Senator Jennie Forehand (D-17) has responded to three negative mailers from challenger Cheryl Kagan with this piece on Kagan's acceptance of lobbyists' gifts and her vote against a 2001 bill on lobbying reform.
Forehand brought up this issue at a recent candidate forum in Rockville. Here is how Kagan answered it.
OK guys, so we are asking you all for a favor. Remember that tragically premature post we wrote calling the District 17 Senate race the "classiest" in MoCo? Can you just forget that we wrote that? Pretty please?
Showing posts with label Lobbying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lobbying. Show all posts
Friday, September 03, 2010
Forehand Slams Kagan on Lobbyist Gifts
Monday, May 17, 2010
Dirty Power, Dirty Tricks
Mirant, the national power generation company that owns the Dickerson fossil fuel electric plant, is in the cross-hairs of a new carbon tax proposed by Council Member Roger Berliner. Mirant is a convenient political target given the $250,000 fine it recently paid for repeated pollution violations and its case has not helped by push polling. But now the lobbying campaign against the bill has been associated with an unthinkable act: stealing email addresses from ordinary residents to launch an astroturf lobbying campaign.
Last week, hundreds of emails began pouring into the County Council opposing the carbon tax. (The carbon tax, which would apply only to Mirant’s facility, is not to be confused with the broader energy tax increase proposed by County Executive Ike Leggett. That tax would apply to everyone.) The emails read:Dear Council Member [Name]:
When Council Member George Leventhal replied to a constituent who supposedly sent such an email, the person claimed to support the tax and said this email was sent without his permission or knowledge. So what happened?
Please oppose the proposed carbon tax bill because it will make electricity more expensive and hurt the environment.
Increased electricity costs will be passed on to consumers. Raising the price of electricity hurts families struggling to get by and hurts local employers who provide jobs and tax revenue our county needs.
Maryland has the toughest air quality standards in the East and participates in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Making Maryland generated power more expensive will only result in more importation of electricity from dirty coal plants in West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Finally, the bill does not even reduce greenhouse gas emissions it simply shifts them out of state.
We all want clean air and to protect the environment. This bill does neither and it hurts consumers.
Sincerely,
[Constituent Name and Address]
The email originated with the address advocacy@mylegislators.com and was sent on behalf of the constituent’s email address. Somehow, the originator obtained the constituent’s email address, name and physical address and incorporated them into the email sent to the County Council.
Mylegislators.com is a URL registered by Domains by Proxy Inc., a common arrangement used to conceal the identity of website owners. However, the operator is pretty obvious since the associated domain servers are DDCNS1.DEMOCRACYDATA.COM and DDCNS2.DEMOCRACYDATA.COM and visitors to the URL are automatically redirected to this page established by DDC Advocacy. The company describes itself this way:DDC Advocacy is the only true full-service advocacy firm. We combine deep expertise, leading technology, and extensive capabilities to deliver high-impact advocacy programs and campaigns.
DDC is a major astroturfer with connections to the Bush Administration and Michael Scanlon, the convicted former press secretary for Congressman Tom “the Hammer” DeLay and lobbyist with Jack Abramoff. It has launched mass email campaigns in Arkansas, Hawaii, Washington and now Maryland. Arkansas House Majority Leader Steve Harrelson complained about the company’s tactics on his blog:
DDC Advocacy is a proven partner in helping you:
Raise awareness with key audiences
Turn constituents into advocates, and advocates into true champions
Mobilize advocates to participate in meaningful ways
Empower advocates to engage with legislators on many different levelsFlooding legislators’ inboxes with messages to support or oppose specific legislation is nothing new. However, there are several new sites popping up on the ‘net (mylegislators.com) where anyone can enter any name and email address and send a message of their choice to legislators of their choice. I’ve received over 800 e-mails in the last week on several issues, but most have focused on (1) the cigarette tax, (2) illegal immigration, and (3) worshipping with guns, and many of them have come from advocacy@mylegislators.com.
We understand that lobbying campaigns are supposed to be creative, but is identity theft really an acceptable advocacy tactic? If Mirant’s goal is to obtain a unanimous vote in favor of the carbon tax, it may just get its way. As for the rest of you, well… you could very well be writing strong emails to elected officials and not even know it!
I respond to each message, but I was much quicker to respond to one fairly touchy e-mail that arrived last night from an old family friend in opposition to the cigarette tax. I picked up the phone and called her, and she had no idea what I was talking about. “You can add as much tax to cigarettes as you want -- I hate ‘em,” she said. “Plus, don't take this the wrong way, but I have never thought about e-mailing you.” Kinda makes me wonder who I'm responding to in many of these e-mail messages.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Star Chambers of Annapolis
Maryland’s Open Meetings Act, originally passed in 1977, is one of the state’s greatest laws. The act requires multi-member public bodies with a quorum to open their meetings to the citizenry and give them reasonable advance notice of their date, location and time. The statute is generally observed at the state, county and municipal levels with occasional violations subject to investigation by a compliance board. But there is at least one institution in the state that often violates the spirit of the law with no consequence:
The committees of the General Assembly.
Maryland’s General Assembly operates under a strong committee system. Every state legislator is assigned to one committee. That committee’s Chair runs the meetings and schedules consideration and votes on bills. Some committees have sub-committees with their own Chairs. The committees are the location of much of the action in the legislature. They are where the bills are studied and debated, testimony is heard and amendments are usually considered (although floor amendments are also possible). Bills pass, change and fail in committee. If a bill cannot emerge from its committee with a favorable report, it almost always dies.
Technically speaking, committee meetings are open to the public. But some committees discourage attendance at their work sessions, especially by bill advocates. It is common knowledge in the capital’s lobbying community that some Chairs will not hold votes or discussion on bills if their advocates are watching. There is never any official admonition, but merely a long-standing culture that direct observation of the legislative process is discouraged. One lobbyist tells us, “Anyone who operates in Annapolis does not recognize the difference between discouraged and forbidden.”
Those who violate the informal rule are sometimes met with an angry stare, a refusal to consider the bill in front of the violator or even a dead bill. One legislator laughs, “You can come, but you’ll be punished. They will exact street justice on you! It’s a control mechanism they use to allow bills to be killed without paying a political price.” Two old Annapolis veterans tell us it has been this way “forever.”
Another tactic used to discourage observers is snap meetings. Some committee Chairs announce their meetings on the floor, which is open to the public, but do it on short notice. Others just do it on the fly. Out-of-the-way rooms may be picked and agendas may or may not be released. Bill advocates sometimes do not know when their bills are considered and discover their fate after the fact. Subcommittee details can be even harder to discover. While committee votes are recorded (but not released on the Internet), subcommittee votes are not. Part of the lack of notice is due to the madhouse quality of some periods of the General Session, especially near the end. But some Chairs make no effort to inform the public of their committees’ activities ahead of time.
The consequences of access problems are significant. Committee votes may be recorded but deliberations are not. Lobbyists and advocates cannot witness the give and take between legislators as they discuss a bill. As one lobbyist puts it, “You don’t know who screwed you.” One legislator refers to the Chair’s “drawer,” a black hole in which doomed bills are deposited without the knowledge of their advocates. Another legislator tells us, “We have an open meetings act in Maryland for a reason and the committees should comply with its provisions. The unwritten policy of discouraging members of the public from watching voting sessions is more about protecting weak, spineless committee members than it is about serving any legitimate public interest.”
Not all committees operate in this way. We hear that some of the more open ones include Senate Finance (chaired by Senator Mac Middleton), Senate Budget and Taxation (chaired by Senator Ulysses Currie) and House Ways and Means (chaired by Delegate Sheila Hixson). Montgomery County Delegation meetings are open to the public and can be well-attended. The press go wherever they want, assuming they can find out where the committee meetings are and what they are working on.
Delegate Saqib Ali (D-39) was the only legislator to comment on these practices on-the-record. When I asked him whether some committees discouraged public attendance, he replied:It is true. It is one of the irksome things about Annapolis. At least now the House (but not the Senate) make videos of bill hearings available over the Intranet. But still, voting sessions are not available. And the presence of advocates or interested parties during voting sessions can often get a bill killed.
Another example for the legislature is the Montgomery County Council. All council and committee meeting agendas are posted on the council’s website, often a week or more in advance. All staff memos and documents are also posted on the website. Members of the public are never discouraged from attending. A bill advocate can follow legislation through committee all the way to the final vote with no pushback. It is simply the culture of the place.
We ought to be encouraging transparency and accountability, not discouraging it. The New York State Senate just launched a state-of-the-art new website that allows unprecedented public participation in the legislative process. We would do well to emulate them in this regard.... and that's about the ONLY thing we should copy about the New York State Senate!!
Ultimately, this issue comes down to whether the General Assembly will obey the spirit of Maryland’s Open Meetings Act and adhere to the values of free and fair democracy. Running a committee is a challenging job, especially in the last chaotic weeks of a General Session. Last-minute changes and quick meetings are inevitable. But the committee Chairs, and their supervisors in leadership, must make every effort to protect the right of the public to watch them deliberate at every level.
Dear readers, we are going to stay on this issue until we see some improvement. The state legislators should learn to enjoy the sunshine because, ray by ray, it will come in.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Annapolis Fit Club
Last week’s Post article on lobbyists purchasing dinners for groups of state legislators illustrates two growing threats. The first is a threat to our democracy. The second is a threat to the health of our beloved politicians. Fear not, dear readers – we at MPW have the answer to both of these problems! But I am afraid our legislators may not like it.
Let’s deal with the health threat first. Our state legislators are only human. They often have to work late, confront hordes of militant constituents and put up with unfair harassment from bloggers. The conditions are so terrible that even aspiring state legislators are driven over the edge. And on top of all that, overfeeding from eager lobbyists raises the awful specter of obesity.
Now our state legislators understand the scourge of obesity. That is why they chose to protect the rest of us from it by designating walking as the state exercise. But along come these crabcake-toting lobbyists eager to fatten them into bill-passing complacency. What would you do if you could have free lobsters, steaks, desserts and booze every single night? Come on, be honest!
A state delegate who shall remain nameless admits that obesity is running amok in Annapolis. One legendary story holds that a legislator once gained 100 pounds in a 90-day session. Some legislators keep desk drawers full of munchables to ward off boring committee sessions. And any legislator who resists eating until committee work is over can become a starving, easy mark for steak-bearing lobbyists.
Weight control is therefore mandatory for protecting our legislators’ health. We suggest that prior to every session, each legislator report for a weigh-in. Results will be publicly disclosed, perhaps even including a picture like this one of Brian Dunkleman from Celebrity Fit Club:
A similar weigh-in will be conducted after the session ends and all gains in weight and body fat will be reported. Any legislator who gains 20 pounds or more must report to Drill Sergeant Harvey Walden for immediate weight loss boot camp!
Now let’s return to the health of our democracy. Our legislators are regulated enough. They are already told too much how to behave and what to do (sometimes by the lobbyists). The answer is disclosure. We will accomplish that in two nifty steps.
First, lobbyists will once again be allowed to serve individual dinners to legislators, but they must pay for the privilege. Lobbyists must win the right to entertain these legislators by winning bids at auction. Each legislator will only be able to attend five of these dinners or they will answer to Drill Sergeant Harvey. Every dinner will be recorded and made available for download. (How many of them will resemble the infamous Bromwell dinner?) After a suitable cut is taken out for Senate President Mike Miller’s campaign account, the auction proceeds will go to purchase and maintain a fleet of personal GPS devices.
Second, these GPS devices will be ankle-shackled to all legislators, their staff and all registered lobbyists. Any time a GPS device belonging to a legislator or staffer comes within 10 feet of a device belonging to a lobbyist, that contact will be logged and disclosed on the state’s website. Every citizen will know exactly how much time each legislator spends with each and every lobbyist.
And if the GPS devices record contact between a legislator and a lobbyist between the hours of 10 PM and 5 AM, an immediate phone call and email will be sent to the legislator’s significant other!
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