29 Comments - jerry 101 - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 10:54 am: Releasing a report to gin up support for some legislation…hmmm…seems as though the ICRP could be a lobby itself. I wonder how much they spend on lobbyists? That said, it does seem silly for governments to hire lobbyists, but do taxpayers really want government officials spending a bunch of time down in Springfield instead of working on problems at home? You may be able to make a case that CTA should just hire an in-house lobbyist, it might save some money, but if a Village spends $10k on a lobbyist, its probably cheaper than sending a senior Village employee down to Springfield to lobby and take time away from that employee’s actual day-to-day job. - Northside Bunker - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 10:59 am: I thought Rod Blagojevich cleaned-up Illinois government ? ! - Anonymiss - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 11:05 am: Nice piece, Rich. There’s a common misunderstanding that “lobbyist” is a dirty word. I understand why it happens, but they do serve a purpose and don’t sound so slimy when called by a different name. I recently spoke to a college class and asked them to name some groups that had lobbyists: “the NRA” “big oil” “cigarette companies” When I asked them to replace the word “lobbyist” with “government relations liaison” or “advocate,” the students offered, “the Cancer Society,” “AARP,” and “this school.” - Been There - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 11:06 am: The problem with reports like this is they are skewed against those who use contract lobbyist compared to those that use just in-house people. If you have people on your payroll, the muni’s and agencies don’t have to disclose who those people are and it is hard to allocate what that cost is. - shore - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 11:10 am: this became an issue in dc 5 years ago with abramoff, it is an indictment of the legislators that the towns don’t think they can get enough from them. they should be disclosed along with the return on investment - Plutocrat03 - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 11:10 am: So we are using public dollars from one budget to lobby for public dollars from another budget? Regardless of which budget the dollars come from it is from the same source - the same taxpayer! No wonder things are so messed up. - Carl Nyberg - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 11:20 am: In my experience in Proviso Township the lobbyists got hired b/c the political class wanted to move public money to the pockets of their friends and allies. The lobbyists did not produce results (state grants or other) that even covered the cost of hiring the lobbyists. Maybe hiring lobbyists is sometimes appropriate, but it can be a scam. If lobbyists are going to be hired with taxpayer money it should be required to explain on the taxing body’s website what the lobbyist is attempting to accomplish. And the tax body should be required to update what the lobbyist has accomplished once per month. And the information should remain online for at least six years. When someone does a web search on “Jane Q. Lobbyist” is should be publicly known she accomplished little to nothing for past clients. The lobbyists want to get the easy money from taxpayers with the low levels of accountability. That ain’t right. If you work for the gov’t in a cushy job, you gotta produce results. - Ghost - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 11:34 am: I am actual partial to CN;s idea. I do agree that the operation of the general assembly requires everyone, including governemnts, to have a lobbyist to watch what is going on and to be prepared to stop bad legislation along with supporting good bills. But I think the actual work being performed needs identified clearly. - Sueann - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 11:35 am: Wouldn’t these taxing bodies do better spending their funds providing the services that they are supposed to provide? - just sayin' - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 11:46 am: I think in many cases it’s just another way to put friends and supporters on a public payroll. Also need to look at how much the lobbyist or the lobbying firm kicks back in campaign contributions to the public officials who awarded the lobbying contract. Bascially public money gets washed and back into the political pipeline. - Rich Miller - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 11:46 am: Sueann, if they were spending more money on lobsters than they were getting back from the state, then you’d be right. Most, however, appear to think it’s a good investment. - wndy - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 11:49 am: Illinois requiring lobbyist compensation disclosure? Not likely. And given how successful ICPR’s organizational friends were with redistricting and campaign finance reform they may want to look at better contract lobbyists. - Judgment Day Is On The Way - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 11:50 am: There’s a whole additional side to this debate, which is that many units of local governments are spending for lobbying services just to have a voice in decisions being made which can adversely affect their current operations. It’s not always about just extracting more money from the State. For example, there’s been many a piece of legislation proposed and implemented into law which would have been far less costly (and much less complex) for the locals to make work if only the connections and lines of communications between the legislators and “the workers” had been in place. - Just Observing - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 11:54 am: A lot of what local government lobbies for is not in the best interest of their constiuents. For example, many local governments used taxpayer dollars to lobby against the Freedom of Information Act reforms; the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District used lobbyists to allow the MWRD Commissioners to vote themselved pay raises rather than leaving their salaries up to the state legislature; many other governments are using taxpayer dollars to increase their own powers and limit the powers of their constiuents. If taxpayers only knew… - Ghost - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 11:59 am: Sueann, what services they provide and money for them comes from legislation those lobbyists are invovled with. So the legislature passes a bill requiring municipalities to provide free medical treatment to all residents under the age of 18, with no state funding. The municipalty is just spending its money providing services so this bill passes unopposed by the local buisness groups happy to push this expense onto governemnt. So now the services they are providing increase massively in cost, no revenue, and they unciontaly bcome unable to provide those other services you wished them to focus on…. perhaps keeping an eye on what the general assembly is doing is a good idea. - John Galt - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 11:59 am: “…it is an indictment of the legislators that the towns don’t think they can get enough from them….” I know this is a bit ideological, but I think part of the problem is the expectation that the state give any significant amount of money to local municipalities. Rather than keep the money in the community in the first place, it gets kicked down to Springfield where counties and towns then have to try to “win” back their own cash. The problem is, for every dollar a legislator “brings back to the district” they may have to cut deals with 10 other legislators to sign onto it for some multiple dollar amount. Maybe a net loss of $2 to the district for every $1 won, but since the cost is diffuse and comes later down the road, nobody notices until it’s too late. It also concentrates the amount of power Springfield (and by extension Chicago) has over the rest of the state. I’m not saying that lobbyists don’t have their place. Like any agent or conduit, they’re amoral. It all depends on the motivations and goals of the clients. It just seems to me that a good chunk of “advocacy” is aimed at looting the taxpayers, and the legislators & lobbyists are just the middlemen that get a cut of the action. - Rich Miller - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 12:03 pm: ===it is an indictment of the legislators that the towns don’t think they can get enough from them=== Only if you are foolish enough to believe that legislators must always, without fail agree with everything proposed by every single one of their mayors, county boards, library districts, school boards and, and, and. Don’t be foolish. - just sayin' - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 12:11 pm: Lobbyists also pass along some of the public money they’re paid to the elected officials they lobby in the form of campaign contributions (more washing of taxpayer money into the political pipeline). Any success a lobbyist has in Springfield for a public sector client likely owes more to that fact than anything else. - Ghost - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 12:20 pm: Springfield and many other cities are facing huge finaial crisis becuase of the overly lucrative pole and fire pensions. Those were passed by the legislature but require local funding. - whats the message - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 1:02 pm: Just Saying you are onto something. That’s the real story that is being missed. Perhaps ICPR 2010 study should research how much these lobbsters give to these elected officials and board members to get the lobbying contract. where is the play to play at the municipal & local government level? - steve schnorf - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 1:12 pm: I think for the most part this is just more silly posturing by the busybodies. So should private contractors (let’s say road builders) have to open up their books and tax returns because a lot of the money they get is tax dollars? There is no end to these threads when you start to unravel them, and so far I’m not real impressed with the results of the “reforms” the busybodies have enacted. Of course, they will say that’s because only inadequate and imperfect reforms have been passed. - unspun - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 2:05 pm: Disclosure by government entities with regard to lobbyist expenditures is completely appropriate, as those are tax dollars. However, private entities should not have to disclose how much they make…this information is proprietary. Lobbyists have to disclose their clients and affiliates, as well as political expenditures. Outside of PAC $, they should not have to disclose their revenues. - VanillaMan - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 2:10 pm: If we don’t call them lobbyists, they don’t end up being political punching bags. If you know that your school ensures close ties within Illinois government by having a specialist personally shepherd school needs through state bureaucracy, you’d probably think it is a great idea and worth paying for. The bigger government gets, the more inefficient and redundant it becomes, justifying government specialists. I think most folks understand that if explained properly. Just don’t call them lobbyists, my man - Ross Perot - permanently labeled them back in ‘92 and even Blagojevich was still whipping that old dead horse ten years later. But that was because Blagojevich is a boob, but that’s another story… - Just Observing - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 2:33 pm: === So should private contractors (let’s say road builders) have to open up their books and tax returns because a lot of the money they get is tax dollars? === Those dollars are publicly disclosed by the government body that pays them. - David Starrett - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 3:07 pm: Among my current clients is a quasi-governmental organization providing State & locally funded rent subsidies to clients. I was hired by them initially to get the State’s portion of this program enacted with a dedicated revenue stream and with as much enduring bipartisan support as possible. Not an easy task at all; others had failed before me. Since that was accomplished, most of my time in their behalf has been spent reviewing every bill introduced which might conceivably effect my client, their providers or those they rent to, and making sure they are well-informed about these measures in time to impact them. Much of the time this has meant “rear-guard” actions to prevent harmful things (like special fund “sweeps”) but I sometimes recommend initiatives as well. This client pays me pretty well for my detailed knowledge of the process and its pressure-points, and the goodwill I’ve developed on both sides of the aisle. I never “wine/dine” legislators, and only make campaign contributions of any significance to personal friends. Steve knows well that I spent a good amount of career as what he would describe as a “busybody.” I hope he would agree that I was pretty reasonable in my approach to reform measures. I think part of what to his frustration over the never-ending stream for reform proposals is the “whack-a-mole” character of reform in this state. –Though I have to admit that many reform groups seem to feel pressure to justify their continued existence (and grant funding) by developing and enactment of yet another set of proposals. - steve schnorf - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 4:22 pm: No complaints about David Starrett in the whole time I’ve known him JO–but since dollars are fungible we really don’t know what they did with that money, do we? And are they overcharging us? - 3 beers to springfield - Thursday, May 20, 10 @ 4:53 pm: In my limited exposeure to the legislature, I’ve learned that despite a community’s or organization’s best efforts, there’s no replacemnt for having full-time representation in Springfield. Legislative committees don’t adhere to the same open meeting rules as the rest of us. Committee meetings are called and cancelled with little notice. Bills are called unexpectedly, and don’t get me started on “floor amendments”. - wordslinger - Friday, May 21, 10 @ 8:23 am: You’d think the local governments’ state reps. and senators could do most of the heavy lifting for them in Springfield. That’s their job, and outside of leadership, most have a lot of time on their hands during sessions. - Big Ears - Friday, May 21, 10 @ 10:18 am: Word to the wise: When reading a newstory about something happening “increasingly” often, just tune out. It’s not a real story. Seriously. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.