Local Government And Lobbyists

When people think of lobbyists they see men with big cigars taking legislators out to fancy restaurants and whispering in their ear about a favored company or project. While lobbyists have been throughout the history of the U.S. a key part of the government process they are seen as something negative and bad. They seemingly taint the process of passing laws perhaps illustrated best by the movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” where a good man fights against corruption and special interests.

While certainly lobbyists have earned this reputation as illustrated by the whole PMA Group scandal working its way through the system they are part of the U.S. form of government. One aspect of lobbying though that recently has come under serious criticism is when a government entity lobbies the legislature. This is mainly done at the state level as the Federal Government’s Executive Branch tends to have rules preventing the various Departments and Agencies directly lobbying Congress.

A perfect example is this article from the Star News in Minnesota discussing that in 2008 “Local government shelled out more money for lobbyists and lobbying…than the year before”. The goal of course is to direct state funds to the various localities and government entities. To make matters worse in many eyes is that the local government often hired contractors to do this so they were spending tax dollars on efforts to funnel more tax dollars their way.

In Alabama and Mississippi there have been major issues with the states’ higher education system using lobbyists to gain more money. The major issue with all this is that money is being taken from needs to fund attempts to get more money even if it is not necessarily a need.

Whether these types of lobbyists are successful in the current fiscal situation facing most states is a major aspect of all this. There is only so much money to go around and most states and cities are facing major revenue shortfalls. This means that there is only so much money to go around and it should go to critical needs. It is hard to argue that this town needs the money more then others; or the rest of the services that government provide.

This is why it is so hard to reduce government spending. Once a program is established there are many people at all levels with a vested interest in keeping it going. To the point that they will take their hard fought for dollars and hire men with big cigars to whisper in legislator ears at fancy restaurants.