Editorials

"An Informed Voter Is The Best Defense Against Bad Government"

"THE BILL ALLEN & FRANK PREWITT RELIEF BILL" !!!

By Dee Hubbard - February 28, 2003

Today the first hearing will be held on HB 106 - changing the definition of lobbying.  This is a sleeper.  It was introduced by the House Judiciary Committee with only one referral to the House Judiciary Committee.  As there will be only 4 Committee members in attendance today, the bill will probably be held over for another hearing.

The reason that bill is so bad has to do with the gutting of the intent of the Lobbyist Registration Act.  Now, if a company wishes to lobby on a bill, its individual employees can have face-to-face meetings with either Legislators or legislative staff for a total of four hours/individual employee in a thirty day period.  If the contact between the employees/Legislators/legislative staff goes beyond 4 hours, then the employee must register as a lobbyist.

This bill will change that 4 hour requirement to more than 40 hours in a thirty day period.  WOW!!!  This means that VECO could send down an individual employee to work a 40 hour week every thirty days and not have to ever register as a lobbyist.  In other words four employees of VECO could cover the entire Legislative Session, while never registering as lobbyists.

The other silent, but deadly, result of this is that all four of these employees could continue to hand out $500/employee in campaign contributions every year. However, if you are a registered lobbyist, you can only make campaign contributions to those Legislative candidates that are running for election in the district that you reside in.

Last year Bill Allen and two of his employees were forced to register as lobbyists.  This put a dent of $1,500 that couldn't be given in campaign and political party contributions to individual Legislators/political parties.

The same thing happened to Frank Prewitt last year.  He was forced to register as a lobbyist, and that action tied up $1,000 in campaign contributions that he and his wife couldn't hand out to various Legislative candidates/GOP party state-wide.

The Alaska State Chamber of Commerce is supporting this bill.  What is so strange about this is that the Chamber has been perfectly happy with the four hour requirement since 1978........25 years.  If this requirement is so bad according to the Chamber, why did it take 25 years to finally figure that out?  Bill Allen being forced to register last year as a lobbyist is what happened.

I'll have more to talk about later today, after the hearing.  Please look the bill over and consider testifying at the next hearing.  I've attached the bill.  You can also access it at the following site:  http://www.legis.state.ak.us/basis/get_bill.asp?session=23&bill=hb106

Thanks for listening.  I hope you can help me work to defeat this or get it amended so the intent behind the Lobbyist Registration Act is not destroyed.

Before you make a decision, think about how that decision will affect the children living during the seventh generation from today.

 

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