Busy week for paid lobbyists and volunteer advocates!

A wide range of paid lobbyists and volunteers from community based organizations paying close attention to the economists' projections at last weeks revenue hearing at Senate Ways and Means, got another piece of news from Senator Marc Pacheco who announced that the Senate intended to debate ethics and lobbying reform legislation on May 14. The day after ther Senate Ways and Means releases it's budget recommendations and one day before amendments are due.

Not unexpected news, since Secretary Bill Galvin had released a much improved lobbyist tracking system that folks were already testing to find themselves and see if the lobbyists they knew were working against them were properly registered. (Yes, a good user-friendly lobbyist search system is critical to campaign planning and implementation.)

The paid lobbyists and volunteer advocates paying attention to this critical reform effort have been tracking carefully what they considered the overly broad "definition" of lobbying that was in the Governors' proposal and had been retained in the House version.

This definition applied to for-profit AND non-profit large and small employers and both had shared with the House Ethics Committee their concerns that if they had to register everyone who had been involved in strategic research and preparing fact sheets the fees would be excessive and the reporting requirements would be burdensome. 

Because we believe that transparency, enabled by user-friendly searchable data bases, is key to encouraging and supporting civic engagement and accountability, we are encouraging ONE Mass network members to talk with their Senator about two things next week.

1. We support a clear unambiguous definition of lobbying activities and urge that procedures be set in place to mitigate the registration costs for small non profit organizations with a total budget under $1 Million.
    
2. We ask for your support for for a balanced and adequate package of new revenues that both addresses the structural deficit and taxes and begin to stablize the critical public structures that keep our communities and our state healthy and strong.
    

p.s. When this particular reform gets through the Senate, the conference committee, and is finally-signed by the Governor, we will continue our work with Common Cause, not only to continue to track the changes in the bill, but also to develop a series of on-site and online trainings to help paid lobbyists and volunteer advocates be in full compliance. One of our models comes from the experienced folk in  New Hampshire .