My jaw just about dropped when I saw that Qwest’s top lobbyist, Eric Isom, was running for a seat in the state legislature. (House District 15, to be exact.) He’s currently up against 3 other Republicans at the upcoming convention. What’s shocking about this is that if delegates in his district truly knew who he [...]

Sen. Howard Stephenson, president of the Utah “Taxpayers” Association, finds himself in the middle of picking market winners and losers in Paul Rolly’s latest column. Apparently our lobbyist senator pressured a purchasing committee to pick a favored vendor even going so far as to have the RFP re-written to be tailor made for the company. [...]

When I initially read that Rep. Kory Holdaway was resigning his seat in the legislature to become a full-time lobbyist for the UEA, I found myself thinking “great, another revolving door lobbyist.” I had fully anticipated some kind of blogging outrage at the revolving door especially in light of the current ethics initiative being proposed. [...]

After the legislature decided to do as close to nothing as possible about perceived ethics problems earlier this year, some citizens were left a bit steamed. There do appear to be a lot of conflicts of interest in the legislature (like a full-time lobbyist as a legislator) and while there have been some rather blatant [...]