Soft Landings and Other Revolving Door Matters

The COGEL conference last week had an excellent panel on the revolving door between government and business. One thing I learned is that the first post-employment laws were passed in the 1850s and 1860s, and they involved lawyers, a group that often argues that ethics laws should not apply to them (in fact, in Pennsylvania, someone said, revolving door laws cannot be applied to practicing attorneys). The idea of a cooling-off period after government service originated in 1955, well before the post-Watergate explosion of government ethics laws.

One term that used by someone on the panel was new to me: "soft landing." In this context, it refers to the fact that there is an incentive for government officials and employees, especially elected officials, to benefit one or more companies doing business with their local government in order to make themselves attractive for a job when they leave government service. The job itself is the "soft landing," making a decision to leave government service, a failure to get re-elected, resignation, or retirement an opportunity rather than a problem.

Here is a typical use of the term, from a 2006 TPM Muckraker blog post:

[O]ver 90 former Homeland Security officials ... left the Bush administration, mostly to cash in on their experience with lucrative lobbying gigs, cushy seats on corporate boards and other velvety-soft landing spots, in many cases earning multiples of what they made in government.

John Steiner, the Austin integrity officer, noted that, at least with respect to lobbying, revolving door provisions can be self-enforcing. How? Knowing that political opponents of lobbyists fresh out of government will attack them and those who hire them, companies are not likely to hire officials right out of government. The more clear the revolving door provisions, the easier it is for this process to work.

It's good to put a jurisdiction's revolving door laws in a clearly understandable format, complete with a checklist and links to laws, advisory opinions, and other relevant information. A good example of this has been produced by the Ohio Ethics Commission.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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