I’m interested in hearing your suggestions for what would improve either the statute or the Ethics Commission’s procedures for lobbyist registration and disclosure.
How can Hawaii’s state law on lobbyist registration and disclosure be strengthened, either through amendments to the law or changes in administrative practices or rules?
Information on the current law can be found in the Ethics Commison’s Lobbyist Registration and Reporting Manual.
The lobbyist law is Chapter 97 HRS.
I have several immediate suggestions.
• Amend the definition of “administrative action” in Chapter 97-1(1) by deleting the reference to Chapter 91 (Hawaii Administrative Procedures Act” so that lobbying of executive branch officials is fully covered by reporting requirements.
Lobbying is currently defined as communicating with legislative or executive brnch officials “for the purpose of attempting to influence legislative or administrative action or a ballot issue,” but a separate definition restricts administrative action to lobbying regarding rules. This means there is a huge blind spot in the law, resulting in no disclosure of what is spent by special interests lobbying the governor and other top administration officials.
I wrote this comment back in 2006:
Other states have been amending their own laws in this direction, though. Idaho, for example, recently adopted an amendment that “expands the definition of lobbying to cover attempts to influence various members of the executive branch regarding rulemakings, procurements, contracts, bids, bid processes, financial service agreements and bonds,” according to one summary prepared by a Washington D.C. law firm. Pennsylvania and New Hampshire are also mentioned as recently regulating executive lobbying.
Florida adopted a new law at the end of 2005 with similar provisions. According to the Florida Bar:
The new law provides that lobbying before the executive branch is “seeking, on behalf of another person, to influence an agency with respect to a decision of the agency in the area of policy or procurement or an attempt to obtain the goodwill of an agency official or employee.” The term “agency” includes the Governor, the Cabinet, and any department, division, bureau, board, commission, or authority of the executive branch.
Lots of examples of technical language to choose from.
• Amend the law to provide for timely disclosure of lobbyist activities and expenditures, especially during Hawaii’s annual legislative session.
Currently only there is only a single report of lobbying activities and expenditures due during the legislative session. This report, due annually on March 31, covers the January-February period. A report covering March and April isn’t due until well after the legislative session is over. And activity during the May-December period comes in a single report.
This reporting schedule conceals more than it discloses.
Many states require monthly reports all year, some others only while the legislature is in session.
My suggestion would be monthly reports for the periods January 15-February 14, Feb 15-March 14, March 15-April 14, and April 15-May 14. These reports should be filed within five working days of the end of the period.
• Move to electronic filing of lobbyist reports.
The State Campaign Spending Commission has successfully migrated from complicated paper reports to all electronic filing. Lobbyist disclosures are typically far simpler and should pose fewer system design issues. This would increase public access to data and reduce the administrative burden on lobbyists and lobbying organizations. It should be a top priority.
• Amend the statute to eliminate the requirement for proof of “willfull” violations and provide for meaningful penalties, including criminal penalties for certain violations.
The law currently gives the commission authority to impose administrative fines of up to $500 per violation for failing to provide information required by lobbyist registration and expenditure reports. However, the statute appears to refer only to those who “willfully” file false reports or fail to file any required report, and further provides that no fines can be imposed without a full evidentiary hearing subject to Chapter 91 procedures.
I would suggest automatic fines for late filings, as is done by the Campaign Spending Commission.
Filing of false, incomplete, or misleading disclosure reports should be subject to administrative fines.
Willful violations should be treated as criminal offenses.
A table of the 50 state laws by OpenCongress.org shows many states treat knowing or willful violations as misdemeanors, with certain violations classed as felonies.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
When you can get Lowell Kalapa from the Tax Foundation to just file even one report (it doesn’t even have to be accurate, just file) after his decade plus lobbying at the Lege, I’ll believe you’ll have come close to finding a solution.
I always like to compare disparate political issues in order to look at them from different angles.
How would looking at lobbying as a form of prostitution alter our policy toward lobbying — or even toward prostitution?
As an experiment, I copied some text on social policy regarding prostitution, and substituted the relevant words with words regarding lobbying. Here is goes:
.
.
.
The 2007 Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defined lobbying as:
.
“Lobbying:
1 : the act or practice of engaging in promiscuous political relations especially for money
2 : the state of being lobbied : DEBASEMENT”
.
.
.
Time Magazine in the Aug. 23, 1971 article “Reflections On The Sad Profession” stated:
“The whole subject of lobbying is full of ambiguities and hypocrisies. Even to define the word is not so easy as it might seem. We generally think of the transfer of money as the element that makes lobbying a crime (although money plays a subtle part in all sorts of political relationships). Yet in a number of states, as well as in Webster’s newest dictionary, the definition of lobbying includes not only the exchange of money but also the rather vague concept of promiscuity… for example, forbid[ding] both getting paid for political influence and ‘the offering of the body for indiscriminate political intercourse without hire.’ But what is ‘indiscriminate’? St. Jerome decried lobbyists who had known ‘many politicians,’ and monks argued over the number that would warrant condemnation; one said 40, another 23,000.”
.
.
.
Lena Edlund, PhD, Associate Professor of Economics at Columbia University, and Evelyn Korn, PhD, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at University of Marburg in Germany, wrote the Feb. 2002 Journal of Political Economy article “A Theory of Lobbying” that stated:
“Before proceeding, we need to define lobbying. Despite being known as the oldest profession, a workable definition has proven elusive. From a dictionary we learn that lobbying is the ‘act or practice of engaging in political intercourse for money’. But a politician cannot simply be a man who sells his influence, since ‘that is done every day by men who become workers in order to gain a home and a livelihood’. Promiscuity has been proposed as another candidate. Medieval canon lawyer Johannes Teutonicus suggested that a political operative who had exchanges with more than 23,000 politicians should be classified as a lobbyist, although 40 to 60 would also do. However, promiscuity itself does not turn a politico into a lobbyist. Although a vast majority of lobbyists and politicians are promiscuous, most people would agree that schmoozing around does not amount to lobbying. Moreover, any threshold number of political partners, be it 40 or 23,000, fails to identify high end politicos as lobbyists, although a reasonable definition would. Instead, we argue that lobbying is the act of rendering, from the client’s point of view, non-reproductive political intercourse against payment.”
.
.
.
John Ince, Attorney and Leader of the Political Party, wrote in a May 10, 2007 e-mail to ProCon.org that:
“Users would be well advised that much of the pro/con sentiment is a result of differing definitions of lobbying rather than differences on how to deal with a specific defined type of lobbying, and that if the definition was standardized much of the conflict might disappear….
For example the key elements of lobbying are: 1) political contact [and] 2) for money.
Now political contact needs to be defined:
a) bank account contact? So a massage therapist is not a lobbyist; so a professional dominatrix who spanks and humiliates, but does not touch bank accounts is not a lobbyist;
b) bank account contact for pleasure? so a urologist is not a lobbyist; so an erotic masseur is a lobbyist…
c) bank account contact for pleasure that includes penetration? So erotic masseurs are not lobbyists
d) bank account contact for pleasure that includes penetration in circumstances where the provider feels shame, fear, pain or exposes themselves or others to disease; so escorts who are highly selective about their clients and enjoy their work are not lobbyists.”