The Chamber of Commerce recently used the lobbying law to rally their troops. They also fought hard to make sure that as many of their members as possible were exempt from having to disclose their lobbying efforts to affect City policy. Having been quite effective in convincing the mayor’s office and the majority of the City Council to go along with their plan, why do their members need specialized /individual training?
My curiosity about this began on November 22 when the Common Council members got the following e-mail from City Attorney Michael May:
Under the recently amended lobbying ordinance, training is to be provided twice every year. Working with the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce, our office recently put on two programs on the new ordinance. These were well attended by representatives of the Madison business community.
A third program is scheduled for Thursday, December 15, from 10 am to noon, in room 260, MMB. The Chamber again is assisting in notifying interested parties of this training. If you or someone in your department thinks this program would be of interest, please contact Connie Shomberg at the Chamber so that we have an idea of the number of attendees.
Connie’s email address is cshomberg@greatermadisonchamber.com
The program will be recorded by Madison City Channel for future viewing.
I thought it was odd that I didn’t know about the first two trainings, but didn’t think much about it until a friend, who is a lobbyist for another organization sent me the following e-mail:
I’m a registered lobbyist and heard absolutely nothing about the first two trainings and certainly have not received an “invitation” to the upcoming one. Very considerate to give me just one option – during business hours, no less – to attend the training.
So then, I checked with my staff Megin (Hicks) McDonell, who happens to registered both as a lobbyist for the Tenant Resource Center and as an individual principal. She hadn’t received any notice of any of the meetings either, either at work as a lobbyist or at home as a principal.
So then, I checked with the City Attorney to find out who the notices went out to. On November 28th, he told me:
Chamber is sending invitations to all registered lobbyists and principals and I notified City people for the third one. I may use a different method next year, but this seemed to work OK given the time limits we had to work under.
Obviously, based on talking to my friend and the my staff, that didn’t happen so I asked him to check into it. On November 29, the City Attorney got back to me with this explanation:
The Chamber did not include lobbyists/principals on the notices for the first two. Why? I’m not sure, but I think it related to the timing of setting the dates and not having time to make the mailings. I didn’t find out that they weren’t notified until just before the training.
They are sending out mailings to lobbyists for the one on December 15.
It is also going to be available for review from City Channel.
At this point, I pointed out to the City Attorney that having the Chamber contact their members about these trainings was probably the least effective way to reach those most impacted by the ordinance. After all, it is the developers and non-profits that are most likely to have to register and very few of them are members of the Chamber of Commerce. Arranging trainings with the real estate industry related groups and non-profits that get money from the City would probably have been much more effective. This just seemed odd to me.
Meantime, this week my staff got notices of the next training. The notice said that it was “The City of Madison and GMCC Lobbying Ordinance Training”. Included in this notice there is the following language:
Registration is Required: Please e-mail ordinancetraining@greatermadisonchamber.com if you are interested in attending. A confirmation e-mail, including directions will be sent out to you.
Deadline for registration is Tuesday, December 13.
Now something new was bothering me. Why do you need to register in advance for a City meeting? And why would you have to register through the Chamber of Commerce? Was this some type of membership recruitment tool for the Chamber? If so, why was the City cooperating in this way? What kind of government holds a public meeting and requires members to register through the local Chamber of Commerce to attend and relies on the Chamber of Commerce to send out the notices?
Oh, and by the way. I just talked to my friend. She still hasn’t gotten notice of the training. And neither have the two other registered lobbyists that she is in contact with.
