Judging from the money reportedly spent on lobbying, the special legislative session on rail was really all about development.

Organizations that paid for lobbying during the brief special session reported their expenditures last week. Their reports were filed with the State Ethics Commission and are posted on the commission’s website.

The first column of numbers are the cost of lobbyists during the session. The second column represents the total amounts spent by each organization.

It’s probably no surprise that the Committee for Balanced Transportation, known variously as “Go Rail Go” and “Friends of Rail,” was the primary conduit for pro-rail lobbying. Most of the other organizations that reported spending (but paid no lobbyist fees) simply reported contributing to “Friends of Rail” or one of the alternate names for the same group.

These details are contained in the actual reports filed with the commission. There are links to the documents in the commission’s summary display of lobbying reports.

In fact, with the various names in use, it’s difficult to know whether “Go Rail Go”, “Friends of Rail”, and Committee for Balanced Transportation are legally one and the same, or whether they are parallel organizations with overlapping donors and participants.

But the large majority of reported expenditures were either contributions to this entity, or expenditures by the group. And almost all of the money spent by Committee for Balanced Transportation and its alter egos went to Anthology Marketing Group for its pro-rail media blitz.

Move Oahu Forward was the only other group to spend significantly on their own activities. The group is registered by Jennifer Sabas, formerly top aide to the late Sen. Daniel Inouye. Nearly half of of the group’s reported $45,000 was paid to Sabas. About $12,000 went to advertising, and more than $11,000 was paid out for unidentified consultants.

Click on either table below to view a slightly larger version.

Lobbying expenses during the 2017 Special Legislative Session reported to the State Ethics Commission.

Committee for Balanced Transportation provided a simple table showing its major expenditures and its sources of funding, which was attached to their report to the ethics commission. It’s included below.

It’s a pretty narrow range of interest groups that put up the money for pro-rail lobbying, isn’t it?

[note: I’ve been blogging this week using only my iPad, and it’s less straightforward than a laptop as a blogging platform (although I’ve managed so far). But things like resizing images isn’t straightforward, which has been an issue. I’m managing, but I wouldn’t call this a total laptop replacement yet. However, I did make use of split screen and drag & drop for this post. Although there’s a learning curve, these should help.]