House bill 1149 needs your support
I'm coming to you this morning not as the partisan hack I usually am, but as a citizen of Colorado. The good news is that Democratic Representative Morgan Carroll's HB1149 is still alive. It has been moved out of appropriations to the judiciary committee. That bad news is that just about every greedy hack in the Colorado government is trying to kill it.
The only way to make sure HB 1149 is passed is for every citizen of Colorado to contact his or her house representative and makes clear that we, the people, expect support for HB 1149. And then call the people on the judiciary committee and tell them to remove the poison pills from the bill so that the legislature has no excuse for voting it down.
If you don't, don't ever complain about how money is ruining our government again.
The only way to make sure HB 1149 is passed is for every citizen of Colorado to contact his or her house representative and makes clear that we, the people, expect support for HB 1149. And then call the people on the judiciary committee and tell them to remove the poison pills from the bill so that the legislature has no excuse for voting it down.
If you don't, don't ever complain about how money is ruining our government again.
2 Comments:
I just called my Rep., Betty Boyd.
When this thing gets to the Senate, I will call my Senator, Betty Boyd.
The latest version of the bill is here and has seven sections.
Sections 6 and 7 are effective date rules, and sections 3-5 bar public officials from becoming professional lobbiests within a year after leaving office.
Sections 1 and 2 do four different things. They require fuller disclosure of who a lobbiest works for (Section 1 and part of Section 2), they require disclosure of business relationship between a lobbiest and a person lobbied (part of Section 2), and they require disclosure of contributions made by lobbiests over $100 (part of Section 2), and they require disclosures of bill numbers and positions on legislation (part of Section 2).
The disclosure of bill numbers and positions in the part of HB 1149 which I have issues with. Bills change dramatically over the course of the session, positions are typically fluid and negotiable, this kind of disclosure discourages the kind of negotiation which is helpful in getting good legislation (since variance between a stated position and the one actually taken in the nature of a compromise, could be viewed as a disclosure violation) and this kind of regulation imposes huge paperwork burdens without providing reasonable returns.
The donation disclosures are basically redundant, but not horrible. The revolving door provisions and the disclosure of who a lobbiest works for are not big paperwork problems and make a good deal of sense.
I'm ambivalent about the business relationship issue, largely because business relationship is ill defined and there is an issue of materiality, and also because it may encourage partianship of lobbiests in terms of their business dealings.
A more focused bill would be better.
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