Category Archives: lobbyists

Checking on ethics issues in the news

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I did a quick search for ethics issues in the news, and found quite a few recent articles showing the concerns being raised around the country. There seem to be lots of issues regarding the disclosure, or failure to disclose, the activities of lobbyists.

Miami Herald: “It was supposed to show who profited from public money. But the rule wasn’t enforced”

If you want to know how much your local government is spending on private lobbyists to lobby the Legislature, the Florida House has a web page devoted to disclosing it.

But though House Speaker Richard Corcoran promised the web page would provide “transformational” transparency, the House forgot one thing: to post all the data.

USA Today: “Public Citizen files ethics complaints against Trump lawyer Michael Cohen”

The watchdog group Public Citizen on Thursday filed complaints with Congress and the Justice Department, saying the New York attorney broke federal ethics and lobbying laws by failing to register as a lobbyist while collecting big sums from companies with business before the Trump administration.

The Hill: “Cohen cashing in on the president”

…regulations leave a lot of grey area about non-lobbying influence or “shadow lobbying”, especially during the chaotic transition between presidents (reports suggest that Cohen met with Novartis and AT&T during the transition in January of 2017). Between Election Day and Inauguration Day, the team helping the president-elect transition to power remain private citizens. As a result, regulations on conflicts-of-interest and the role played by industry lobbyists are set voluntarily.

Standard transparency measures are largely invalid, meaning the transition team can meet with anyone it would like, without any burden to reveal this to the public. And lobbyists peddling a pet project or policy recommendation do not have to disclose this, even though they may have just donated millions during the campaign to help elect the president.

The Guardian: “Payments to Michael Cohen show how ‘shadow lobbying’ eludes US law”

Professor James Thurber of American University, who has researched lobbying for decades, said it was too easy for influential people in Washington to make money around the legislative process without informing the public, in what is loosely termed shadow lobbying.

“If someone is trying to influence government policy and is getting paid for it, they should register,” said Thurber, who said that as well as being fundamentally weak, the Lobbying Disclosure Act was also not enforced aggressively enough.

The 23-year-old law states that anyone who spends 20% of their time lobbying in a three-month period, and is paid to lobby public officials twice or more, must register as a lobbyist and identify their clients. Ethics experts have consistently said this language makes it too easy to technically avoid that threshold.

Robert Mueller investigating payments to Michael Cohen, Swiss drug giant says “You get paid to tell the client how to lobby, or what the important people are thinking, or who to call on what topic,” said Daniel Auble, a senior researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics. “Anything like this is allowed without disclosure.”

Democrat & Chronicle: “New lobbying rules just what corruption-susceptible Albany needs”

…the release of 92 pages of lobbying regulations by the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics is just what the doctor ordered for corruption-susceptible Albany.

On Tuesday, the commission voted to approve new regulations with the goal of increasing public transparency regarding individuals and organizations who spend money to sway government. The new regulations also serve as a one-stop shop of sorts to assist the public and groups regulated by the state watchdog panel in better understanding the requirements of Article 1-A of the Legislative Law, better known as the Lobbying Act.

Washington Post: “Ethics officials examine D.C. lawmaker’s business ties to digital sign company”

Ethics officials are investigating D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) for his dealings with a digital sign company that would have benefited from legislation he proposed, according to District government officials familiar with the matter.

Among other things, investigators are scrutinizing $50,000 the company tried to pay a small firm owned by Evans in 2016 — several months before the lawmaker circulated a bill that would have aided the sign business in a dispute with District regulators.

Politico: “The problems with Pruitt: A complete guide”

From a $43K phone booth to a stay in a lobbyist’s condo, these are the ethical quandaries spurring investigations into the EPA chief’s conduct.

Follow the money: It was about development

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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.]

Trump seems to be a model for questionable ethics

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As a candidate, Donald Trump pledged to “drain the swamp.” As president, what he’s done instead is to turn off all the lights so that no one can see who or what is inhabiting the swamp.

So it’s no surprise that Trump’s problems with ethics are much in the news.

The New York Times reports today on an “extraordinary” and “unprecedented” move to block the Office of Government Ethics’ request for information on the status of former lobbyists or lawyers hired by the administration. Ethics rules prohibit former lobbyists or lawyers from taking action affecting their former clients or even the policy issues they formerly dealt with until two years has passed, although the president can approve waivers. The director of the ethics office has requested copies of any waivers issued for lobbyists in the Trump administration, which has now stepped in and questioned their legal authority.

NY Times: “White House Moves to Block Ethics Inquiry Into Ex-Lobbyists on Payroll.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post examines the potential conflicts posed by the business interests of Trump’s son-in-law (“Kushner keeps most of his real estate but offers few clues about potential White House conflicts“).

Meanwhile, from Reuters: “Senator asks ethics office to review Trump hotel payments.”

According to the Reuters story:

Reuters reported on April 26 that public pension funds in at least seven U.S. states periodically send millions of dollars to an investment fund that owns the upscale Trump SoHo Hotel and Condominium in New York City and pays a Trump company to run it, according to a Reuters review of public records.

“Trump may be profiting from the retirement plans of millions of our nation’s public servants,” Senator Patty Murray of Washington state wrote in a letter to Walter Shaub, the director of the Office of Government Ethics, citing the Reuters report.

The Office of Government Ethics is the U.S. agency that oversees conduct within the executive branch and supervises ethics officials to ensure they are preventing conflicts of interest and other violations.

“This looks like exactly the type of monetary flow prohibited by the Constitution,” said the senator.

And then there was this recent story from ThinkProgress: “Trump Jr.’s speech at a Dubai university raises ethics questions.”

Donald Trump Jr.’s paid commencement speech at American University earlier this week in Dubai is latest example of the Trump family potentially mixing business with politics.

But it’s not necessarily just whether or how much he was paid?—?the dollar amount isn’t known, but CBS News reported the university paid former President Bill Clinton $150,000 in 2002?—?it’s that Trump Jr.’s speech could be seen as a way for Dubai’s leaders to curry favor with the White House. CBS reports that Dubai “helped found and holds a continuing stake in the school.”

Ahead of his commencement speech, Trump, Jr. went to Dubai to also discuss real estate opportunities in the country with Emirati billionaire Hussain Sajwani.

These are dangerous times for those of us who have worked for ethics in government at all levels. The Trump administration’s disdain for ethics is sure to start trickling down, and embolden state and local officials who have chafed under restrictions imposed by ethics laws.

Making sense of what was spent lobbying the legislature last year

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In my Civil Beat column last week, I tried to do an overview of lobbying expenditures reported to the State Ethics Commission during 2016 (“Ian Lind: Tightening The Rules For Lobbyists/Lobbyists spent millions trying to influence lawmakers last year“).

I reported more than $5.3 million had been spent on legislative lobbying during the year, which seems like a substantial number. In the end, though, that total dropped to a bit under $5.3 million as a result of errors in the reports that were filed.

The column also reviews proposals from the ethics commission for clarifying reporting requirements in an attempt to close several loopholes that have been exploited by some to sidestep the disclosure requirements.

I would suggest that you at least skim the column, then return here for an explanation of what went into writing it and the problems I ran into.

First, I downloaded the latest version of the database of reported expenditures by organizations that retain lobbyists or are otherwise required to disclose their costs for influencing legislation, and then selected a subset containing all the reports for each of three reporting periods during 2016. These reports cover the periods January 1-February 28, March 1-April 30, and May 1-December 31. The legislature is in session during most of the first two periods.

When these are put online, the commission includes the amount reported for fees paid to lobbyists, and for the total of all categories of spending, in addition to the organization name, date filed, and other details. Also included is a link to the available pdf of the form.

During an initial pass examining the data, I noticed that several organizations submitted amended reports during the year. I went through each of those, and tried to make sense of the “amendments.” In some cases, the amendments appeared to simply be duplicates of the originals. In a few other cases, they reported new and presumably updated figures.

In one case–Outrigger Hotels–there were several amended disclosure forms filed, each containing the same numbers. On its face, it appeared Outrigger ranked #2 of all the organizations in spending, but several things stood out as warning flags that this might have been the result of errors. While I was working on my column, I tried reaching Max Sword, Outrigger’s in-house lobbyist. But Sword is also the current chair of the Honolulu Police Commission, which was meeting that same day, and I wasn’t able to reach him until the following day.

It turned out, according to Sword, that errors were made in the online process of filing these reports, resulting in errors. But although I suspected there were errors, at least in the case of Outrigger, I wasn’t able to confirm them prior to publication.

In any case, my next step was to add up the amounts reported in each of the three periods for each organization, and produced a list of the total amount spent by each group during 2016. Then I sorted these in descending order to give a quick list of the top spending lobbying groups.

I’m pretty sure that this is still a relatively good assessment of the overall situation. However, my “final” numbers changed when I made the correction for Outrigger, dropping it from #2 to #8 in the ranking.

Here’s a link to the full list of organizations and what they reported spending on lobbying at the legislature last year.

If you spot instances that deserve more attention, please leave a comment below. Thanks.