For what it’s worth, here is the testimony I submitted yesterday afternoon to the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Labor in support of SB653, “Relating to Lobbyists.”

Testimony to the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Labor

Senator Gilbert S.C. Keith-Agaran, Chair
Senator Maile S.L. Shimabukuro, Vice Chair

Thursday, February 25, 2016 9 a.m.

Conference Room 016

Submitted by Ian Lind in support of SB653 “Relating to Lobbyists”

Thank you for this opportunity to strongly support SB 653, which would extend to the executive branch the same lobbying registration and disclosure requirements that already apply to lobbying here at the Legislature.

I am a former executive director of Common Cause in Hawaii, later worked as an investigative reporter for one of Honolulu’s daily newspapers, and continue as an observer of and public analyst of our ethics and lobbying laws in practice.

The definitions in the current lobbyist law give the impression that it covers executive branch lobbying, but the fine print restricts its application to formal rule making proceedings under Chapter 91.

The bill does not impose any additional restrictions or burdens beyond those in the existing lobbying law, but simply recognizes that the public has a real and legitimate interest in knowing who is spending time and money to influence the decisions of the state administration and its executive departments and agencies.

In a column published in Civil Beat in September 2015, I described what is really a case study in why the lobbying law needs to apply to the executive as well as legislative branches of government.

The column focused on the lawsuit filed by the state against Ciber Inc., a large information technology firm, accusing the company of misrepresenting its capabilities when competing for a contract to design and implement a new accounting system for the Department of Transportation, and then fraudulently billing the state even as the new system failed test after test, and fell farther and farther behind schedule.

The lawsuit alleged that the company hired the state’s largest lobbying firm as part of a strategy of “using inappropriate political influence to muzzle its critics at DOT and pressure DOT into paying still more fees for a worthless system.”

Here’s the point:

What did Ciber spend lobbying the governor’s chief of staff? We don’t know, because that lobbying wasn’t subject to public disclosure.

Neither registration nor public disclosure are required of lobbyists influencing decisions by the governor or executive departments. We don’t know what lobbyists are paid, or what is spent on their efforts.

And while state law prohibits hiring and paying lobbyists contingent on a successful outcome to their lobbying, that doesn’t apply to executive branch lobbying because, in the eyes of the law, it isn’t really lobbying.

I have attached a copy of the full Civil Beat column.

SB653 will not add to the administrative burden of departments and agencies, and does not represent a new types of regulation beyond those that lobbyists are already accustomed to dealing with.

But this bill would create a huge new window for the public into the workings of the executive branch, dramatically increase the ability to understand how policy decisions are being made, and serve as a deterrent against the exercise of undue or improper influence.

I urge you to extend the reach of the current lobbyist law by passing SB653. ###