Monday, November 15, 2004
The state Supreme Court struck down an earlier law in 2002.
HARRISBURG (AP) -- Requiring lobbyists and their clients to publicly report how much money they spend trying to influence public policy is a way of life in most states. But Pennsylvania's last lobbyist-disclosure law is a memory that is now more than two years old.
As the current General Assembly prepares to go out of business in barely two weeks, that memory is likely to get a little more moldy.
A pair of House and Senate bills to restore a lobbyist disclosure law like the one the state Supreme Court struck down in August 2002 appear fatally stalled by a combination of politics and indifference, as legislators take up other topics ranging from Sunday beer sales to prospective pay raises for themselves.
"I'm becoming increasingly pessimistic," said Rep. John Maher, R-Allegheny, the sponsor of the House bill, which has languished since it was reported out of committee last March. "At this stage of a legislative session, the challenge is [how to get] 10 pounds of sugar in a five-pound bag."
"The mountain got a lot steeper in the last few days," agreed Barry Kauffman, state director of Common Cause, which helped develop both bills. "It's a real shame. There is absolutely no excuse for not having a lobbyist disclosure law in place before the next session starts in January."
In 2001, the last full year that the old law was in effect, 800 registered lobbyists reported spending nearly $52 million to shape, pass or kill legislation. Since the Supreme Court ruling, the state Senate has run its own disclosure system for lobbying directed at senators, but the House has not reciprocated, nor does Gov. Ed Rendell require disclosure of lobbying activity in the executive branch.
Animosity
The Senate disclosure bill has been snared by animosity between its sponsor, Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Jubelirer and Sen. Vincent J. Fumo, who with Senate Minority Leader Robert J. Mellow, D-Lackawanna, has introduced amendments Jubelirer says would prevent his son from continuing to earn a living as a Philadelphia media consultant.
A spokesman for Jubelirer, R-Blair, said the latest amendments stem partly from an incident during a debate last month over Republican-backed changes to the slot-machine legalization law that eliminated some provisions Fumo wanted. Fumo became angry when Democrats were prevented from offering their own amendments, calling Jubelirer and another GOP leader a derogatory term for homosexuals.
"We passed the corrective gaming bill and they didn't like it," said J. Andrew Crompton, Jubelirer's counsel.
A spokesman for Fumo, D-Philadelphia, said the amendments -- one to expand the definition of lobbyist to include certain media consultants, the other to bar members of lawmakers' immediate families from lobbying the Legislature -- are intended to close loopholes in the bill, not to hurt Jubelirer's son.
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