Originally Published: May 11, 2011
Reforms would limit disproportionate influence of lobbyists also involved in political campaigns and money raising
Good Government Group urges restrictions on public funds for political candidates connected to lobbyists
Fourteen recommendations to be formally presented at city lobbying commission tonight also include moving oversight and enforcement from the city clerk’s office to the campaign finance board
Citizens Union today released a report outlining a package of fourteen reforms to the city’s lobbying laws on the day it is testifying before the recently formed City Lobbying Commission which is charged with reviewing the laws. If adopted, the recommendations proposed by the good government organization would limit the disproportionate influence of those lobbyists who provide paid political campaign services or raise money for candidates.
Citizens Union’s main recommendations are:
- Prohibiting candidates for office who voluntarily opt into the city’s heralded public campaign finance program from spending taxpayer dollars for the services of campaign consultants who also lobby city government.
- Preventing those campaign contributions bundled by lobbyists and used to leverage their influence with elected officials from being eligible for public matching funds.
- Moving oversight of lobbying reporting and enforcement from the City Clerk’s Office to the Campaign Finance Board.
“Citizens Union wants to ensure government decision-making is independent, well-informed, and objective. The practice of campaign consultants whose political services are paid by candidates who receive public monies must end if those consultants then turn around and lobby the very same elected officials they helped elect. We do not want to regulate private enterprise, but we also don’t want public funds used to leverage the influence of campaign consultants who are also lobbyists,” said Dick Dadey, Executive Director. “It is this same thinking that led us to call for ending the public matching of campaign contributions that are raised by lobbyists for candidates. Lobbyists who bundle large sums of contributions for candidates during campaigns and then make requests of those same elected officials once elected ought not to have bundled contributions they collect for a candidate matched from the public coffers.”
Citizens Union is also concerned about the perceived or actual independence of the City Clerk’s Office, which oversees lobbying reporting and enforcement. The City Clerk serves as both the Clerk of the Council and the City’s Clerk. This dual role and the City Clerk’s appointment solely by the Council raises questions as to whether the City Clerk’s Office is the appropriate entity to monitor lobbying of the very body, the City Council, that it is part of and appointed by. Citizens Union believes the Campaign Finance Board, which has appointments from multiple entities is better suited to oversee lobbying reporting and enforcement. Citizens Union generally supports one single entity to regulate lobbying and campaign reporting and enforcement as well as oversight of the city’s ethics laws.
Citizens Union is also proposing the following:
- Elected officials and certain other public servants in senior positions should be prohibited from lobbying their former agencies or branches of government after leaving their positions for two years rather than the one-year prohibition in current law.
- Enhancing transparency for both lobbying activity and the City Clerk’s Office itself. Expand the definition of lobbying to include advocacy that is often done before resolutions and bills are drafted and receive a number. This will shed light on an important period when lobbyists influence policy.
- The Clerk’s Office should report more information about lobbying activity as they have begun to do in their 2010 annual report, including rankings of lobbying activity by most lobbied subjects and bills, firms lobbying on the most subjects and bills, most frequently lobbied government institutions and contacts, most money spent lobbying, firms with the most clients, and top violators of lobbying law by frequency and severity. The Clerk’s Office also should report its own productivity in the Mayor’s Management Report (MMR).
- Lobbying activity should be reported that includes the period before bills and resolutions are introduced, not simply after legislation is first drafted and receives a number.
“Clarifying the definition of lobbying to include the period before legislation is introduced and requiring the Clerk’s Office to provide more pertinent information on lobbying activity will provide the public with a greater awareness of the political actors influencing the policies enacted by elected and agency officials in New York City,” said Alex Camarda, Director of Public Policy.
Citizens Union has also advised the City Lobbying Commission that the city’s lobbying database, which reveals registered lobbyists and provides limited information about the subjects they lobby on, should be made more user-friendly so that searches using differing criteria can be done, as is the case to some extent with the state’s lobbying database.
The disclosure of lobbying activity is linked to how information is self-reported by lobbyists and their clients. Lobbyists are currently required to report city lobbying activity in six bi-monthly reports to the Clerk’s Office while providing the same city lobbying activity again to the state’s lobbying reporting and oversight entity, the Commission on Public Integrity. Citizens Union recommends that this redundancy is eliminated to ease the burden on lobbyists reporting their activity and that ideally a joint state-city electronic filing form is created. Short of that, the two online reporting sites ought to look and feel as similar as possible, and information should be easily transferred between the two sites.
Citizens Union also seeks to relieve the challenges lobbyists face in reporting their advocacy before government policymakers by requiring that all newly registered lobbyists receive training from the Clerk’s office so they are better prepared to meet the requirements of the lobbying laws. The good government group also is calling for an amnesty program to be put into place that will encourage lobbyists, particularly small non-profit organizations, to come forth and make known their undeclared activity. It is believed that many non-profits are unaware of the requirements of the lobbying law or are afraid to come forth about their previous lobbying efforts out of fear of facing steep late fees for not filing at the appropriate time.
The City Lobbying Commission will be releasing a draft report in June of their recommendations for reforming the lobbying laws. Subsequent hearings will follow culminating in a final report thereafter. The Council is expected to take up legislation stemming from the Commission’s recommendations this fall.