Interesting City Lobbyist/County Election Board Member Conflict

When a lawyer decides to represent a private client, she does not
give up her right to vote or petition governments on her own behalf.
But what about when a lawyer decides to represent a public client,
especially as a lobbyist? Does such a lawyer give up her right to
vote on issues relating to the city government (assuming she sits on
another government's board) or petition a government on behalf of her own
beliefs?<br>
<br>
These questions arise from a case in Cincinnati, where a city
lobbyist also sat on the county elections board. According to <a href="http://cincinnati.com/blogs/politics/2014/01/26/cranley-to-lobbyist-don…; target="”_blank”">an
article this week on cincinnati.com</a>, the city government
strongly opposes moving an early-voting site out of the city's
downtown, but the lobbyist supports the move. The mayor asked the
lobbyist to withdraw by abstaining from the elections board vote. Instead, the lobbyist
withdrew from his lobbying contract, which had paid him nearly $9,000 a
month.<br>
<br>

What makes the situation especially interesting is the fact that the
lobbyist's vote would ensure a tie that would then be broken by the
Secretary of State, who also appears to support moving the early-voting site out of the downtown, where it is closest to those who
engage in early voting. Were he to have kept his lobbyist position and voted on the elections board, it would have been the lobbyist's job to
lobby the Secretary of State, to try to get him to change his mind.
But (1) the lobbyist would have had to give up his right to petition
the Secretary of State as a citizen and elections board member who
supported the move, and (2) the lobbyist would not have had his
heart in it, and would probably not have done a competent job for
the city. In short, he would have been too conflicted to act as a
lobbyist.<br>
<br>
Once before, there had been a conflict (regarding a ballot issue
on city pensions), and the lobbyist had chosen not to vote as
a county elections board member. This created the reasonable expectation on the part of the city that, if another conflict arose, he would do the same thing. If the lobbyist wasn't sure that is how he would handle another conflict, he should have
considered alternatives and, after seeking advice from the state ethics commission, have told the city and elections board what he
would do in the future. Then, the city government would have not have had the reasonable expectation the lobbyist had allowed it to have.<br>
<br>
The lobbyist could have chosen to simply withdraw from the matter
totally, both as lobbyist and as elections board member. That would
have been the advice I would have given him, if he had failed to
plan what to do. By quitting as the city's lobbyist to make a single
vote that was important to him, he placed his personal political views above those he had
pledged to push on behalf of the city.<br>
<br>
This might seem to be a very unusual situation, but in fact, it is
part of being a lobbyist. As Zephyr Teachout writes in her
recent essay, "The Forgotten Law of Lobbying," (which I will soon be
reviewing in this blog), "the lobbyist is paid to represent
political views not held by the lobbyist. This is unlike a
lawyer-client relationship, because in general in a lawyer-client
relationship, the lawyer has no separate, independent
civic relationship to the private matter. In a
lobbyist-client relationship, the lobbyist, by virtue of being a
citizen, has a distinct relationship to what he himself might
believe. He is selling his own citizenship, or one of the
obligations of his own citizenship, for a fee. In this sense,
agreeing to work, for pay, on political issues is more akin to
selling the personal right to vote than selling legal skills."<br>
<br>
This sale occurs whether one is lobbying for a government or for a
business. Because of this, some lobbyists do limit their work to
those who share their political views. But in local government, it's rarely
about political views, although in this case it is (really more partisan than political, and perversely so).<br>
<br>
Like most lobbyists, when this lobbyist took his job, he most likely
failed to consider what he was giving up, and how that might lead to
problems down the line, when suddenly he realized he was giving up
something very important to him. He had given up certain rights from the start,
but he failed to recognize this. He should, therefore, have
sacrificed this personally important partisan vote, and then decided what to
do thenceforth. That would have been the most responsible thing to
do. Doing so, and explaining why, might have alerted other lobbyists about what they have
given up, allowing them to make responsible decisions in advance.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
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