By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
Last week, the National Rifle Association announced that its longtime Tallahassee-based lobbyist Marion Hammer will “step down” but “continue to serve as an advisor to the NRA.”
That’s a curious turn of a phrase. But it has a simple, unstated meaning: Hammer, 83, will soon be able to dodge once again regularly disclosing to Floridians the splendid sums the NRA slips regularly into her purse, currently more than $50,000 every three months.
This time, perhaps, legally.
Three years ago, after Florida Bulldog disclosed that Hammer, former NRA president, hadn’t filed any lobbyist compensation forms, a potentially costly infraction, since the state began requiring them in 2007. She tried wriggling out of trouble by saying, among other things, that she was “a consultant and not a lobbyist,” according to then-state Sen. Perry Thurston, D-Fort Lauderdale, and therefore not required to file such a report.
