Leading the Way on Lobbying Disclosure

When it comes to lobbying disclosure, local government agencies should lead the way. According to an article in the San Diego Reader, this is not the case with the San Diego Airport Authority, whose lobbying firm did not disclose any of the lobbying it did for the Authority in the first half of 2015.

According to the article, this summer the Authority put out an RFP for a three-year "State Legislative Consulting Services" contract. The successful bidder would be required to "assist [the Authority] by advising and advocating on public policy issues under consideration by State elected officials and State agencies [and to] pro-actively promote the Authority's position on policy matters to elected officials, their staffs, and other decision makers through personal contact, written correspondence, and/or testimony [and] proactively identify opportunities and assist the Authority in obtaining grants for capital projects, environmental initiatives and other airport-related programs."

This sounds a lot like lobbying and should be expressly called "lobbying." There is no excuse for any public agency to play the language game with lobbying. It should contract for "lobbying" and require the successful bidder to go beyond legal requirements in disclosing all possible lobbying activities and payments.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics