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"I bet you that cost me my job," West Virginia Senate president, Republican Mitch Carmichael, jokingly told colleagues in April when he voted for a new measure that would expand broadband competition in his state.
Just over a month later it turned out to be true, when he was fired from his job as a sales manager at Frontier Internet, despite having recently been given a significant raise.
Frontier Internet is the state's largest high-speed internet provider and it was implacably opposed to the measure that Carmichael voted in favor of: one that allows up to 20 families or businesses to form a co-op to provide broadband in areas that are currently poorly served. It also lets cities and counties band together to build municipal networks.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 10 2017, @07:55PM
Yes, this can be a problem. There's a lot of debate around the value of full-time vs. part-time legislatures and how they impact stuff [publicintegrity.org] like conflicts of interest, lobbying, etc. But just because one isn't a full-time employee of a company doesn't mean you can't receive compensation or other benefits -- lobbying happens no matter what. The vast majority of states have policies that are supposed to prevent legislators from voting on something where there's a conflict of interest, but enforcement varies a lot.
Bottom line is in states where being a legislator is a part-time job, representatives are likely to bring conflicts of interest from their employment directly. In states where being a legislator is a full-time job, they bring conflicts of interests based on their former employers, businesses who pay them speaking and "consulting" fees, etc. Full-time legislator pay often tends to lead to more elaborate campaigning, which means more money flows in from donors, who have their own interests.
There are ALWAYS conflicts of interests. It just depends on what form they take.