Mike Toomey, the former Rick Perry chief of staff now connected with the Green Party of Texas’ controversial efforts to appear on the ballot, lobbied right up until Perry hired him in 2002 and picked up lobbying again less than six weeks after resigning in 2004.

When Perry hired former roommate Toomey as his top aide in November 2002, the governor’s office sent out a new release promising that Toomey would “be bound by the Governor’s Office Code of Ethics, the most stringent ethics and revolving door policy in state. The Code of Ethics prohibits governor’s staff members from lobbying the office for one year plus one legislative session after leaving the office.”

No current or previous versions of the Governor’s Office Code of Ethics are available online. Toomey’s hiring is the only time the Governor’s Press Office ever cites the Code of Ethics, at least online.

When asked for a copy of the Code, a Governor’s Office staffer said that would require a formal Texas Public Information Act request (which has been submitted).

During the 2007 and 2009 legislative sessions, state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, filed legislation that would enact into law the restrictions on lobbying by former top aides to the governor. The bills did not make it out of the Senate committee stage.

Toomey left Perry’s office Sept. 6, 2004. On Oct. 14, 2004, he started lobbying for Texas CASA for a contract of less than $10,000. By mid-November, Toomey had four more clients–including Texans for Lawsuit Reform and Associated Building and Contractors–with contracts totaling between $45,000-$110,000, according to Texas Ethics Commission reports.

By the time the Texas legislative session started up in January 2005, Toomey was lobbying on behalf of 33 clients, with contracts totaling between $620,000-$940,000–less than five months after leaving the governor’s office.

The Code of Ethics only proscribed Toomey from lobbying the governor’s office, not lobbying in general. However, between September 2004 and the end of 2005, Toomey’s clients and their associated PACs donated $100,000s to Perry’s campaign. That included $50,000 from gambling proponent Big City Capital LLC (the only donation by the group in 2005 and its first contribution to Perry), as well as $65,000 from SBC Texas Employee PAC. Perry called two special sessions of the Legislature in 2005 addressing school finance and deregulating telephone rates for SBC and Verizon.

More recently, another former Perry chief of staff Brian Newby left the office Oct. 15, 2008, to lead a Hurricane Ike Recovery and Coordination Effort. Less than four months later (at the beginning of the 2009 legislative session), Newby was on contract to lobby on behalf of Fort Worth law firm Cantey Hanger and the Tarrant Regional Water District, which has been involved in a dispute over Oklahoma water resources. The two contracts totaled between $50,000-$100,000.

(Photo: Texas Lobby Group/The Green Party of Texas)