lobbying

Here's an excerpt from GLOBE'S Andrea Estes article Mass. lobbyists on pace to have a record year.

Jon Hurst, president of the 3,200-member Retailers Association of Massachusetts, said his group spent more than ever in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent an impending sales tax increase from 5 to 6.25 percent. His group and others argued that consumers would take their business to New Hampshire or to the Internet.

“It was the biggest issue we’ve had in the past 20 years,’’ Hurst said. “Our expenditures went way up. It was important to us, because we were trying to save consumers $900 million in new sales taxes. But it goes to show spending money doesn’t always mean you’ll get the outcome you want in the Legislature.’’

So much for all of Jon's hard work.

On the other hand other "special interest groups" hard work hasn't paid off either (yet)

A wide range of paid lobbyists and volunteers from community based organizations paying close attention to the economists' projections at last weeks revenue hearing at Senate Ways and Means, got another piece of news from Senator Marc Pacheco who announced that the Senate intended to debate ethics and lobbying reform legislation on May 14. The day after ther Senate Ways and Means releases it's budget recommendations and one day before amendments are due.

Not unexpected news, since Secretary Bill Galvin had released a much improved lobbyist tracking system that folks were already testing to find themselves and see if the lobbyists they knew were working against them were properly registered. (Yes, a good user-friendly lobbyist search system is critical to campaign planning and implementation.)

The paid lobbyists and volunteer advocates paying attention to this critical reform effort have been tracking carefully what they considered the overly broad "definition" of lobbying that was in the Governors' proposal and had been retained in the House version.

This definition applied to for-profit AND non-profit large and small employers and both had shared with the House Ethics Committee their concerns that if they had to register everyone who had been involved in strategic research and preparing fact sheets the fees would be excessive and the reporting requirements would be burdensome. 

Because we believe that transparency, enabled by user-friendly searchable data bases, is key to encouraging and supporting civic engagement and accountability, we are encouraging ONE Mass network members to talk with their Senator about two things next week.

There are many things we can achieve together as a community that we are not able to achieve as individuals. Governor Deval Patrick’s proposed transparency and lobbying reforms are designed to restore in Massachusetts residents a confidence in government that makes those achievements possible. Yesterday, March 18^th, Massachusetts legislators held a joint hearing at the State House to discuss the Bill on ethics and lobbying reform.

State Administration and Regulatory Oversight Co-chair, Representative Steven Walsh, and House Speaker Robert DeLeo hope to have the bill on the House floor as soon as possible, certainly before the 2010 budget reaches the floor in late April.  There are rumors around the State House that this bill will be on the House floor as early as the last week of March.  Senator Brian Joyce, the committee's co-chair, called Patrick's bill a "very well thought out and very well developed proposal" that both leaders of the House and Senate would like to implement as soon as possible.

Lost in today’s news is an important hearing. 1:00.....A Temporary House Committee on Ethics holds a public hearing on Gov. Deval Patrick’s ethics and lobbying reform bill......Room A-1

One of our jobs at ONE Massachusetts is to provide our network members with the information they need to “pay attention” to how our government works and how we pay for it. It’s called informed civic engagement. Yawu Miller will will be testifying today for ONE Mass in support of increased transparency in the budget making process and increased transparency in the registration and reporting requirements for lobbyists.

Why? Because paying attention is a two way street and transparency is the stop light.

Andrea Estes and Matt Viser’s story in today’s Globe speculates that DiMasi’s “relationships contributed to his undoing”.  And they are correct.

There is no excusing the Speaker from not paying attention when his long time friends and supporters offered to pick up some of his personal expenses or offered him gifts, even if it was “perfectly legal”.  He just didn’t think how it would look on the front page of the paper, and how even these perfectly legal activities would further erode the public’s confidence in government.

There is no excusing his long time personal friends for exploiting their friendship with him for their own personal gain as ‘strategists” advising special interests trying to influence public policy.  I doubt they thought for a second how they were betraying the trust of their long time, now very powerful friend.