by Stephen D. Haner
“Code of Virginia §2.2-419. Definitions” includes the following:
“Lobbying” means: 1. Influencing or attempting to influence executive or legislative action through oral or written communication with an executive or legislative official; or 2. Solicitation of others to influence an executive or legislative official.
“Lobbying” does not mean: 1. Requests for appointments, information on the status of pending executive and legislative actions, or other ministerial contacts if there is no attempt to influence executive or legislative actions; 2. Responses to published notices soliciting public comment submitted to the public official designated in the notice to receive the responses; 3. The solicitation of an association by its members to influence legislative or executive action; or 4. Communications between an association and its members and communications between a principal and its lobbyists.
The practical application of that definition means that when the Secretary of the Commonwealth reports and the media subsequently reports that “$15.9 million was spent on lobbying in Virginia” that is misleading to the point of being meaningless.
A very good lawyer-lobbyist explained to me years ago, when I was first filing out these reports, that only the time actually communicating with the legislator on a specific vote was “lobbying.” He might drive three hours across the state to see a legislator, having spent five hours doing research and prepping a briefing document, but only the 30 minutes he actually discussed the issue with the legislator was “lobbying.” So he would bill the client for the six hours of driving, five hours of prep time, and perhaps 30 minutes for the meeting itself. Only the 30 minutes shows up on the lobbying disclosure report.
In reality 30 minutes is a long time during the session for such a conversation. You might get two or three minutes with a legislator under that time-deprived situation (unless you take them out to dinner, of course.)
Lobbyist compensation is the largest expense listed on those annual reports. Now I’m going to take a surprise tack and say – who cares? Whose business is it how much a lobbyist gets paid? Like most people, lobbyists are not eager to have their income revealed to the world. Some of them list their full fee or salary on the reports, but most don’t. Most pro rate what they earn based on some version of the above scenario.
My suggestion is drop the requirement that compensation be reported at all – just ask whether the lobbyist is retained or salaried. In my last posting (“Let the Sun Shine In“) I noted what you do have a right to know – this is something you don’t have a right to know.
Removing the compensation item would increase the focus on the lobbyist expenses that should get the focus – entertainment, gifts, food and drink, travel. There should be better reporting of efforts to gin up grassroots support through phone banks, mail and email and paid advertising (see exceptions 3 above, which needs to go or be tightened up); and, as mentioned before: an enforced requirement to report the executive and legislative issues that were the subject of the lobbying (most reports do not).
However, there is one class of lobbyist I want to see fully reporting their compensation, because the taxpayers are directly footing that compensation—the people employed and retained by the local governments, local school divisions and the local government associations that are funded by taxpayer money. Whether they are employed or retained, they work for the taxpayers.
Stephen D. Haner is a lobbyist, doing business as Black Walnut Strategies.
