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From Jeremiah kimmelmanCalmness
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This story was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.
Lobbly groups spend more than half a billion dollars to influence the government of the state in 2024, most, according to an analysis of Calmatters of Data recently submitted to the Secretary of StateS Google lobbying, oil companies and utilities during special sessions in the third quarter seems to drive a sharp spike in costs.
Companies and organizations report approximately $ 540 million lobbying costs to direct their point of view to California employees, including legislators, hundreds of accounts between January and December last year – and this is over 10% of $ 485 million in 2023.
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Perhaps this is not so surprising in a full-time legislative body and one of the largest economies in the world, said Francesco Trebi, Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley, who studies political influence and lobbying.
"Half a billion is something normal," he said. "If California is about 14% of US GDP and the federal lobby is about $ 4 billion, $ 500 million is about 13% of that. So this would be in line with the size of the California economy."
Thomas Holiok, a professor of political sciences at Freshno State University, said that the increase in costs could reflect not only the desire of corporations for more influence, but also the increasing influence of the California policy itself.
As California maintains its fame, "more and more interest groups and lobbyists will accept what Sacramento does very, very serious," he said.
Main players governing the lobbying boom
The Western States Oil Association reported over $ 17.3 million in the year's intercession costs, over $ 10 million of which were spent last summer and more than twice the total account of the previous year.
The organization has taken public positions 18 Accounts Last Session and obtained the desired result two -thirds of the time, according to an analysis of Calmatters of data from Digital democracyOur platform for tracking state legislators and legislation.
Partly the expenses of the commercial group more than doubled due to the increased proposed oil and gas provisions, including session Focused on gas prices.
The largest non-oil Spentter was Pacificorp, who reported that he had spent more than $ 13.4 million to influence California's employees last year, 30 times the average for the year for the company in the last two decades. Investor -owned utility lobbies to increase tariffs, but does not take a public position on any accounts in 2024.
Pacific Gas & Electric, one of the largest utility services in the state, reported nearly $ 3.6 million a lobbying last year. During the two -year legislative session, the company took over Public position of 45 accounts And he also made his way to approximately two -thirds of them or 31 accounts.
Google usually does not spend much on the effort to lobby at the state level but spent more in 2024 than the last 20 years combined.
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The company reported one of the largest sums for the state advocacy last year, led mainly by a Spending in the third quarter of the year when the technology giant is fighting a Media bill and AI provisionsS The company made its way in both cases.
Much of his intercession went through the Computer and Communications Association, which reported that it spent nearly $ 7.4 million, $ 7 million from which came from Mountain View Behemoth's Behemoth.
Only two labor groups spent more than $ 1 million on lobbying last year: the International Union of Office and the California Association of Teachers.
SEIU reported that it was spending nearly $ 3.4 million and the California Teachers Association, another powerful union in the state, spent more than $ 3.1 million. Both unions took public positions on hundreds of bills and broke nearly 70% of the time.
This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.
