Lobbyists write, lawmakers debate

04/24/2006

Bills often are crafted by those who will benefit

BY RACHEL E. STASSEN-BERGER
Pioneer Press

It may come as a surprise to those outside the state Capitol, but it’s commonplace inside the marble and granite walls: Hired guns and other non-elected officials often write bills.

The practice, in which outside groups’ staffers work with legislative staff to craft legislative measures, helps lobbyists dictate language they’d like to see enacted. But lobbyists alone can’t make their will law; they need sympathetic lawmakers’ permission and backing.

While excessive lobbyist power is a concern here and elsewhere, the custom of letting lobbyists draw up legislation raises few eyebrows at the Minnesota Capitol. Still, when lobbyists are too intimately involved in legislators’ work and finances, it has led to state and national scandal.

In Minnesota, anti-abortion and abortion-rights organizations often have friendly lawmakers introduce desired bills. Counties, cities, townships and school districts, individually and through their associations, spend millions to get favorable measures, such as local sales-tax permissions, passed. And lawmakers wouldn’t dream of crafting stadium legislation without consulting teams on every aspect of the bills.

The Office of the Revisor, which helps put the technical, legal language to legislative intent, even has rules about when it will — and will not — work with outsiders in writing a bill.

The thrust of the rules, said Revisor of Statutes Michele Timmons, is that lawmakers are always in control. Lobbyists can work with the revisor only if they have specific permission from lawmakers. Even then, once the bill is written, it goes back to the lawmakers, not the lobbyists.

Lobbyists and other advocates often are called to testify about measures they’ve crafted and sometimes have more detailed information about the impact of one measure or another than the lawmaker who is sponsoring it.

But the practice doesn’t grant lobbyists too much power, said lawmakers, government watchdogs and legislative staffers.

“I don’t think they usurp our power,” said Rep. Fran Bradley, R-Rochester, who sometimes carries measures that represent lobbyists’ desires.

For example, he sponsored a measure that Mayo Clinic lobbyists drafted that allows, rather than mandates, a foreign medical school graduate to use the Federation of State Medical Boards’ credentials verification service to practice in Minnesota. It’s a change Bradley, a former IBM engineer, would be unlikely to come up with on his own but that matters much to Mayo, which is in his district. But that doesn’t mean he just accepts lobbyists’ bills without reviewing every detail, he said.

Despite outside groups’ intimate involvement, they have no guarantee their carefully crafted language will become law. As measures wend their way through the process — from drafting to introduction to committee and floor passage to conference committee — they may change significantly.

“It’s never completely, exactly the way it started out,” Bradley said.

Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, said he has no problem with lobbyists crafting legislation.

“I don’t know that there’s anything inherently wrong with lobbyists being involved in drafting bills,” said Marty, who has earned a reputation for pushing ethical-government issues during his decade in the Senate.

But he does have a problem if those lobbyists wield too much power over lawmakers.

“It’s inappropriate when elected officials are giving them a free hand as in, ‘You tell us what you want and we’ll give it to you,’ “ he said. “It’s not on who’s actually writing the language but who is controlling the debate.”

Too-cozy relations with lobbyists recently have created dust-ups in other states.

In Wisconsin, Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, a Democrat, sued two Republican lawmakers because they shared drafts of concealed-weapons legislation with a lobbyist from the National Rifle Association but not with the attorney general. That suit is still pending.

And in North Carolina, a lottery company’s lobbyists and staffers have been under investigation after charges that they helped write a favorable law for that state’s first lottery, in part through intimate connections to the House speaker.

Minnesota hasn’t seen such turmoil of late. And legislators, lobbyists and government watchdogs haven’t said the power of making laws has shifted from elected officials to lobbyists because of the practice.

That does not mean lobbyists don’t have the power to work with lawmakers to pass laws that work to their advantage, whether or not they explicitly draft bill language.

Businesses and municipalities often work with elected officials to get helpful financial matters into law. A few years ago, for instance, two groups of physicians spent $500,000 on lobbying in a fight over access to the lucrative cancer-treatment business. The outcome: One group that was operating a for-profit clinic in Maplewood effectively was barred from opening any similar clinics outside hospitals through 2008. Last week, the Minnesota Senate extended that prohibition through 2013.

David Schultz, a Hamline University professor who teaches ethics, legislative process and public policy, said it is difficult to make a pure case that lobbyists are too involved.

“My view on lobbyist influence is that there are no black-and-white statements,” he said.

Still, he said, questions remain about when the balance of power shifts from the people’s representative to a hired gun. He believes the Minnesota Legislature doesn’t always “operate at the high end of independent judgment,” in part because lawmakers are only in St. Paul part time and have limited research staff.

“The question is who is driving the legislation: Is it the legislator or the lobbyist?” Schultz said. “The test to me, I think, ought to be … are legislators exercising any independent judgment in reviewing this legislation? And if they are, then the power balance hasn’t shifted. If they are just acting as a conduit for the lobbyist … legislators have pretty much given away their independent judgment.”