California Reformers Struggle Against Lobbyist-to-Lawmaker Texting
BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, March 3 2010
Across the country we've been seeing good government reformers slowly coming to the terms with the fact that existing electronic discolsure laws are about as effective at ensuring transparency as a water gun is at putting out a house fire. They're the wrong tool for the job, mostly because they've stayed stagnent while the way that people use e-mail, cell phones, SMS text messaging, and more has rapidly evolved; we've reported, for example, on efforts by open government advocates to deal with the device-to-device BlackBerry messages popular in many government buildings but which largely fall outside the range of public disclosure laws.
Which brings us to Sacremento. There, reports the San Jose Mercury News' Denis C. Theriault, the State Assembly's brand new Democratic speaker, John Perez, has made waves by saying in his inaugural address on Monday that, from this point forward, text messages between lobbyists and lawmakers are "banned" during floor sessions or committee business. Here, exactly, were Perez's words:
Starting today, text messages from lobbyists are banned while we're on this floor or in committee doing the people's business. Californians expect us to pay full attention to the issues and to each other -- and they deserve to know who is involved in the debate. They need not worry that special interest lobbyists are secretly sending messages of opposition or support to us as we deliberate.
That might come across as an encouraging development, but some critics quoted in Theriault's piece are appropriately worried that a death-to-lobbyists'-texts edict but be satisfyingly full of sound and fury, but, really, not all that meaningful.
Better, they say, would be for Sacramento to do what the San Jose city council just did:
[T]he San Jose City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a policy that watchdogs consider one of the state's most far-reaching when it comes to disclosing text messages and other electronic communications about public business -- even if sent on private devices or accounts.
The city policy requires council members to disclose communications received on their personal e-mail or cell phones during meetings -- either from lobbyists or from others with a financial interest in the matter under discussion.
The concern is that if these electronic disclosure laws aren't made both nimble and powerful, then savvy folks will just adapt their electronic practices to avoid them. Why would that be a concern? Well...
Lobbyists, as they filed out of the Assembly chambers after Perez's remarks Monday, were joking with one another about the ways they could find to escape the ban.