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December 9, 2024

‘Not a dirty word’: State Ethics Office tracks lobbyists; $34.8M spent in 2024 as of mid-Nov.

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Office of State Ethics Executive Director Pete Lewandowski.
By David Krechevsky
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If you ask Pete Lewandowski, executive director of the Office of State Ethics in Hartford, he’ll tell you that lobbying is not “a dirty word.”

“We’re trying to break that stereotype out there,” Lewandowski said during a recent interview with Hartford Business Journal. “Lobbying is a constitutionally protected form of speech.”

In fact, it’s among the freedoms cited in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Along with the freedom of religion, speech, the press and to peaceably assemble, it guarantees the right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

That petitioning can take a few different forms; lobbying is one of them.

Of course, like anything else, there are bad actors who try to abuse the system. That’s where the state ethics office comes in.

Among other things, the office’s 16-person staff regulates and enforces the rules on the people and organizations that register each year to lobby state legislators and agencies. It also conducts audits and imposes penalties on those who fail to comply.

“Our role is simply to provide transparency to the process,” Lewandowski said.

The parameters

Under state law, anyone who spends $3,000 or more on lobbying must register and file regular financial reports.

That $3,000 threshold covers a broad range of things an individual or organization can spend money on as they attempt to inform and/or influence elected and appointed officials.

“The bulk of these expenditures are related to … payments to lobbyists to spend endless hours at the Capitol to monitor legislation and so on,” Lewandowski said.

It also includes costs related to hiring subject-matter experts to testify before a committee, including not only an expert’s fee but the cost of transportation, room and board, he said.

The state also tracks spending on marketing and advertising, including the cost of entertaining legislators or state officials.

“If a lobbyist holds a legislative reception at the Capitol during the session, those costs have to be reported,” Lewandowski said.

There are exceptions to the regulations on who must register as a lobbyist. An example is the “five-hour rule,” which allows corporate executives to meet with public officials or legislators to discuss an issue for up to five hours before the lobbying registration rule kicks in.

The rules don’t apply to municipal officials who meet with legislators or public officials as part of their job.

The numbers

There are penalties for failing to comply with the rules, including a $10,000 fine for each violation. Depending on the nature of the violation, criminal charges are also possible. There is also the potential to be barred from lobbying for two years.

The ethics office released a report on Nov. 19 stating that, based on its current lobbyist registrations, “there are 1,131 registered client lobbyists (people hired to lobby on behalf of others), 560 in-house communicators (lobbyists directly employed by an organization) and 193 individual communicators.”

In addition, based on disclosure statements, $34.8 million was spent on lobbying from January through mid-November 2024. Of that total, $33.1 million was direct compensation for lobbyists, it said.

Lewandowski, who served as a staff attorney in the compliance division before being named executive director in August 2019, says lobbyists generally comply with the rules

“Lobbying is a reputational activity,” he said. “If you sully your reputation, guess what, … your clients will go away from you.”

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