Lobbying disclosures leave public in the dark
Every three months for three years, when federal law compelled the Carmen Group to publicly describe its federal lobbying efforts on behalf of Xavier University of Louisiana, the firm used the vaguely worded phrase: “Hurricane Katrina related recovery issues.”
It’s akin to calling Hurricane Katrina a weather event.
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The firm’s true objective was to “devise and implement strategy” to convince federal officials they should forgive $130 million worth of emergency loans the U.S. Department of Education gave the storm-battered university.
The lobbying gambit met with some success: Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., successfully included a loan modification plan for the university in an omnibus spending bill — something Xavier University President Norman Francis publicly lauded as “critical and important.”
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The Carmen Group later praised itself as “instrumental in drafting and securing legislation … which provided for loan modification relief” for Xavier University it valued at more than $45 million.
In keeping with the Lobbying Disclosure Act, the public should seemingly know of a lobbyist’s attempts to secure forgiveness or modification of a taxpayer-funded loan worth tens of millions of dollars.
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But were it not for a lawsuit, which detailed a dispute between the university and the firm, the public would be unaware of what Carmen was really hired to do, despite a law requiring that it describe its activities with specificity.
The Lobbying Disclosure Act says “public confidence in the integrity of government” will increase when “the identity and the extent of the efforts of paid lobbyists to influence federal officials” is disclosed.
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Apart from the case of Carmen and Xavier, details contained in a half-dozen other lobbying proposals and service contracts obtained by the Center for Public Integrity through state and federal court filings as well as freedom of information requests reveal exponentially more information about lobbying efforts than what’s contained in quarterly reports submitted to the U.S. Senate and U.S. House.
Reforms fall short
Lobbyists seldom get into trouble for filing such a paucity of information despite the 2007 passage of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, in the aftermath of the Jack Abramoff scandal.
There’s more to this story. Click here to read the rest at the Center for Public Integrity.
This story is part of Consider the Source. Seeking to ‘out’ shadowy political organizations flourishing in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. Click here to read more stories in this investigation.
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Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
