Lobbying

The Mercury and today the Tribune offer insightful coverage of proposed changes to the City of Portland Lobbying Ordinance, up for public hearing tomorrow. Most of the debate centers on the threshold for how many hours a lobying entity (person or group) has to contact city decision-makers before having to file reports; and on whether recognized Neighborhood Associations should be included if they go over the threshold.

The lobbying ordinance, while well-meaning, is backwards. It puts huge documentation and reporting burdens on citizens (volunteers as well as paid lobbyists) while letting elected officials off almost free. City officials and staff are paid to take public comment, and should be required to help document it. Lobbying reporting should be a two-way street. Decision-makers should report, and lobbyists too, so that the public can see how the tallies match up. Currently, there’s almost no way to tell whether lobbyist reports are accurate or not. And certainly, no requirement for elected officials to say whether or not they were influenced by the supplications of citizens communicating with them. Or for staff to help volunteers fulfil their reporting requirements. None of that is fair.

Under the current ordinance, City Commissioners are required to post their calendars at the end of the quarter – those can be seen on the Auditor’s site. But if you want to know who lobbied the Council, say, a couple of weeks ago, go to PortlandOnLine.com and click on each of the photographs of the Councilmen in turn. Commendably, the links to their calendars are clearly visible. Erik Sten gets the prize for reporting – links to his calendar for every week since the beginning of 2006 are easily found. Sam Adams, runner-up: every week since the beginning of this year is still up. Mayor Potter’s an honorable third – his calendar by the week for the past two months shows up.

The two Commissioners urging more reporting from lobbyists and Neighborhood Associations are the two with the least transparency in their own public calendars. Dan Saltzman posts only the current week, and I discovered during my campaign that the numbering system for the files varies, so it’s not possible to guess and find previous weeks’ calendars on line. And Randy Leonard posts only at the end of each quarter – often far too late to find out what trucks are coming down the pike for a hearing before Council.

I favor all lobbying being reported – but only if that includes more transparency by the Council. I think the way time requiring reporting is calculated would need amendment if Neighborhood Associations were included, because it’s hard for them to distinguish between general education of participants, and information-sharing/activism aimed at lobbying to influence city officials. And reporting should be simplified. Citizens who visit or call Council offices should have the time documented for them by staff via a sign-in log, and letters and emails sent to city addresses should automatically become part of the record. Time spent researching and writing such communications shouldn’t count, nor should efforts encouraging neighbors to lobby if they don’t end up taking action. But in principle, all direct lobbying should be documented. If and only if….

City Council members should be required to post their calendars weekly, and leave them available posted for at least a year. For ever, in archives, preferably.

And City Council members should state when making votes that were influenced in any way by people not on staff in the City, who they communicated with (by phone, email, in person, by semaphore or eye-rolling, even) whose input affected their vote.

How hard would that be?