Small town lobbyists
September 09, 2008 09:25 p.m. by Japhet Els
The former Legislative Director to Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) was arrested this past Monday on 10 corruption counts after giving gifts to several public officials as a reward for their "taking actions beneficial to [his] clients." Doolittle, of course, has been under the microscope after allegedly being tied to fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He's challenging a Justice Department subpoena and hired a attorney formerly with Ken Starr's office to defend himself.
The item that caught my eye in the Wikipedia entry on Doolittle was "Small Towns pressured to hire lobbyists." Doolittle's staff apparently told California municipal employees that hiring a lobbyist "wouldn't hurt." Let's go a few thousand miles north to the town of Wasillia, AK, where then-mayor Sarah Palin hired a Washington lobbyist to give her town a bit more power inside the beltway. Clearly, there seems to be the beginnings of a trend here: state elected leaders using powerful D.C. beltway lobbyists to tap into support (read "money") from the federal government. Indeed, the New York Times noted this trend back in 2006 saying that small towns, municipalities, school districts and transit authorities are, "putting lobbyists on retainer to leverage their local tax dollars into federal tax dollars." Since they aren't getting what they need from the state, they're jumping to the federal level by hiring a lobbyist and hoping to garner more federal funds for their town.
So, what's keeping every town of seven thousand citizens from hiring lobbyists? More importantly, does this change the process and structure of how federal and state governments interact? What this seems to create is a dependency not on the state's internal resources, but instead, on those of the federal government. Instead of working within each of their own state budgets, lobbyists are hired to take the interests (needs) of small town America directly to the federal government in the hopes of securing funding for projects, thus bypassing state government altogether. This threatens the very integrity of the state political structure in that it makes it indebted to Washington, D.C. It's easier to avoid the competition within your state budget when you can hire a lobbyist in D.C. and have access to a bigger pot of potential gold.
The solution to this lies in opening up government. Earmarks, the main tool used by politicians to fund local projects with federal money, can be transparent and be pushed through an approval process allowing others to see who is requesting what money for which projects. Not only will this help clean up corrupt or questionable earmarks but it will also engage people and allow them to take part in a process that has, up until now, been left to the lobbyists, politicians and special interests.
One of the first things you can do is sign our petition asking Congress to overhaul the earmark process, open it up and take the corruptive influences out. Then find three friends who will sign it with you. The only way to change the same-old politics of D.C is to challenge it. That's what we're trying to do here at Change Congress and we hope you'll join us.
The item that caught my eye in the Wikipedia entry on Doolittle was "Small Towns pressured to hire lobbyists." Doolittle's staff apparently told California municipal employees that hiring a lobbyist "wouldn't hurt." Let's go a few thousand miles north to the town of Wasillia, AK, where then-mayor Sarah Palin hired a Washington lobbyist to give her town a bit more power inside the beltway. Clearly, there seems to be the beginnings of a trend here: state elected leaders using powerful D.C. beltway lobbyists to tap into support (read "money") from the federal government. Indeed, the New York Times noted this trend back in 2006 saying that small towns, municipalities, school districts and transit authorities are, "putting lobbyists on retainer to leverage their local tax dollars into federal tax dollars." Since they aren't getting what they need from the state, they're jumping to the federal level by hiring a lobbyist and hoping to garner more federal funds for their town.
So, what's keeping every town of seven thousand citizens from hiring lobbyists? More importantly, does this change the process and structure of how federal and state governments interact? What this seems to create is a dependency not on the state's internal resources, but instead, on those of the federal government. Instead of working within each of their own state budgets, lobbyists are hired to take the interests (needs) of small town America directly to the federal government in the hopes of securing funding for projects, thus bypassing state government altogether. This threatens the very integrity of the state political structure in that it makes it indebted to Washington, D.C. It's easier to avoid the competition within your state budget when you can hire a lobbyist in D.C. and have access to a bigger pot of potential gold.
The solution to this lies in opening up government. Earmarks, the main tool used by politicians to fund local projects with federal money, can be transparent and be pushed through an approval process allowing others to see who is requesting what money for which projects. Not only will this help clean up corrupt or questionable earmarks but it will also engage people and allow them to take part in a process that has, up until now, been left to the lobbyists, politicians and special interests.
One of the first things you can do is sign our petition asking Congress to overhaul the earmark process, open it up and take the corruptive influences out. Then find three friends who will sign it with you. The only way to change the same-old politics of D.C is to challenge it. That's what we're trying to do here at Change Congress and we hope you'll join us.
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