News

Five to Four

by Josh Feit

Over the course of spring 2003, as the $3.2 billion Boeing tax break made its way through the state legislature, Boeing lobbyist Anthony Anton wined and dined at least 20 state lawmakers. One dinner at Jean-Pierre's restaurant in Olympia, attended by liberal Democratic legislators such as Seattle Rep. Helen Sommers and Dem majority leader Lynn Kessler--who ended up voting for the corporate giveaway--set Anton back $350. All this info about behind-the-scenes influence is readily available on reports that lobbyists are required to file with the state.

Unfortunately, if you want to discover the same sort of tidbits about city lobbyists, you're SOL. Lobbyists at the city are not required to fill out disclosure forms like the one Boeing filed. The conundrum with making lobbyists register, according to Polly Grow at the city's Ethics and Elections Commission, is that identifying lobbyists is like defining obscenity: You know it when you see it, but it's tricky to define. How do you technically draw the distinction between a concerned citizen and a slick lobbyist without chilling political participation?

Well, state regulators don't have much trouble figuring it out. When I asked officials at the state Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) what barometer they used, they had one word: "Money."

"How much are they spending on lobbying?" the PDC's Doug Ellis asks. "How much are they getting paid?" In Olympia, lobbyists are required to disclose who's paying them, how much, and what they're spending on lobbying. It's the same at the federal level.

The bottom line: When someone's getting paid to influence public policy, the public has the right to know who's footing the bill. A current example: The anti-monorail group OnTrack is meeting with council members regularly to derail the elevated-public-transit project that voters approved in 2002. It sure would be nice to know exactly who funded the fancy anti-monorail briefing binders that OnTrack handed out to council members in May. If it turns out that Second Avenue property owners like Equity Office Properties (a Chicago-based Fortune 500 firm) are funding OnTrack's activity to kill a local transit project, the public should know.

And it's not just anti-monorail folks who are shielded from disclosure. The pro-monorail group, Monorail Now, is also lobbying without disclosing. Ditto the whole slew of individuals and groups that met with council members recently: people like Dan McGrady from Paul Allen's influential development company Vulcan and George Griffin of consulting firm G3. (I only gleaned these names by looking over last week's sign-in sheet at the front desk outside council chambers.)

The public has the right to know whose being paid to lobby council and shape public policy. That point was unavoidable when I glanced up from the council sign-in sheet and caught a glimpse of the silver pen jutting out of the pencil jar on the receptionist's desk. In big letters it spelled "Vulcan."

josh@thestranger.com