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Tilley, now a lobbyist, was the majority floor leader at the time. A longtime recipient of lavish lobbyist gifts, Tilley was preaching that he had had a change of heart. He was pushing a bill to ban lobbyists’ gifts, thanks to the advice of one Everett A. Tilley.

The elder Tilley had advised his son that all his hobnobbing at hotels and fancy dinners and sporting events on the dime of special interest lobbyists looked bad.

It was a good story.

But it was also a ruse.

Tilley never really stopped taking gifts, he just made it harder to figure out which lobbyists’ donations were paying for them. And after a serious committee of legislators produced a strong ethics bill, Tilley used his power as floor leader and speaker-in-waiting to gut it. Eventually, he resigned his seat, became a lobbyist, and put into practice every bit of undue influence a strong ethics bill would have sought to outlaw.

With a of the ethics debate in the 2016 legislative session, Tilley’s flaunting of weak ethics laws in Missouri is in the crosshairs of several pieces of legislation.

Among them is , which would get to the heart of Tilley’s practice as a lobbyist.

Onder’s bill would institute a two-year cooling-off period before a lawmaker can become a lobbyist. Most other states, and Congress, have a version of such a “revolving door� law, but Missouri lawmakers have fought it off for years. Why? So they can cash in. Tilley did it, resigning and becoming a lobbyist. So did the of the Senate, Tom Dempsey, a Republican from St. Charles County. The lure of money is so great that top lawmakers in Missouri don’t even bother filling out their terms before they cash in, going to work for the very special interests that were currying their favor with donations and gifts in their final legislative session.

Onder’s bill would also make it illegal for a lawmaker-turned-lobbyist to maintain a campaign account.

This is where Tilley has fully monetized his previous public service.

When he resigned, the former speaker had a nearly $1 million campaign account, earning interest from an investment in bank shares. Almost immediately, he began using it to give him an advantage other lobbyists didn’t have, donating five-figure checks to lawmakers who would then turn around and hire him as a consultant, often for similar amounts of money. He did this with Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, whose campaign account is now under federal investigation after Kinder self-reported some financial discrepancies, which appear to be connected to a staffer whom Tilley recommended. He did it with Sen. Mike Parson, who is now running for lieutenant governor, and with numerous other Republicans.

But one of the more insidious things Tilley has done with his campaign account is use it to funnel money through other committees to obscure the source of his largesse.

Chief among them is a committee called Missouri Growth, and this is where Tilley’s sad story of woe involving his father really unravels.

In January 2013, with a $900 donation, Everett Tilley started the political action committee Missouri Growth, according to records. Whether the elder Tilley was ever actually involved is an open question. The treasurer of the committee is the same one Tilley uses on his committee, and the phone number on file with the MEC is an outdated cellphone of Steve Tilley’s. The committee paid an immediate consulting fee of $380 to Steve Tilley’s company, and then sat idle for about a year, other than paying accounting fees to a company run by Tilley’s sister.

In March 2014, Steve Tilley’s committee, Friends of Tilley, gave $5,000 to Missouri Growth. A month later, Noranda Aluminum, the smelter in southeastern Missouri, gave $5,000 to the committee. Tilley is a lobbyist for the Fair Energy Action Rate Fund, which is an ally of Noranda (and funded by Noranda and others), in the battle against Ameren Missouri electric rate increases.

Missouri Growth’s first actual donation to a state representative came in September 2014. It gave $750 to Rep. Jeremy Lafaver, D-Kansas City. In October, the committee received $1,000 from another committee Tilley used to control as speaker, MO Leadership Committee, and $7,500 from a 501-c-4 nonprofit called Missourians for Low Energy Costs. That committee was accusing it of being a shill for Noranda.

Then the donations got bigger. There was $1,500 to state Rep. John Diehl, the new speaker of the House, and $3,500 to Sen. Jill Schupp, D-Creve Coeur.

In 2015, Tilley put in an additional $25,000, shortly before he renamed his Friends of Tilley campaign account the “MO Majority PAC, LLC.� At the time, he said he renamed the committee to more appropriately represent his plan to use his campaign money to help elect Republicans. Noranda put another $5,000 in Missouri Growth in 2015.

And the donations increased, to both Democrats and Republicans.

ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Mayor Francis Slay, a Democrat, received $1,500. Schupp received another $1,000. Fellow Democrat Sen. Jason Holsman of Kansas City received $2,000. Numerous House Republicans — and a few Democrats — received between $300 and $500, among them Democrats Penny Hubbard and Michael Butler of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, and Republicans Don Gosen and Sue Allen of west ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County.

Was the money from Noranda or from Tilley? Did the candidates know the original source of the money when they received it or asked for it?

This is one of the most insidious ethics problems facing the legislative process. In Missouri, despite a law that says it is illegal to try to hide the source of campaign donations, the practice is common. Tilley is not alone.

When Onder convenes a hearing on his bill that would outlaw much of what Tilley does, he should invite Tilley’s father, Everett, to testify and ask him a simple question.

How does this look?