Broken Process 2: Even the Lobbyists Are Confused
Monday, May 03, 2010
Hundreds of hours (and Web page views) later, the team at GoLocalProv was still scratching its heads.
In a state with a law requiring financial disclosure both from lobbying entities and their clients, what could be so difficult about adding up all those disclosures? If the numbers are there, on the Secretary of State's Web site, why couldn't a person just add them up?
"The data are accessible, but somewhat confusing for the reader," says John Marion, Executive Director of Common Cause of Rhode Island. "They are especially confusing for those who have to disclose, by the way."
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Problem One: Non-standard units of payment. It begins with how lobbyists make their money. Paid in a non-standardized way (payments range from by the hour, by the month, by the six-month legislative session, or annually), lobbyists express their income without necessarily making the final sum evident. And, as reported in our story on the process, the data-base doesn't always provide all the information necessary to do the math to get a final sum. "They don't specify in law or regulation what the unit of remuneration is," says Marion. "It provides a vague definition of compensation. When you fill you lobbying expense forms, as I do, the assumption is that you fill out the forms with month as the unit, but it's not specified that you do so.
Problem Two: Legislative versus Executive lobbying… more confusion. As lobbyists may work to influence either legislative behavior or gubernatorial action, there are two pools of payment, as it were: legislative and executive. To glean from the filings as they appear currently on the SOS database, exactly how much was literally being spent by companies and organizations hiring lobbyists, takes an understanding of the processes and definitions… not obvious to a citizen who seeks some public information.
Problem Three: Many names, same funds? Or multiple payouts? Further still, multiple lobbyists associated with a firm must account for funds paid to their firm. This can create confusion when trying to determine what a specific individual lobbyist may or may not be earning. Cross-checking again total amounts of money spent by the companies and organizations funding the lobbyists can sometimes clear up this confusion, but not always. And not without some effort.
Even the lobbyists are confused. From the beginning, according to Marion, even a well-intentioned lobbyist may struggle with how to express his or her earnings. "The definitions are really poor," he says. "What is lobbying is difficult to discern and therefore difficult to report. Gifts are well-defined, but the expenses an individual or firm spends on lobbying are not."
With credit to the SOS's public information office's "lobbyists school" run during the session, Marion says that again, lobbyists who attend may emerge, as he did, still lacking clear direction on how to report consistently and clearly to the SOS database. If the proactive lobbyist attending the SOS's school for clear reporting emerges confused, how will the system ever correct that fundamental lack? Or will the system only amplify it?
How is our system graded by independent sources?
