It's questionable whether a contractor, developer, grantee, or other
individual or entity that seeks special benefits from a local
government should be permitted to make sizeable campaign
contributions to candidates for positions in the local government.
But if they are not permitted to make such contributions directly,
they should not be permitted to make them indirectly, either.<br>
<br>

This is the second post on Alan Rosenthal's <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=pcOyJfxNwfwC&quot; target="”_blank”"><i>The Third
House: Lobbyists and Lobbying in the States</i></a> (CQ Press,
1993). This post focuses on the importance of connections over influence, the
role of money and constituents in local lobbying, and local
lobbyists as relatively unprofessional, and what that means for lobbying regulation.<br>
<br>

<b>An Oakland Ethics Reform Proposal</b><br>
According to <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_25755048/proposal-would-empower-oaklands-…; target="”_blank”">an
article this week in the <i>Mercury News,</i></a> an
Oakland, CA council member has proposed to more than triple the city ethics
commission's staff, expand its oversight powers to include campaign

Although twenty years old and about the state level, Alan
Rosenthal's <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=pcOyJfxNwfwC&quot; target="”_blank”"><i>The
Third House: Lobbyists and Lobbying in the States</i></a> (CQ
Press, 1993) provides valuable food for thought about lobbying at
the local level. This first of two posts looks at such topics as the importance of relationships to lobbying and what makes local lobbying so different.<br>

Small towns don't need lobbying registration, because no lobbying of
any consequence occurs there.<br>
<br>
Small towns don't need lobbying registration, because no lobbying of
any consequence occurs there.<br>
<br>
Say it often enough — as local government and lobbying associations
do — and people believe it's true. But it's not. And here's a good
example why.<br>
<br>

Sometimes even a wrongheaded ethics complaint can do good, by
showing how wrongheaded a town's government
ethics program is.<br>
<br>
According to <a href="http://www.theday.com/article/20140512/OP01/305129991&quot; target="”_blank”">an
editorial in <i>The Day</i> this week</a>, the head of a local
political party, Independence for Montville, filed an ethics

The mayor of Miami-Dade County has announced the formation of a
Procurement Review Task Force to, according to his May 6 memo
(attached; see below), "improve and simplify our procurement
process."<br>
<br>
The principal goals of the task force are:<blockquote>

One of the areas where government ethics laws are weakest is the
indirect relationship, such as when a gift is given not to an
official, but to an official's spouse or child; an official's
business relationship is not with a developer, but with the owner of
the developer's parent; an official's aide participates on a recused
official's behalf; or an official participates in a contract matter
when she has a family relationship with the owner of a subcontractor

Many government ethics professionals don't like waivers. I think
they're valuable. Basically, they are requests for an advisory
opinion in which the official recognizes that certain conduct would
constitute an ethics violation, but wants a determination that he
can engage in the conduct due to special circumstances. The
result of such a determination is the creation of a new, narrow
exception to a rule. This is a good way of preventing bad unforeseen

According to <a href="http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20140501/BLOGS04/140509993/speaker…; target="”_blank”">a
post in the <i>Crain</i>'s Insider blog last week</a>, the New
York City council hired as deputy general counsel a lobbyist whose