Every contracting job I've ever had has had some kind of training document that said "hey if you ever go out to lunch or something with a government customer, just split the check please we don't want to be on the news"
Like the exact “gratuity” situation is well known to businesses who do public/private work, and it’s just universally considered to be—at best—clearly unethical.
To be clear, the exact "gratuity" situation here is a public official walking into a business that they constructed a multimillion dollar biased contract offer for and saying "I need money." (that's literal!)
This is so far beyond any "oh no should we split the check?!?" it's insane.
Yeah I meant that the majority seemed concerned that if this is criminalized then so would going out to a celebration dinner or something, but that scenario itself is already just generally considered obviously unethical by everyone.
Yeah, and the problem is that even if you wanted to make sure that that was now considered OK, you didn't have to make *this* OK! Jackson said it well in her dissent. They weren't asked "is this an OK gratuity?" They were asked "can _effing anything_ afterwards be a bribe?"
By the freaking reading of this opinion, a mayor could authorize a multimillion dollar contract for a company, immediately resign and be appointed CEO of said company, pocketing a huge bonus for it. Not a bribe! Just a gratuity! So long as you don't leave a paper trail!
