1. Los Angeles has a corruption problem. The article below is clear and dramatic proof of the problem. But this article makes a faulty presentation, implying that the problem is lobbyist, citizens that are paid to present a case (on behalf of other private citizens) to city officials.
2. The problem is the City of Los Angeles, and government, itself. The mere existence of this problem is a symptom that government carrys power in a form that it shouldn’t.
3. Although registering of lobbyists might not be such a bad idea, the real monitoring should be of the council, and the registration of the lobbyists should be a tool to clearly and publicly note which council member has been influenced, and whose vote may be conflicted.
4. Neither lobbyist nor council should be in favor of this. After all, the system greases both palms – the council receives support for future campaigns, and maybe some perks on the side, while the lobbyist and their representatives enjoy privilege within city government.
5. The only rational solution is simply to remove the power from government’s hands. Individuals are quite happy to live their lives without city government influence.
6. Example 1 from the article. Harvey Englander represents hotels near the airport. He lobbied for ‘living wage law’, probably a lower minimum wage for his employees than the law would have demanded. A city government enacting this law is an abuse of freedom – primarily for low-skilled workers, who have a reduced ability to lower their wages in order to do work at their skill level.
7. Example 2. Land developers. Again, city control of land development is a simple abuse of power. Land owners have the right to do what they want with their land. The city should have no legal say. However, the residents in the immediate area might have a say. This is why we have a civil judicial dispute system. Property right go with land ownership.
8. As an aside, government influence of land development, often a progressive cornerstone, is anti-environmental, anti-poor, and harms almost every supposed class that the progressive movement ostensibly protects. It removes land control from people’s hands, and places it in the hands of the few, rich and influential powers who have the government eye.
9. The “LA Alliance for a New Economy” is a further example of government control gone wrong. Among their ‘victories’ was using government influence in 2004 to drive away a Walmart from the city of Inglewood. This meant that residents (particularly the poorest, without transportation) had less places to work, and fewer, more expensive choices for daily necessities.
10. The Lobbyists equating the badge to the wearing of the Yellow Star…
11. Salaried employees in many different professions keep hourly time records. In my experience, public accountants, consulting groups, and law firms are staffed with employees who, while on salary, meticulously document time spent on each individual task for each individual client. David Tristan’s statement otherwise is not reasonable. Tracking hourly time would not be an unreasonable request to make to a firm.
12. Again, further evidence of corruption is the apparent exemption of non-profit groups. Unpaid lobbyists are one thing – they directly represent private citizens. But lobbying by non-profit organizations are merely concentrated efforts by particular citizens donating to an organization in the hope of gathering special influence over government decisions. They are no different than businesses in this aspect. If this is unfair to you, then I suggest you level the playing field by removing government influence that keeps non-profits from growing according to the support they receive from private citizens (which in turn, comes from the good and efficient work that they do!)
13. And to the lobbyist who wants to trade disclosure for no metal detector: Nice try. Potential terrorism is an entirely different article.
L.A. Council may require lobbyists to wear badges
“It’s another attempt by the Ethics Commission to make it undesirable to be a lobbyist, and it has no public policy benefit,” said lobbyist Steve Afriat, whose firm represents billboard companies and other businesses.
Others have gone so far as to liken the proposed badge to the Star of David imposed on Jews in Nazi-era Germany.
“I refuse to wear the equivalent of a yellow arm band,” said lobbyist Harvey Englander, whose firm has represented hotels near Los Angeles International Airport that fought a new living wage law for their employees.
Ethics officials have been taken aback by the references to anti-Semitism, saying their proposal has a valid and inoffensive policy goal. Elected officials have complained privately that they can’t always tell if the person talking to them is getting paid to sway them on an issue, said David Tristan, the commission’s director of program operations.
The badge “was never meant as something negative,” he said. “In fact, we were hoping it could be viewed as something positive, where people could get familiar with who these people are.”
The four-page lobbying proposal will be reviewed over the next two months and would ultimately need to be approved by the Los Angeles City Council. Although some of the changes are minor, one major objective is to help officials and employees identify unregistered lobbyists who are working on behalf of city contractors, real estate developers or other special interests.
Some within the city’s lobbying ranks — mostly those who have gone to the trouble of filling out the Ethics Commission’s extensive paperwork — have argued that there are a number of unregistered lobbyists who have gotten a free pass from the city’s enforcement agency.
Former Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre did not register as a lobbyist until last year, after The Times reported that he had spoken to five elected officials and seven city departments regarding various companies and issues. One nonprofit group, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, registered in mid-January, weeks after city officials received a public records request from a law firm asking for the number of times the group had met privately with the city’s elected officials.
Under the current law, lobbyists are not required to register with the Ethics Commission until they have spent at least 30 hours working on a particular issue in a single three-month period. The new proposal would require lobbyists to identify themselves when they have made a single contact — for pay — with an elected official or other city decision-maker.
“People that are on salary don’t keep hourly records,” Tristan said. “They’re on salary, so a one-contact rule would basically mean that if you have one contact, you’re basically a lobbyist.”
Such a change would probably require registration by figures such as attorney Mickey Kantor, a former federal cabinet secretary who did not register as a lobbyist even though he spoke to city harbor commissioners three times last year on behalf of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, according to port documents.
Lobbying firms are still pushing for the city to require that unpaid groups, such as homeowners associations, register as well. And business leaders have voiced irritation about a plan to exempt some nonprofit groups from registering, saying that it would keep the public from understanding how certain public decisions are made.
Los Angeles is not the only city looking to tighten its lobbying rules. San Diego put a similar law into effect on Jan. 1, lowering the earning threshold for requiring a lobbyist to register from $2,730 every three months to $1.
That change brought to light a number of unregistered lobbying clients, said Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, a nonprofit group that plans to weigh in on the Los Angeles lobbying proposal.
“Qualcomm [Stadium] had never registered before. SeaWorld had never registered before. And the unions never registered before,” he said.
Despite the uproar over badges in Los Angeles, at least one lobbyist sounded willing to make a deal on the issue. Afriat said he would be willing to wear the new identification, as long as he no longer has to pass through the metal detectors that greet every person who enters City Hall.
“You let me get through security without emptying my pockets, and I’ll wear anything,” he said. “
