California lawmakers reject lobbying transparency bills

from Ryan SabalowCalMatters

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California lawmakers are poised to repeal legislation that would have forced them to immediately release lobbying letters from businesses and advocacy groups and give the public a new window into the secretive world of Capitol lobbying.

Two bills that would have required the Legislature to publish the letters lawmakers receive from registered lobbyists and groups trying to influence legislation were never heard in the California Assembly.

CalMatters has been trying for more than a year to gain real-time access to these public records to add transparency to the legislative process.
The letters detail the concerns or expressed support groups have about the hundreds of bills lawmakers introduce each year, often passing them after just a few minutes of debate and public testimony.

Now the Democratic lawmaker in charge of the committee that will have to approve the measures to move forward says the Legislature doesn’t need a law to post the letters online.

Chairman of the committee on the rules of the meeting Blanca Pacheco “supports the goal of improving public access to position papers” and is “interested in identifying practical ways to make this information more accessible without requiring legislation,” according to its spokeswoman Alina Evans.

Evans’ emailed statement made clear that the public is unlikely to be able to read the letters online anytime soon.

“Before any letters can be published or distributed outside the Assembly network, there are technical, privacy, accessibility and cost considerations that must be addressed,” Evans said.

She added that Assembly officials are evaluating whether the current system used to send the letters “can be updated in a way that is secure and meets accessibility requirements. A major overhaul may require a more formal process and funding discussion.”

The likely failure of the bills has disappointed a prominent good governance group that is pushing legislation.

“We think that allowing the public to have access to these position letters will simply make the policymaking process fundamentally more transparent,” said Daniel Conway, lobbyist for Common Cause California.

The group notes that at least 10 state legislatures post advocacy letters online. This includes Republican-controlled states like West Virginia and Democratic-controlled states like Hawaii.

“If advocacy materials are important enough for lawmakers and officials to review while making policy decisions, the public should generally have timely access to those same materials,” Common Cause writes on its website.

Common Cause says posting letters about each bill online would help people better understand the legislation, identify policy disputes earlier and encourage constructive dialogue and compromise. The measures are Assembly Bill 2063 by a republican Greg Wallis of Rancho Mirage and Assembly Bill 2557 from Rebecca Bauer-Kahana Democrat who represents the San Ramon area.

Neither lawmaker responded to CalMatters’ interview requests. Spokesman for the Chairman of the Assembly Robert Rivas of Salinas referred CalMatters to the Assembly Rules Committee.

CalMatters seeks to make the letters public

CalMatters attempted to obtain the letters because they were submitted through the Legislature’s online position letter portal, which lawmakers and their staff have access to but the public cannot.

Under the current system, legislative staff provide the letters upon request for individual bills, a time-consuming and tedious process.

CalMatters strives to publish every letter from every lobbyist and advocacy group on every bill in it Digital Democracy Databasewhich is free to the public.

The letters would help Digital Democracy create a more accurate gauge of who supports and opposes each bill in the legislature.

Without the letters, Digital Democracy can only track the positions of lobbyists and other advocates through theirs short testimony at committee hearings or if their positions are listed in public analyzes of bills written by legislative staff.

The Legislature denied CalMatters’ request, made under the Legislative Open Records Act, to obtain direct access to the position letter portal.

Instead, CalMatters began requesting the letters en masse from the Assembly and Senate. They have furnished some of the letters, but long afterwards they are the most valuable.

For example, CalMatters requested the letters received from the Assembly from January 1st through February 10th. The Assembly granted them earlier this month.

By then, many of the bills had moved on to the next chamber, were heavily modified, or had already died.

Common Cause said this was a problem. Ordinary Californians and small advocacy groups who don’t have the direct access to legislators and their staff that well-funded, sophisticated lobbying organizations have, limiting their ability to shape legislation.

“Journalists, advocates and members of the public often need access to advocacy materials before hearings and votes — not after legislation has already advanced,” Common Cause said on its website.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.