May 26, 2007
Restaurant blues over ethics rules
Mark Johnson - Charlotte Observer

Waiters at the 42d Street Oyster Bar in downtown Raleigh wear suspenders and bow ties as they serve delicately fried shrimp and shucked oysters. Until January, the 300-seat dining room routinely included a few tables of state legislators with lobbyists paying the bill, sometimes from the other side of the room.

The gravy train -- in this case, the raw bar -- has ended.
The state's new ethics law that took effect this year bans lobbyists from giving gifts to lawmakers, including buying them dinner. Nowhere has the pinch been felt more than at Raleigh's pricier bistros, especially downtown near the Legislative Building.

"It was very unusual to go in (42d Street) and not run into 10 or 15 people I knew," said Rep. Jerry Dockham, a Davidson County Republican. "Now I can go with relative anonymity."

Lobbyist Bill Scoggin said his peers have dubbed the ethics law the "Eat More Dinners With Your Family Act."

Legislators may miss the fancy food, but operators of the capital city's steakhouses and seafood eateries say they have their own set of hunger pangs, though mitigated by an uptick among other customers.

"You've got to figure that the new ethics law and the concerns surrounding that, it has to take away from some of the business we would be doing," said Brad Hurley, a co-owner of 42d Street.

J.K. Norfleet, owner of JKs Restaurant north of downtown, said the decline in lobbyist-and-legislator dining is striking.

"You definitely see a difference between this year and last year," Norfleet said. "It's just not the same. It's affected people taking people out."

One measure of the bygone days of the lawmaker dining market was that a waiter from Norfleet's restaurant wound up testifying at the 2006 trial of former state lottery commissioner Kevin Geddings.

The waiter had once served dinner -- halibut, snapper and a chocolate tart -- to then-House Speaker Jim Black and two lottery company lobbyists. Black, a Democrat, was a familiar face because the waiter had previously worked at the General Assembly -- for a Republican.

Cigar-chomping lobbyist Rufus Edmisten, a former N.C. secretary of state who represents General Motors and the video poker industry, among others, said that by not paying legislators' dinner bills, he has saved enough money to buy a "medium-sized car."

Restaurant operators said they can't calculate a dollar figure from business lost to government reform, but the good news is that somebody else has made up for it. Several eateries favored by lawmakers reported that, while their politician business was down, their overall business is still ahead of last year, possibly because of the revitalization of downtown Raleigh.

John Hackett, manager of Sullivan's Steakhouse on the bar-and-restaurant row along South Glenwood Avenue, said his staff was braced to take a big hit on their bottom line.

"We thought, `Here it comes,' " Hackett said, "and a few months later we're having the best year in history."

Lawmakers, meanwhile, search for more affordable cuisines. Sen. Fletcher Hartsell, a Cabarrus County Republican, renamed the ethics law the "K&W Cafeteria Relief Act." Dockham said he's on a first-name basis with "the bread lady" at the venerable Southern cafeteria in Raleigh's Cameron Village.

Perhaps a winner in this mandated economizing is the Roast Grill, a 67-year-old house-turned-restaurant on an obscure side street near downtown. The lunch spot is so narrow that a customer has to practically slide between the row of counter stools and the two tables. Maximum seating for the place is a tight 14. The only entree is hot dogs -- no ketchup -- plus a couple of desserts.

On Thursday, five senators perched at the counter. Edmisten said he now sees more legislators there than at the steakhouses.

"I've noticed a lot of my legislator friends have lost weight," he said. "It's not been so healthy for the restaurant business, but it's healthy for our bodies."