Changes to lobbyist rules may lead to less transparency

Government watchdogs say there's an increase in lobbyists terminating their registrations with the federal government, which could lead to less transparency about who's trying to influence Congress and the White House. According to a study released today by OMB Watch and the Center for Responsive Politics, there were more than 1400 lobbyists who terminated their federal registrations during the second quarter of this year. That’s compared to just 300 in the same period last year. And while the number of these so-called "deregistrations" is up, the number of newly registered lobbyists is also down. Lee Mason is the director of Nonprofit Speech Rights for OMB Watch. He spoke to FSRN earlier today.

"We think the evidence is really kind of inconclusive, except to say that there was a significant spike in that second quarter. We can draw some inferences from the activity that was going on in that period. Certainly the health care debate was going on. There was a lot going on around climate change. So there might have been a lot of lobbyist activities and there was a reason there were a lot of lobbyists engaged in communications during that period – equally that might account for the number of deregistrations. Maybe as the bills got closer and closer to being passed many of the lobbyists decided to terminate their registrations with different clients."

But, Lee adds, the report does show that the requirements for reporting lobbyist information are weak and need to be improved.

“We made a number of recommendations to the administration about what we would like to see listed on the forms that would really clearly identify who was registering, what kind of client they’re working with and when is the termination really a termination of your registration and we think that they should probably have another category."

OMB Watch says people who have terminated their registrations as lobbyists could still be doing the same job, but under other titles, like senior advisor. Researchers say the de-registrations could be an unintended consequence of the Obama Administration's executive order enacted earlier this year which placed restrictions on former lobbyists who wanted to work for the White House. Another restriction limited lobbyists' communications with the White House while the stimulus and TARP funds were being allocated. To see a copy of the report, go to opensecrets.org.