of energy sector lobbyists using sex, drugs, and alcohol to unduly influence decision-makers. A 2008 report by Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney found that Chevron, Shell, Gary Williams Energy Corporation, and Hess Corporation lobbyists had provided gifts that included meals, alcohol, golf as well as engaged in sex and cocaine use with twelve employees of the Minerals Management Service. Sempra was not mentioned in that report, but is has participated in the Royalty In Kind program, which was at the center of that scandal. “This past history the possibility that trading sex for political influence is not an unknown tactic for energy corporations and warrants further investigation,” explained Cressman.