Minnesota taxpayer-funded lobbying

I’ve written before about disclosure in Minnesota of the states taxpayer-funded lobbying. The Minnesota State Auditor publishes a yearly summary of all of the taxpayer-funded lobbying within the state.

Taxpayer-funded lobbying is the use of public funds by public entities for the purpose of influencing legislation. Minnesota is the only state I know of that proactively discloses this activity. Even then, it only discloses taxpayer-funded lobbying within the state. The Auditor’s report only requires lobbying information for governments lobbying the Minnesota state legislature. Of course, many of these governments are also lobbying the U.S. Congress.

The Auditor’s report contains revealing insight on lobbying by governments in Minnesota. For example, of all lobbying:

*Cities account 32% of total spent on lobbying
*School districts: 10%
*Counties: 28%
*Other entities: 30%

Also, for taxpayer-funded lobbying associations, those governments that did belong to them tended to either be members of one (46.1%) or two (49.9%) associations.

Because other states don’t provide* this level of disclosure, Minnesota serves as an interesting example of government lobbying.

*If you know of another state requires such disclosure, tell us about it!

Taxpayer-funded lobbying and Cook County

Sunshine Review compiled the totals for lobbying expenditures by the ten largest counties in Illinois. We found over $6.2 million in taxpayer-funded lobbying. Naturally, we included Cook County.

Cook County has had transparency complaints against it in the past. In fact, we’ve written about some of them. For our Freedom of Information Act request, the county was a mixed bag. The Freedom of Information Act officer I worked with would generally pick up phone calls and make himself available.

However, the process of getting my information, even once it was already processed by the county, was fatiguing. To begin with, I didn’t get all of the information I requested. I requested contracts between the Cook County Board and lobbyists since 2005. I also requested the county board’s membership dues to taxpayer-funded lobbying associations.

I received contracts with lobbyists for 2008 and 2009.

For those keeping score:

Requested: lobbying contracts and membership dues
Received: lobbying contracts, no mention of membership dues

Requested years: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
Received: 2008 and 2009

The total amount of spending that Sunshine Review uncovered for Cook County lobbying is $780k. But this is clearly only a partial figure. The real number must be exponentially more. In a purely unscientific fashion, the amount spent on lobbying between 2005-2010 in Cook County is more than twice as much at $1,559,980, considering the 3 years of contracts not disclosed and not even considering membership in taxpayer-funded lobbying associations.

From my very subjective perspective, Cook County wasn’t stonewalling me. They just didn’t prioritize their resources or time to respond to my request. Which is just as unacceptable as them having done it on purpose, because the result is the same: citizens and journalists having to go through rings of fire in order to get information that rightfully belongs to them.

There’s always room for improvement when it comes to transparency and taking your constituents seriously, and Cook County is no excuse.

IL spends $6.2 million on taxpayer-funded lobbying

State and local governments are not transparent in how taxpayer dollars are spent and the people’s business is conducted. An especially good example is taxpayer funded lobbying.

Taxpayer-funded lobbying is the use of public funds to lobby for even more taxpayer dollars. Taxpayers pay twice for this: not only do their hard earned dollars pay to hire lobbyists, but citizens must also foot the bill for the increased government spending resulting from the “successes” of these special interests.

Most citizens have no idea that tax dollars are spent to hire lobbyists because without affirmative disclosure laws, taxpayer-funded lobbying is rarely shared with citizens or journalists. Only through time consuming (and frequently frustrating) Freedom of Information Act requests is this information pried from the government.

Beginning in March, 2010, Sunshine Review sent Freedom of Information Act requests to all 102 Illinois counties. In an analysis released this week, data from the 10 most populous counties alone shows $6.2 million dollars spent between 2005 and 2010.

The Sunshine Review analysis looked at lobbying contracts and membership in taxpayer-funded lobbying associations. Taxpayer-funded lobbying associations are groups that are funded at least in part by public dollars. In turn, they lobby for the collective interests of government bodies. In total, 31 lobbyists represent the counties, and the counties hold at least 69 memberships to taxpayer-funded lobbying associations.

What’s needed is a higher standard of transparency in state and local government. State legislation and local ordinances requiring affirmative disclosure—not only in Illinois but around the country—would help citizens scrutinize spending.

Government transparency saves money: it prevents fraud and it brings light to questionable spending. Perhaps the $6.2 million spent in lobbying by Illinois counties is justifiable. But who is to say? The people who can truly answer that question, citizens, are being denied their voice in government by having this information kept from them.

Visit Sunshine Review for more information and for county specific data.

• Champaign County
• Cook County
• DuPage County
• Kane County
• Lake County
• McHenry County
• McLean County
• Peoria County
• Will County
• Winnebago County

This was also posted on State Budget Solutions.

Minnesota taxpayer-funded lobbying: How much disclosure is enough?

A few months back, the Illinois Policy Institute released a report heralding the transparency of Minnesota on the state’s disclosure of its taxpayer-funded lobbying.

Taxpayer-funded lobbying is just what it sounds like: lobbying funded by citizens’ money. Local and state governments use public funds, which come from tax dollars, to lobby for legislation and to attempt to gain money from other governments.

Not much is known about this process, which is why the Illinois Policy Institute was optimistic about Minnesota’s disclosure. Every year, the Minnesota state auditor releases the Local Government Lobbying Services Report, which details the cost of lobbying by entities in the state. The report includes payments to taxpayer-funded lobbying associations, as well as contracts with lobbyists. A very good job of proactive disclosure, especially considering the archives for this information go back to 1989.

Or so it would seem. The nonprofit Freedom Foundation of Minnesota recently released a report highlighting the federal lobbying spending of 26 public entities in the state. The entities spent $5.2 million since 2006 lobbying federal officials.

So what’s the problem? Federal lobbying isn’t included in the auditor’s report. According to the Freedom Foundation president, this needs to change:

“It’s critical that taxpayers have an understanding of how much their local governments are spending on lobbying,” he said. “It is important for them to know how much their cities and counties are spending to lobby legislators in St. Paul. It stands to reason it is just as important for them to know how much they are spending to lobby congressmen in Washington, D.C.”

That makes perfect sense. Minnesota should be lauded for its efforts in being accountable to its citizens, but in transparency, there’s always room for improvement. Federal lobbying should be disclosed as readily as state and local lobbying is. Minnesota will be all the better for it.

$500,000 taxpayer-funded lobbying exposed in Texas

More taxpayer-funded lobbying is bubbling up in Texas. It was revealed earlier this week that the authority for the Port of Corpus Christi spends a half-million dollars a year on lobbyists in Washington.

“If you don’t have people in D.C. to protect yourself, you’re going to be in trouble,” John LaRue, the port’s executive director, said. “We’re not talking hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake, we’re talking about hundreds of millions.”

Lobbying with taxpayer dollars happens at every level of government, some of the funds help local government entities, but other have proven to be wasteful spending. Like yesterday’s example of sending local firefighters on a trip to Vegas. This spending needs to be proactively disclosed and scrutinized by taxpayers, just like any other government spending.

68 agencies in Washington fail to disclose lobbying

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation found that 68 agencies in Washington had failed to disclose taxpayer-funded lobbying. The Transit Authority was one of the worst offenders and has’t complied with transparency laws by failing to report its lobbying activity for seven years, amounting to to $800,000 in spending.

Who lobbies Cook County? More importantly: who does Cook County lobby?

We give Cook County in Illinois a B- on the information it discloses on its website. Which is a decent grade. One of the check marks the county misses on our checklist is for “Lobbying.” The county does not disclose on its website what lobbying organizations it pays dues to, or what lobbyists it hires to represent the county before the Illinois State Legislature or the federal government.

Most local governments have lobbyists. And because these lobbyists are a part of public affairs, they should be disclosed.

Cook County is now posting lobbying reports online of those who lobby them. Which is great! The section of Cook County’s website is called “Lobbyist Online. The county is the largest of Illinois’s 102 counties and it contains the largest city in the state, Chicago. Naturally, this is interesting information:

The site, proposed by County Clerk David Orr and a bi-partisan group of commissioners, also lists how much lobbyists were paid.

Orr said 188 lobbyists representing 89 businesses reported on time. They contacted about 60 government officials and were paid a total of $1.12 million.
“You can track who they were lobbying and, for the most part, why,” Orr said. “They made 576 contacts with those roughly 60 people, and that’s just in the first half of 2010.”

Still, while this is great information, it still doesn’t make up for the fact that Cook County still does not disclose what lobbyists it contracts. Cook County as a whole has at least one lobbyist, as reported to the state of Illinois, and its departments and subsidiaries have more. Not to mention the dues paid to organizations like the Metro Counties of Illinois.

The county’s efforts in increasing transparency are laudable, but it can still take the next step forward. Lobbying by counties isn’t rare. Especially because of its prevalent nature, local governments should take the initiative to making that information available to its taxpayers. If anything, they should do it to get an extra point on our checklist and upgrade their B- to a B. Or, you know. For its citizens.

Kentucky transparency on the up after several downs

Kentucky’s transparency website, www.opendoor.ky.gov is being recognized by the Center for Study of Responsive Law.

Kentucky’s transparency has since greatly improved. Last year, the Center for Study of Responsive Law criticized the state for not publishing the full text of state contracts online, and the state would have been considered one of the worst on transparency.

This year, however, Kentucky has taken the initiative to change. In April this year, Kentucky was recognized as the only state to receive an “A” rating for transparency in a report published by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, whose findings we include on our state website transparency evaluations.

In addition to its transparency website, Kentucky operates http://kentuckyatwork.ky.gov, which publishes information about American Recovery and Reinvestment Act projects.

Another sign that Kentucky is seriously committing to transparency is Senate Bill 88, which passed and will soon become law. This bill requires more transparency from taxpayer-funded organizations such as the Kentucky League of Cities and the Kentucky Association of Counties. The Kentucky Association of Counties, at least, is taking their new mandated responsibilities seriously. It aims to become a model for other taxpayer-funded lobbying associations as far as their accountability standards.

I’ll end this post with a hopeful quote from the Center for Study of Responsive Law that summarizes the significance of Kentucky’s turn-around:

“Kentucky went from a worst performer to one of the best full-transparency states all in one year. This remarkable progress demonstrates the ease and speed with which all states could open their books to their citizens.”

New Jersey taxpayer-funded lobbying confuses taxpayers and Senator

The National Taxpayer’s Union is a little irked about taxpayer-funded lobbying. They way they describe it, the practice boils down to governments “spending tax dollars to persuade the state Legislature to give them…more tax dollars.” And NTU asks two important questions:
*Couldn’t that money be used more wisely?
*Why do towns even need these lobbyists?

Two questions governments have a duty to answer to taxpayers. NTU also noted a common argument against taxpayer-funded lobbying: “Municipalities should be a priority for their state legislators, who are elected to represent those very towns.”

The main problem for NTU, however, isn’t necessarily government lobbying, but rather the lack of transparency and accountability. Laws on public lobbying are not as demanding as those on private lobbying. It therefore becomes easy to obscure the already-convuluted chain that taxpayer dollars go through in order to end up as payment to lobbying firms. The solution is better legislation. State Senator Loretta Weinberg in New Jersey (D-Bergen) has introduced a bill in the New Jersey legislature that would require towns to report any lobbyists they hire, the purpose, and how much the firm was paid.

The senator, like NTU, is also confused by the practice and questions the necessity of taxpayer-funded lobbying. “Why do they need a middle man? Municipalities are our most important clients. Towns don’t need a lobbyist to come to my office. I can’t remember a single time when I thought they were getting their money’s worth [by hiring lobbyists].”

At Sunshine Review, we’ve been working to find and compile information about taxpayer-funded lobbying and taxpayer-funded lobbying associations. Please join us in adding to public understanding about what it is that your government does.

For more New Jersey resources, see the links below. And be sure to join us at #FOIAchat on Twitter tomorrow from 2-3 pm EST, where we’ll be live chatting about FOIA in the news.

*New Jersey state website transparency evaluation
*New Jersey cities
*New Jersey counties
*New Jersey school districts
*New Jersey taxpayer-funded lobbying

South Carolina bill banning taxpayer-funded lobbying failed

A few weeks ago, the South Carolina House of Representatives rejected a proposal that would have prohibited school districts from routing taxpayer money to fund bureaucratic advocacy groups, or taxpayer-funded lobbying associations.

Representative Boyd Brown introduced the budget amendment, which would eliminate taxpayer-funded lobbying and prohibit the use of tax dollars for dues at any “organization which employs a lobbyist.” The bill died March 18 by one vote.

The South Carolina Policy Center estimates that every dollar collected by government lobbying costs South Carolina’s economy between $1.60 and $1.82. And in the state, less than half of each dollar spent on public education reaches the classroom. You do the math.

While an outright ban on taxpayer-funded lobbying associations didn’t work out this time in South Carolina, one path concerned citizens can take is to follow the footsteps of journalists in New Hampshire, who ultimately made it so that New Hampshire taxpayer-funded lobbying associations have to be transparent. As usual, the prescription is for citizens to do the hard work to get governments to give up information.

Next Page »