The Ethics Board advises that a candidate for the Legislature may, consistent
with Wisconsin’s lobbying law:

  (1) remain employed as a lobbyist by the candidate’s employer while a
        candidate for election to the Legislature;

  (2) engage in campaign activities while on paid vacation time, holidays, and
        compensatory time in accordance, and consistent with, the employer’s
        treatment of other employees’ use of leave time; and

  (3) continue, while a candidate and prior to taking office, to receive benefits
        paid in part by the employer consistent with the organization’s policy for
        other employees.

The Ethics Board also advises that upon assuming office, a legislator may no
longer accept compensation or anything else of pecuniary value from the
organization except to the extent that the legislator, as a former employee, may
be contractually entitled to continue to receive benefits from an employment or
union contract that predates the candidacy.

The Ethics Board advises that state agency may accept funds from private
sources to be used to reimburse a state official’s travel expenses incurred by the
official while engaged in official duties.

A lobbying principal may, consistent with the lobbying law, urge its members to
contribute to a candidate, as long as the organization is not acting in concert with
the candidate. A lobbying principal may not bundle and furnish contributions
from its members to legislators except between June 1 and the general election
in the year of the member’s election and, then, only if the Legislature has
concluded its final floorperiod and is not in special or extraordinary session.

The Ethics Board advises that:

1. A state public official attending a conference or convention may accept
      educational or informational material or other item for the purpose of
      conveying it to the State of Wisconsin for the use or benefit of a state
      office or agency.

2. Except as just noted, a state public official should not accept from a lobbying
      principal or lobbyist anything of pecuniary value or from anyone else
      any item of more than token value. This is so, regardless of whether the
      official was to retain it or furnish it to another for other than governmental
      use.

3. A state official should not accept, without full payment, a meal or drink
      offered at a conference or convention unless it is provided, arranged, or
      sanctioned by the event’s sponsor.

Wisconsin law [§19.56 (1), Wisconsin Statutes] encourages you to
address groups about legislative, administrative, executive or judicial processes
and proposals and issues initiated by or affecting a department or the judicial
branch and to accept reasonable compensation from the sponsor when you do.
The bookends offered are well within the ambit of reasonable compensation. If
your address can be appropriately characterized as meeting the subject matter
criterion, you may surely retain them.