At first sight, it would seem rather biased of me to write a column condemning a proposed lobbyist registration ordinance that will go before the city’s Elections Oversight Committee on Tuesday.
After all, I’m a lobbyist of sorts.
Soon though, it won’t be just lobbyists being referred to as “lobbyists”—it will also be non-profit professionals, business people, or anybody else who is paid to make sure that the Long Beach City Council doesn’t ride roughshod over their ability to perform their jobs.
The proposed ordinance considers a lobbyist “any person or entity who (1) receives or is entitled to receive one thousand dollars ($1,000 .00) or more in economic consideration in a calendar month, other than reimbursement for reasonable travel services; or (2) whose duties as a salaried employee, officer or director of any corporation, organization or association include communication directly or through agents with City official, for the purpose of lobbying.”
According to the city, Lobbying means “any oral or written communication (including an electronic communication) to a City official, made directly or indirectly, in order to influence or persuade legislative or administrative action.”
To be fair, the ordinance tries to weed out all concerned citizens from being considered lobbyists by eliminating things like requests for municipal information, ministerial communications, RFP submissions and responses, communications between the city and the news media, and other routine city communications.
That still leaves a considerable amount of people, most notably non-profit professionals, who are often involved with issues before the City Council, but who spend much their time trying to clean up our neighborhoods through civic action. If this ordinance passes, they (and their employers) would be required to file annually in a lobbyist registry, submit quarterly reports in regards to their activities, and pay an annual fee.
So why am I against this ordinance? Because I love my city, that’s why. As a member of a local non-profit Board of Directors, and active with dozens of others throughout the years, I realize what an asset it is to have an Executive Director or other paid staffer intimately involved with the workings of Long Beach.
That’s one of the reasons why Long Beach is so great—our non-profits are many and the people who lead them have influence at the highest reaches of our city government.
You can read the whole text of the ordinance here, but in my opinion, what Long Beach doesn’t need right now are more levels of bureaucracy.