Ethically Speaking: Accepting Tickets to Events

Mark Boardman Attorney Boardman, Carr, Petelos, Watkins & Ogle P.C.

Scenario 1: Tickets to the Event at the Seminar

You have an opportunity to go to a great seminar, and as part of the seminar, you attend a concert or some other event where you need a ticket. Will you violate the Ethics Act if you take it?

Scenario 2: Student Athlete Recruitment

You have an opportunity accompany a perspective student athlete on a recruiting visit to a college football game, where you receive free admission. Will you violate the Ethics Act if you go?

Short Answer: No. These are exceptions which will allow you to use the ticket.

Analysis: The Alabama Legislature adopted major revisions to the Alabama Ethics Act in its special session held in December 2010. The Alabama Ethics Commission says that part of the intent of those ethics reforms was “to do away with the longstanding practice of giving free tickets to sporting events to public officials and/or public employees, merely because they were public officials or public employees. As a general rule, it is now prohibited for public officials and public employees to receive tickets to sporting events or recreational events merely for the fact of their public service.”

Nevertheless, if your seminar is an “educational function” then you can use the tickets as long as doing so “could not reasonably be perceived as a subterfuge for a purely social, recreational, or entertainment function.” In reaching this position, the law says to take “into account the totality of the program or agenda.” The free ticket amounts to a waiver of a registration fee or similar cost, so perhaps even your spouse can attend this ticketed event as part of the educational function,” again, provided that the concert or play is “an integral part” of the seminar. The seminar sponsor also can seek precertification by the Director of the Ethics Commission. (The value of the hospitality cannot exceed $150 per year if the seminar is held by a lobbyist or $250 a year if the seminar is held by a person or business which employs or retains a lobbyist.)

The Ethics Act prohibits any public official or public employee if accepting the tickets could lead to corruptly influencing official action. Likewise, no public official or public employee shall use his or her official position for personal gain. However, in this scenario, you are doing neither, because you are attending a seminar which will help you become a better educator and the play or concert is part of the event.

Similarly, you are not corruptly influencing a government function or using your public position for personal gain if you are assisting a student athlete. Thus, when you accompany a student athlete onto the field at Jordan Hare or Bryant Denney stadiums, you are there to assist the student athlete, both as a chaperone and as an advisor. The NCAA provides strict rules by which the universities can recruit the student athlete; you are even required to follow those. Thus, you, too, can accept free admission to the sporting event. The Ethics Commission even goes further, stating: “It is not improper for the University to provide complimentary passes to teachers, administrators, etc., who are director or overseeing a program or other activity in which the perspective student athlete is participating.”

Enjoy the seminar!