Federal lawmakers have been getting tickets to sold-out World Series through a perk that has some ethicists crying foul. Some 75 tickets for this series have been sold to 15 lawmakers and their aides at face value by Major League Baseball and the teams. No ethics rules are being broken because the lawmakers aren't getting the tickets for free, but critics complain that the deal violates the spirit if not congressional rules banning lawmakers from receiving gifts.
"Anytime you have access to something that regular people don't have, it should be considered a gift," the director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington tells the Wall Street Journal." Regular people can't call the Major League Baseball office and get tickets." An MLB spokesman said there's a limited amount of face-value tickets available for lawmakers, and that the politicians need to go through the same channels as advertisers and members of the media.
(More 2009 World Series stories.)
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