Today, we are launching a new Web site, Party Time, a project to track parties thrown at the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions as well as fund raising activities by all lawmakers running for Congress that happen all year round in Washington, D.C. and beyond.

The count of parties and events we’ve heard about scheduled for the Democratic and Republican National Conventions is now above 400-and counting. As we noted the other week, here, these convention parties are often sponsored by corporate interests such as Citi, Eli Lilly and Qwest, as well as powerhouse lobbying firms such as Patton Boggs. They continue despite new ethics reforms intended to rein in excesses of special interest bashes for members of Congress. Many of these party hosts are also sponsors of the conventions’ host committees, major donors to federal candidates and party committees and are also big spenders on federal lobbying.

So, for example:

AT&T is hosting more than a dozen parties at both conventions, most of them parties for different state delegations. The company is also underwriting both the Democratic and GOP Convention committees, and happens to be the #2 top donor to federal and candidates and parties since 1989, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. AT&T has spent more than $3 million on federal campaign contributions and lobbying combined in 2008 alone, 60% of which is directed to the GOP. It has also spent another $3.2 million on federal lobbying.

Qwest’s CEO, Ed Mueller, is hosting an event at the Denver Art Museum on Monday, August 25. The company is also giving the Democratic and GOP Convention host committees a total of some $12 million in direct and in-kind contributions. Qwest has given $682,000 to federal candidates and parties so far this election cycle, and spent $1.7 million on lobbying.

A long list of financial service powerhouses are sponsoring a “financial literacy brunch” at the Democratic National Convention, including Allstate, AEGON, Bank of America, Capitol One, Charles Schwab, Edward Jones, Fidelity, Genworth, MasterCard, Mutual of Omaha, Nationwide, Principal Financial Group, State Farm, NASDAQ, US Bank, Visa, Wachovia and Wells Fargo. These companies are major campaign contributors and lobbying forces in Washington.

(more…)

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On Friday, August 1, 2008, the Clerk of the House must launch a public database on the Clerk’s web site for travel and gift disclosures and personal financial disclosures filed by lawmakers. This action is mandated by the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

Earlier this year, under mandate from the same ethics reform bill, the Senate launched a searchable database of travel and gift disclosure forms. Users can also download the entire database in XML format.

By the end of the week, we should be able to see what disclosure looks like on the House’s side.

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As of July 30 lobbyists will have to report some interesting new information: any campaign contributions, including those from a political action committee controlled by the lobbyist or organization; honorary expenses linked to lawmakers; expenses for meetings involving lawmakers; and donations to presidential libraries. The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 required this new disclosure that lobbyists will file twice a year, with the first deadline being July 30th.  The new forms, LD-203, are here. The Center for Responsive Politics says they plan to capture all these reports. Should be some interesting material in these new reports.

But I was struck by the lack of timeliness of these new reports. Being filed only twice a year raises the question: how much transparency will these forms actually provide?  With all the online tools we have access to today, why not have instantaneous disclosure?  Why wait six months, when the money changing hands is affecting legislation being written today?  It seems to me that this new requirement will give us some more information about the role of the power lobbyist, it does little to deal with the most critical problem - the timeliness of reporting.

Hat tip: Amanda Adams at OMB Watch’s Advocacy Blog.

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Lobbying disclosure reports will finally get reviewed by an oversight body as a result of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA). The Government Accountability Office (GAO) began auditing the first quarter lobbying reports to determine compliance and noncompliance to the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 and subsequent amendments included in HLOGA. The GAO may ask for time sheets and restaurant and travel records to check to see if employees are meeting the lobbyist threshold. The audit results should be released around Sept. 30, 2008, six months after the initial quarterly report filing date. Michael Stern at Point of Order points out some issues that may prevent the GAO from requiring audited firms to turn over documents:

According to this article in Roll Call, the failure to comply with a GAO request could then be referred to the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House, which are responsible under the LDA for notifying any lobbyist or lobbying firm that “may be in noncompliance” with the law. This in turn could lead to a referral to the U.S. Attorney for potential civil or even criminal enforcement.

This, I think, must be wrong. HLOGA gives GAO the authority to request information from certain individuals and organizations, but it does not require that the information be provided.If Congress had intended that registrants and lobbyists be required to provide information requested, it surely would have said so explicitly. To imply such a duty would seem particularly inappropriate given the possibility that requests might infringe on First Amendment rights or other privileges.

A more likely interpretation is that Congress intended that the GAO’s notification would be referred to the committees of jurisdiction, which could then choose to use their subpoena power to obtain the needed information.

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I don’t want to let this slip by.

The Hill reported on a U.S. District Court decision made on Friday that upheld a key provision of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 (HLOGA). In February, the National Association of Manufacturers had filed suit challenging HLOGA’s disclosure provision requiring any organization actively participating "in the planning, supervision, or control" of lobbying efforts that ponies up more than $5,000 in a quarter to disclose their activities and expenditures. NAM argued that the disclosure clause is imprecise and impacts groups that it is not intended to target, and that it violates the First Amendment. They also said that they were worried that the law would also require it to disclose the names of its members.

In a 57-page opinion, Judge Kollar-Kotelly disagreed, saying the clause was "narrowly tailored to serve compelling government interests, and is neither vague on its face nor is applied to the NAM." You can read the judge’s opinion by following a link provided by the Campaign Legal Center. The court decision clears the way for the new law to force disclosure of such coalitions’ members to the public for the first time on April 21, according to The Hill.

The purpose of this section of the law is to shine a light on stealth lobbying and sham coalitions, pushing legislation such as those that are often promoted by groups like NAM.

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Here’s a pleasant surprise in the just passed Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA). One of the law’s new filing requirements is that individual lobbyists have to report all "covered official positions" held for 20 years prior to their current filing period. This could provide an amazing amount of new information about where people have lobbied in the past — information that we’ve never seen before.

The new provision will be quite significant for lobbying firms. For them, the 20-year lookback applies to all lobbyists listed on any new registration filed for any client with an effective date of Jan. 1, 2008 or later. For most lobbying firms, this means that eventually all lobbyist employees will need to disclose their prior employment under the 20-year lookback.

The new requirement will have little impact on non-lobbying firm organizations with in-house lobbyists who were already registered as of December 31, 2007. For those organizations, only new lobbyists disclosed as of Jan. 1, 2008 or later will have to report their previous employment in accordance with the 20-year lookback.

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