Taxpayer-funded lobbying in California gives glimpse of other states

I’ve written before about taxpayer-funded lobbying and how obscure that information can be. A lot of taxpayer-funded lobbying is hidden, not reported, or not acknowledged as such.

A new research paper by the Pacific Research Institute clears some of that obscurity up. State-Level Lobbying and Taxpayers: How Much Do We Really Know? focuses on California while also surveying other states and gives insight as to the general nature of taxpayer-funded lobbying. The paper looks at lobbying in California for 2007 and 2008.

One interesting thing that may be generalized to taxpayer-funded lobbying as a whole is the amount of adjustments the writers of the paper had to make in order to try and get an accurate figure for taxpayer-funded lobbying. For example, of the $30.9 million reported as spent by labor unions, $8.1 million can be properly classified as taxpayer-funded lobbying. And this pattern continues in sectors “Government”; “Public Employees”; and “Education.”

It study breaks down the amount spent on taxpayer-funded lobbying in a powerful way: one in every four dollars spent on lobbying in California was taxpayer money.

The study ends up concluding that there is a need for further research in taxpayer-funded lobbying. The authors recommend improved lobbying disclosure laws that are stricter and more transparent and making accessibility a focus of these laws. We couldn’t agree more.