The committee room before the full crowd arrived.

The Advisory Committee on Transparency's event earlier today was a huge success and we thank everyone who was able to join us. It was certainly a lively discussion and we will be following up on the many topics discussed. I hope our panelists enjoyed themselves and the audience found the 'Washington's Lobbying Fix' illuminating.

The full video of the event will be on our site shortly or, for those who have some nostalgia for the electronic fireplace, you can watch the event on CSPAN2 tonight at 8:30-10:00. Below are more photos from the event.

Photos by Nicko Margolies

Improving federal lobbying laws is the focus of a new report released by a task force of the American Bar Association’s Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. The Task Force on Federal Lobbying Laws, on which I served,* recommended [PDF] more comprehensive disclosure by lobbyists and those who support their efforts as well as strengthened enforcement of current law. To become ABA policy, the report must be reviewed by the ABA’s governing bodies.

Here are highlights from the report's recommendations:

• End a major loophole as to who counts as a registered lobbyist. The law would be changed so that a person need only spend 12 hours/quarter to be required to register as a lobbyist; current law requires a person to spend 20% of their time engaging in lobbying activities before having to register. It would also simplify the monetary trigger that requires registration.
• Disclose more lobbying information. Lobbying firms and organizations would be required to disclose more information about their activities, including contacts with all congressional offices, committees, and federal agencies; provide a list of all bills and topics regarding which lobbying activity was conducted; and identify all persons who engaged in “lobbying activities” or “lobbying support.”
• Better track lobbyists and lobbying. The publicly-accessible lobbying disclosure database should be improved; lobbyists would now be able to be tracked individually through the use of unique identifiers; and a new form for lobbyists to deregister would be employed.
• Require reporting for those involved in professional lobbying campaigns. Clients would be required to disclose the lobbying and lobbying support activities of firms hired to assist in a lobbying campaigns -- whether they are engaged in polling, public relations, coalition building, strategic planning, or providing assistance from high-profile public figures. All of these disclosures would be available online. Most people doing this work would be officially deemed “lobbying supporters.”
• Focus special attention on big money and big wigs. Anyone who is a “lobbying supporter” must file regularly if he or she has bundled money; given more than $10,000 in federal donations w/in a year of providing lobbying support; spent more than 10% of his/her time providing advice on lobbying strategy; or served as a Member of Congress, Senate-confirmed political appointee, or within the last 5 years as a Congressional staffer or within the Executive Office of the President.
• Separate lobbyists and fundraising. Individual lobbyists cannot engage in certain fundraising activities to support a campaign for a Member of Congress -- or a candidate for Congress -- with whom that lobbyist has had a “lobbying contact” within two years. Similarly, an individual lobbyist cannot make a “lobbying contact” if he or she has engaged in a covered fundraising activity within the past two years. (Note that candidates for Congress are not covered under current law.) Also, this prohibition on fundraising would be applied to other registered lobbyists at the same firm where a lobbyists has made a lobbying contact, and would require the firm as an entity to abstain from raising funds for that Member/candidate or directing money to that political figure.
• Clear up Earmarks. Although the report doesn’t take a specific position, it generally recommends that the House and Senate consider making earmark disclosure more timely and meaningful, perhaps in the ways described in the Earmark Transparency Act of 2010. Similarly, lobbyists who seek earmarks (and their employers) would be required to file a form stating they have neither contributed to nor sought individual or PAC contributions for the Members they lobbied for earmarks during the current session of congress. Also, lobbyists who are paid on a contingent fee basis would need to publicly file that contact if they lobby for earmarks, tax relief, or targeted loans, grants, contracts, or guarantees.
• Fix the Byrd Amendment. The Byrd Amendment, which (generally speaking) bans those who receive government contracts from using government money to hire lobbyists to lobby Congress or the executive branch, is badly worded and needs to be clarified. The report calls on OMB to issue final rules interpreting the statute.
• Improve enforcement. The Task Force noted the lackluster enforcement of the Lobbying Disclosure Act, and recommended that Civil Division of the Department of Justice may be a reasonable candidate to be assigned the duty of interpreting and enforcing compliance with the LDA.

* Note: I served on the Task Force as a liaison, which means that I participated in all the deliberations but did not vote on any issue.

That seems to be a question raised from The Next Right's Soren Dayton. Dayton is taking the position that lobbyists and factions seeking to influence government do not have influence and therefore we should not require them to disclose their activities. This position is very much outside of the mainstream of thought on lobbyists and their influence in Washington. Currently, there are over 30,000 registered lobbyists in Washington with the sole job of influencing outcomes in the federal government. This could include, as Dayton says, educating officials and running pressure campaigns, and truly, there is not an inherent wrong with what almost all lobbyists are doing. However, even if the vast majority of lobbyists are doing no wrong, the revelation of their activities is still essential to a vibrant representative democracy. Over the years, the classic and legal case for regulation of lobbying has been built, starting with Madison's treatise against faction in Federalist No. 10. As we know well, the American form of government was created to temper the power of faction without limiting the liberty needed for a free society, despite liberty being to faction "what air is to fire". While there should be no attempt made to prevent factions from interacting with the government (the right of petition), there certainly can be regulation of factions and interests who seek action from Congress or the executive branch.

Modern lobbying disclosure laws take their root in the changes in American society following the Civil War. In 1876, the first lobbying regulation was enacted, albeit briefly, in response to concerns about the growth of the influence industry, which was growing alongside the growth of the federal government. Many of the pushes to enact lobbying regulation have followed on the heels of outrages and scandals. The 1876 regulation rule was adopted following the long reveal of the Credit Mobilier scandal, where lawmakers also worked as lobbyists handing out railroad stock to congressional leaders. Later outrages included a lobbying campaign against the Underwood-Simmons tariff bill that eventually revealed that the National Association of Manufacturers had an office inside the Capitol and provided all sorts of support for supportive lawmakers, a phony grassroots lobbying attempt by opponents of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, the lobbying attempts to quash certain provisions in the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, the Koreagate scandal in the 1970s, the Wedtech scandal in the late 1980s, and many, well documented cases during the 1990s and 2000s. All of these episodes (with an assist from Mark Twain) helped to inform public opinion that lobbyists were an execrable blight on representative democracy. This is despite the fact that lobbyists are not only protected by the First Amendment, but a vital part of democracy.

It is in these two contradictory notions -- that lobbyists are scum and that lobbyists are vital for democracy -- that lobbying regulation must exist. Debate over previous lobbying regulation bills (the Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act of 1946, the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, and the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007) acknowledged that the disclosure by lobbyists is not only due to the potential for corrupting activity, but because they serve an important role and their existence needs to be revealed, not only to the public, but for lawmakers and officials to better understand with whom they are meeting. In fact, the general thrust of the debate during consideration of the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 surrounded the need for lawmakers to be informed of who they are meeting and discussing policy. While this has served the legislative need to know the bias of a caller, it has not served the public interest nor has it helped the factions and interests that hire lobbyists to better police each other.

The positions that the Sunlight Foundation supports, and that Dayton finds to be mockable, are that lobbyists should disclose, in real time, their contacts with officials, including what was discussed, and that the threshold for lobbyist registration should be lowered to include the many influencers who operate behind the scenes (see: Daschle, Tom). These positions would provide an important view into a part of governance process that has so far been kept in the shadows. The reason why the disclosure of contacts is important is not because we are worried that lobbyists are engaging in a quid-pro-quo but because of associational bias. In her legal essay, St. John's University law professor Anita Krishnakumar explains that, "...[T]he public perceives that lobbyists receive special face time with elected officials. Irrespective of where that face time occurs -- in scheduled meetings, on a train ride, over a game of power, or on the golf course -- it creates opportunities for lobbyists to persuade elected officials of their clients' positions, opportunities that ordinary citizens do not have. In other words, the public's concern is not just that elected officials will engage in blatant vote-selling to lobbyists, but, more subtly, that they will be partial to the causes of lobbyists' clients because they spend a lot of time in lobbyists' company."

In many cases, lobbying contact disclosure may show lobbyists working to create bills before they are even dropped in the hopper. While Dayton denies that lobbyists write bills, there is enough proof out there that hired lobbyists have worked hard at crafting many important bills. Another revelation would be the frenzied lobbying for earmarks, which are often largely driven by paid lobbyists. (While Dayton supports a ban on earmarks, he does not recognize that their origin, and the reason why they are so reviled, is because they are often the creation of lobbyists.)

The disclosure of lobbying contacts provides not only the public with a better view of which interests and factions are trying to influence outcomes, but it also provides a chance for those same interests and factions to view the actions of their opposition. If union officials are putting a full court press over the Employee Free Choice Act, business groups will be able to see which lawmakers they are targeting and can prepare a better response. Groups can help educate the public on which lawmakers are more supportive of their causes, or if they are in opposition. And some lawmakers, exposed by the sunlight, may find it in their interest to meet with more groups to not only provide a more bipartisan public record, but to also gain insight from a more diverse group of interests.

A legitimate issue that Dayton raises is that government officials are the ones that we should be pointing a finger at. They are the ones who ultimately make the final decision on legislation or regulation and, therefore, they should face accountability, not lobbyists. In the Obama administration stimulus lobbying rules, we see a bit of this position. Lobbyists are not required to disclose who they meet with or what they are discussing, instead it is the agency official who must disclose written and oral communications with registered lobbyists. This is a reversal of the disclosure burden, away from the lobbyist. While I firmly believe that lobbying contacts should be disclosed, for the better of the public, the interests, and the government officials, there is still a debate over who discloses that information. Should it be the lawmaker or their staff? Or should it be the lobbyist? Or both? As evidenced by the Obama stimulus rules, that is still up for debate.

The need for a better system of lobbying disclosure, that increases registration and disclosure, is necessary to provide the public, interests, and lawmakers with the information that actually matters and to provide the professional legitimacy that the lobbying industry needs.

Each weekday, Sunlight's communications team collects all the press mentions of Sunlight and of our grantees.  Instead of just keeping that to ourselves, we thought we'd try something new by highlighting some of the more interesting mentions  and sharing that with you each week. (You can also check out our Delicious page and our Press Center to see who's writing about us.)

Elizabeth Brotherton at Roll Call (subscription required), Associated Press Managing Editors, Paul Krawzak with CQ Politics and Deb Price with The Detroit News wrote stories about about U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers posting their earmark requests for the 2010 budget on their Web sites as new transparency guidelines required. Bill Allison, Sunlight’s senior fellow, researched the disclosures. Journalists used Bill's research as the base for their articles, including many regional papers reporting on earmarks requested by their respective congressional delegations.

National Journal’s "Tech Daily Dose" blog reported that the Center for Responsive Politics’ site OpenSecrets.org is going "open data" this week. For the first time in their 26-year history, CRP "is making its most popular data archives fully available to the public for download for free,” The Journal writes.  Sunlight helped fund CRP's OpenData initiative to make millions of records available under a Creative Commons license, The Journal adds.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg with The New York Times wrote about President Obama's promise to bring transparency to the federal government. She notes the administration is finding that fulfilling the pledge is easier said than done. Technological hurdles, privacy concerns and the Washington's entrenched culture of secrecy have so far proven hard to overcome. Stolberg lists several steps the Obama team have successfully taken, the streamlining of a health care summit over the White House Web site and the setting up of Recovery.gov to help track the stimulus package. She quotes Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, as saying the site is “an amazing potential model of how information is made available to the public."

The Huffington Post published an op-ed by Mike Klein, Sunlight’s co-founder and chair, where he commends President Obama for establishing a transparency policy applicable to lobbying and the stimulus program. Mike encouraged the administration to not limit transparency just to lobbying the stimulus program. "The president should now mandate real time online transparency of lobbying throughout the executive branch." He also called on Congress to amend the Lobbying Disclosure Act so that lobbyists would be required to disclose all lobbying, whether of the Congress, the executive branch or the independent agencies, and in real time and online. Ryan Singel at Wired's "Epicenter" blog profiles Sunlight Labs’ contest Apps for America, and asked his readers to vote for their favorites.  Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of the Washington Examiner, also wrote about Apps for America. Winter Casey and Bara Vaida at National Journal's "Under the Influence" blog and Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones wrote about mockups of Web-based lobbying disclosure forms John Wonderlich, Sunlight’s policy director, and Ali Felski, Sunlight Lab’s senior designer, created.