QUESTION
What education is required for city employees on lobbying laws and reporting requirements?
1:51:51
·
136 sec
Council Member Lincoln Restler inquires if there is any education or training required for city employees on lobbying laws and reporting requirements to help identify and report unregistered lobbying activities. City Clerk Michael McSweeney responds that there is currently no training provided for city employees regarding lobbying regulations.
- Restler suggests implementing training for those targeted by lobbying to better inform the Clerk's Office about unreported lobbying.
- McSweeney acknowledges that such training would be beneficial.
- Restler proposes examining his own interactions over the past few months as a case study to identify any unreported lobbying activities.
Lincoln Restler
1:51:51
I'd like to ask about kind of the topic of unregistered lobbyists, which I think was a major goal of the 06 in 2013 lobbying reform and and my sense is is we made some meaningful progress at that time on this issue.
1:52:03
I'd imagine it's impossible to estimate this gail of unregistered lobbying or to know how many people may be lobbying without, you know, properly filing with with the clerk's office.
1:52:14
And just kind of wanted to think about it from a little bit of a different direction.
1:52:19
Is there education that's required of city employees?
1:52:22
On lobbying laws and reporting requirements.
1:52:25
Do you think if people like us and folks on the mayor side and and city agencies were better trained.
1:52:34
You know, if the targets of lobbying activity were better trained, we could help ensure that we could help flag for you all, potentially unreported activity.
Michael McSweeney
1:52:46
We believe it would be helpful because, you know, there's no we don't conduct training of city employees with respect to lobbyists.
1:52:54
So it would definitely be helpful in our opinion.
Lincoln Restler
1:52:58
Great.
1:52:58
I think it's something that we should think a lot about, about whether they're opportunities for us to require more training of the targets of lobbying so that we can do a better job of informing you all.
1:53:10
I think it would be an interesting case study to look at who I've talked to in the last 4 months in who reported it to you and who who is missing.
1:53:21
And I imagine that there's quite a few people that are.
1:53:27
We really appreciate the data that's included in the annual report and the data that's accessible in open data.
1:53:36
I guess is it possible to update the data from the clerk's office on the open data portal on a more frequent basis?
Michael McSweeney
1:53:48
In preparation for the hearing, I reached out to our contact at OTI, and they you know, they they would be more than willing to to look at it.
1:53:57
I mean, we we've talked about doing it, and it's something that, you know, they're they'll be happy to look into.
1:54:02
I mean, they have the same resources shoes that every city agency has, but they're definitely willing.
Lincoln Restler
1:54:07
Great.