The Moline Dispatch and The Rock Island Argus
April 27, 2008

Shine a light on lobbying
Editorial Contrary to popular opinion, lobbyists are not all evil. The best ones are honest, informed, useful sources of information for those charged with crafting public policy.
The trick is telling the bad from the good. The way to do that is to know exactly who is doing what. In Illinois, where there are, the Center for Public Integrity says, 12 lobbyists for every legislator (the average in the 50 states is five), transparency becomes even more critical.
That's why a recent study of local government lobbying raises red flags. The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform (ICPR) found that local government agencies in Illinois spent more than $5 million to contact with lobbyists during the last fiscal year. Among them locally were the city of Cordova, which paid a lobbying firm $7,500; the i wireless Center (the former of Mark of the Quad-Cities), which wrote checks to lobbyists totaling $3,000; and MetroLINK which paid $9,000 to its lobbyists last year. Those amounts were tiny compared to what governments and agencies in the Chicagoland area spent. Take, for example, the $700,000 handed out by the metropolitan area's four mass transit agencies even as the state debated a transit bailout. (For the complete report, visit www.ilcampaign.org.)
How much local government is paying to lobby state government is interesting, to be sure. But what may be more important is what the study teaches us about the transparency of lobbying process in Illinois. Recent lobbyist ethics legislation has been lauded as cleaning up the process. But has it?
"This $5 million of public funds is significant, but it is a small portion of the tens of millions of dollars spent on lobbying by hundreds of corporations, labor unions and other special interest groups represented by lobbyists in Springfield," said Cynthia Canary, director ICPR in a press release announcing the study. "What the public doesn't know is what special interests in the private sector are spending to try to pass or kill legislation and to impact actions in the executive branch."
It took the state's Freedom of Information Act and the cooperation of local officials to create the current study, she said. "But a change in state law is needed to mandate similar disclosure by the private sector."
ICPR's David Morrison, lead researcher on the study, adds, "The federal government and several other states require more public disclosure of private sector lobbying expenditures, but Illinois lobbying laws require far less disclosure. Some local governments, including Cook County and the City of Chicago, require more public disclosure about financial arrangements of lobbyists of local governments than the state requires of state-regulated lobbyists.? Most alarming were the discrepancies he found between what local governments reported about lobbying action and what the state recorded via lobbyist disclosure. If reporting was that bad among public sector lobbyists, what must it be like among private sector ones? ICPR offers these steps to toughen lobbyist disclosure in Illinois:
-- Require all lobbyists, government or otherwise, to disclose the terms of lobbying contracts, including financial arrangements.
-- Require organizations lobbying government to disclose expenses related to lobbying, including salaries of in-house lobbyists and other administrative expenses.
-- Require lobbyists who hire other lobbyists as subcontractors to disclose how much work they're doing and with whom. The lobbyists' clients also should report the identity of subcontractors working for them.
-- Give the Secretary of State?s office, the keeper of the records, authority to audit reports and punish violators.
-- Ban state officials from immediately lobbying on leaving office. It's common, for example, to find former agency heads lobbying regulatory panels they used to head, or former legislators lobbying colleagues and friends. A cooling off period should be required.
All are steps lawmakers should take today. We fear, however, that they will fare no better than House Bill 1, a measure aimed at ending pay-to-play politics in Illinois. Despite vocal public support by the bulk of lawmakers, the bill has languished in the Senate for a full year as reports of public corruption make headlines. The word from Springfield is that a compromise could be reached as early as next week. We hope so and urge lawmakers to support the compromise if it truly does ban, or at least curb, the practice. Then they can turn their attention to shining a disinfecting light on lobbying.
Contrary to popular opinion, lobbyists are not all evil. The best ones are honest, informed, useful sources of information for those charged with crafting public policy.
The trick is telling the bad from the good. The way to do that is to know exactly who is doing what. In Illinois, where there are, the Center for Public Integrity says, 12 lobbyists for every legislator (the average in the 50 states is five), transparency becomes even more critical.
That's why a recent study of local government lobbying raises red flags. The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform (ICPR) found that local government agencies in Illinois spent more than $5 million to contact with lobbyists during the last fiscal year. Among them locally were the city of Cordova, which paid a lobbying firm $7,500; the i wireless Center (the former of Mark of the Quad-Cities), which wrote checks to lobbyists totaling $3,000; and MetroLINK which paid $9,000 to its lobbyists last year. Those amounts were tiny compared to what governments and agencies in the Chicagoland area spent. Take, for example, the $700,000 handed out by the metropolitan area's four mass transit agencies even as the state debated a transit bailout. (For the complete report, visit www.ilcampaign.org.)
How much local government is paying to lobby state government is interesting, to be sure. But what may be more important is what the study teaches us about the transparency of lobbying process in Illinois. Recent lobbyist ethics legislation has been lauded as cleaning up the process. But has it?
"This $5 million of public funds is significant, but it is a small portion of the tens of millions of dollars spent on lobbying by hundreds of corporations, labor unions and other special interest groups represented by lobbyists in Springfield," said Cynthia Canary, director ICPR in a press release announcing the study. "What the public doesn't know is what special interests in the private sector are spending to try to pass or kill legislation and to impact actions in the executive branch."
It took the state's Freedom of Information Act and the cooperation of local officials to create the current study, she said. "But a change in state law is needed to mandate similar disclosure by the private sector."
ICPR's David Morrison, lead researcher on the study, adds, "The federal government and several other states require more public disclosure of private sector lobbying expenditures, but Illinois lobbying laws require far less disclosure. Some local governments, including Cook County and the City of Chicago, require more public disclosure about financial arrangements of lobbyists of local governments than the state requires of state-regulated lobbyists.? Most alarming were the discrepancies he found between what local governments reported about lobbying action and what the state recorded via lobbyist disclosure. If reporting was that bad among public sector lobbyists, what must it be like among private sector ones? ICPR offers these steps to toughen lobbyist disclosure in Illinois:
-- Require all lobbyists, government or otherwise, to disclose the terms of lobbying contracts, including financial arrangements.
-- Require organizations lobbying government to disclose expenses related to lobbying, including salaries of in-house lobbyists and other administrative expenses.
-- Require lobbyists who hire other lobbyists as subcontractors to disclose how much work they're doing and with whom. The lobbyists' clients also should report the identity of subcontractors working for them.
-- Give the Secretary of State?s office, the keeper of the records, authority to audit reports and punish violators.
-- Ban state officials from immediately lobbying on leaving office. It's common, for example, to find former agency heads lobbying regulatory panels they used to head, or former legislators lobbying colleagues and friends. A cooling off period should be required.
All are steps lawmakers should take today. We fear, however, that they will fare no better than House Bill 1, a measure aimed at ending pay-to-play politics in Illinois. Despite vocal public support by the bulk of lawmakers, the bill has languished in the Senate for a full year as reports of public corruption make headlines. The word from Springfield is that a compromise could be reached as early as next week. We hope so and urge lawmakers to support the compromise if it truly does ban, or at least curb, the practice. Then they can turn their attention to shining a disinfecting light on lobbying.