In addition to that round of golf, Cagle was gifted with a cocktail party and two nights’ lodging at The Cloister on Sea Island, a posh resort primarily patronized by those in the “1 percent” of America’s highest-income taxpayers. His tee time was set for Oct. 12 as one of the preliminary events in a PGA golf tournament known as the McGladrey Classic.

There was quite a bit of sputtering from some of my colleagues in the media, but I don’t know why anyone was outraged or even surprised at this. This kind of stuff has been going on for years with the people that the voters elect to the General Assembly.

It was just a year ago this month that House Speaker David Ralston, his chief of staff Spiro Amburn and their immediate family members were embarking on a $17,000 expenses-paid junket to Europe, courtesy of a lobbyist for passenger rail interests.

That little trip was the most expensive single expenditure reported by a lobbyist in Georgia since at least 2005. Ralston said the jaunt to Germany and the Netherlands enabled him to understand better how European countries handle their mix of rail and related transportation facilities. I’m sure it was a very educational journey for the speaker.

Although some would question the propriety of what Cagle, Ralston and dozens of other legislators do each year, what they do is allowed by Georgia law.

Every state surrounding us limits the gifts that an elected official can receive from individual lobbyists to $55 or less; South and North Carolina allow no lobbyist gifts to lawmakers. In Georgia, there are no limits to what a legislator can accept in the form of meals, drinks, lodging and travel expenses from lobbyists. This has been true during the periods when Democrats ran state government as well as Republicans.

When Sonny Perdue established GOP control of the governor’s office for the first time in more than a century, one of the first things he tried to accomplish was an upgrading of the state’s ethics law that included a limitation on lobbyist gifts. Perdue proposed a limit of $50 on the gifts legislators could accept.

The governor’s efforts to write that restriction into law went nowhere because of the opposition of the House speaker at the time, Glenn Richardson. Richardson, a hard-drinking womanizer who later would resign from the General Assembly after his affair with a female lobbyist was exposed, insisted that the gift limitation be stripped from Perdue’s bill.

Richardson was so adamant about removing the gift prohibition that when the bill was voted out in committee, even Perdue’s House floor leader, Rep. Jay Roberts (R-Ocilla), voted to carry out Richardson’s wishes.

After Richardson was forced from the Legislature in disgrace, his successor picked up right where the former speaker left off.

Ralston, who sponsored his own rewrite of the state’s ethics law, said he also was flat-out opposed to any limitation of any kind on the freebies that lobbyists could give to lawmakers. It was sufficient merely to file reports disclosing these gifts, Ralston contended.

“I trust the people of this state to make those judgments,” he said. “I’m comfortable with letting the people make the determination. They know what to do.”

Ralston knew “the people” well. Georgia voters have proved time and time again that ethically questionable behavior does not bother them. There have been numerous media reports in recent years of the freebies that lobbyists for entities like Cancer Treatment Centers and Delta Air Lines have given to legislators. None of the lawmakers involved, as best I can determine, ever lost an election because they accepted these gifts.

The entity that paid for Cagle’s free golf outing to the Cloisters has done this before. Four years ago, Cancer Treatment Centers of America was trying to persuade legislators to pass a bill that would exempt them from the state’s healthcare regulations and enable them to open a medical facility in Metro Atlanta. CTCA lobbyists could not get the bill through the Senate in 2007, so they just kept showering lawmakers with freebies and junkets.

CTCA spent gobs of money buying meals and drinks for the more influential legislators and flying them around the country on junkets that also, coincidentally, included tickets to PGA golf tournaments. Lawmakers were often flown to the company’s facilities in Illinois and in Tulsa.

A check of campaign disclosure reports shows that CTCA contributed more than $72,000 to legislators over the two-year cycle, concentrating on the leadership and the lawmakers who sat on the committees that marked up the bill. They finally succeeded in 2008 when the Senate, after a tongue-lashing from Sen. Tommie Williams, a CTCA favorite, passed the bill and sent it to the House.

Given that track record, was it a surprise that Cagle has become the latest political figure to accept a junket from CTCA lobbyists? It shouldn’t have been.

Do the voters even care about any of this? They don’t seem to.

Legislators and other elected officials will continue to accept favors from lobbyists because their constituents let them. I’m sure they will continue to keep letting them do it.