In Pennsylvania, a public official or public employee only needs to wait one year before they are allowed to lobby the people they formerly worked with. The current one-year regulation is an insufficient deterrent that allows for a revolving door on our politics.  For this reason, I plan on introducing legislation to extend the lobbying waiting period from one year to five years. By increasing the waiting period, public officials and government workers are deterred from using their prior positions to leverage contacts or relationships within the public sector for lobbying.
 
The practice whereby public officials or government employees become lobbyists after leaving their public positions is an all-too-familiar one in our state. Many of the hundreds of registered lobbyists in Pennsylvania include public officials and government workers from both major parties.  This practice creates a de facto corruption risk, and must be addressed.
 
Our institutions are suffering from deep distrust, and laws that only encourage more corruptive forces in government must be reformed. Please join me in showing Pennsylvanians that now is the time to put the people back in charge of our state government.
 

Statutes/Laws affected:
Printer's No. 0558: 65-1103(g)