Suburbs, cities facing high costs try new tack: Hiring federal lobbyists to pry dollars out of Washington
Crashes at one of the state’s most dangerous rail crossings, in Elmwood Park, have killed seven people and injured at least 27 over the last few decades. Village officials want to build an underpass to make the intersection safer, but the village can’t do it alone — the $121 million price tag is more than four times the western suburb’s annual budget, according to Village Manager Paul Volpe.
Elmwood Park is one of a growing number of Illinois municipalities that’s looked to federal lobbyists in Washington, D.C., to make a case that some of the dollars flowing out of the capital should go toward projects like the underpass.
It’s no new thing for cities, counties and villages to try for money from larger units of government. Typically, they have looked first to the state, University of Illinois at Chicago professor of political science Christopher Mooney said: At the state level, a municipality’s “interests are more obvious and more direct.”
But Julia Payson, a University of California at Los Angeles professor of political science, said the passage of major federal spending bills like the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has prompted more municipalities to look to Washington as a way to fund projects.
“Cities have been lobbying at pretty historically high rates,” Payson said. “There’s just a lot of money around to compete for.”
Elmwood Park has paid $230,000 since 2020 to the transportation lobbying firm Tai Ginsberg and Associates, according to federal lobbying records. So far, the village has received $3 million in federal funds, Volpe said.
Payson said that kind of return on an investment is an example of how municipalities who lobby successfully are in for “a huge payoff.”
“You do earn back that money, plus much more,” she said.
University of Illinois at Chicago political science professor E.J. Fagan said lobbying can be a smart investment for a town looking to fund a major construction project, observing that “it’s not actually trivial to figure out what lever in the Department of Transportation (to pull).”
A Pioneer Press/Chicago Tribune review of federal lobbying records showed that 29 municipalities in Illinois — from population powerhouses Chicago and Cook County to suburbs with fewer than 10,000 residents — have used professional federal lobbyists or had one on standby to represent their interests in Washington between 2020 and the present.
Illinois cities, towns, villages and counties besides Chicago spent about $838,000 on federal lobbyists in 2020, $1 million in 2021 and $1.4 million in 2022, lobbying disclosure records kept by the U.S. Senate and analyzed by the Chicago Tribune/Pioneer Press show. This year, they have spent a total of $720,000 so far, per lobbying disclosures. The grand total is slightly inexact because lobbyists are not required to report receipts under $5,000.
One town that’s turned its attention to opportunities in Washington is north suburban Niles, where the village board recently renewed a $60,000 contract with lobbying firm Smith, Dawson & Andrews.
Niles Mayor George Alpogianis said the move to hire federal lobbyists last year was a response to the federal government’s move to make more funding available to local governments during the pandemic.
“With all the money that the federal government was starting to push out of D.C. and making its way to states and municipalities directly, I thought it was a good idea that we ended up switching from a state lobbyist to a federal lobbyist,” he said.
So far, Alpogianis said the village is more than satisfied with that change. He pointed to a recent $200,000 federal grant for the Niles Teen Center the village secured with the help of U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s office.
Alpogianis said he feels good about his own relationships with Niles’ state representatives in Springfield and the village was “switching gears” by investing in representatives in Washington. Smith, Dawson & Andrews lobbyists are pursuing a few different initiatives on Niles’ behalf, he said.
One bombshell cost looming for almost every municipality in Illinois is the state’s mandate to replace the lead service lines, or pipes, which carry water from the water main into individual homes. In Niles, the cost of replacing pipes made of toxic lead could run up to $72 million.
Alpogianis said the village recently requested $3 million in federal funds for those repairs from members of the Illinois congressional delegation. They’re also pursuing a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to help pay for police officers over a five-year period, he said.
For those wondering how federal lobbyists work, UIC’s Fagan said lobbyists spend most of their time “making arguments on the merits” to support their clients’ goals in Washington.
He said that could take the form of writing letters or arranging calls between a client and a lawmaker, for example.
Fagan said he would anticipate that a town that invests in a lobbyist would have better odds of netting a grant than a neighboring municipality that didn’t take the same step.
“From the perspective of a city manager or the mayor or council of that town, they probably don’t know how to get one of those grants … so you hire someone that’s an expert,” he said.
In southern Cook County, officials in the village of Flossmoor facing a big-ticket project to fix a viaduct at the center of town decided to engage Washington lobbyists in 2021, anticipating the passage of a federal infrastructure bill.
Mayor Michelle Nelson said the project has a price tag of about $8 million.
She said the village hopes to get a $200,000 grant from Washington to put toward repairs. She acknowledged that the grant would be a drop in the bucket for such a large project, but said it would add up combined with state grants and other federal funding opportunities.
“We’re looking to reduce the burden of this big project on our residents and at the same time free up additional money for roads and sidewalk improvements,” Nelson said.
Fagan, of UIC, said the rise in lobbying activity over the last few years is similar to a spike that occurred in 2009 and 2010 — a response to the federal stimulus package approved to fight the 2008 financial crisis, he said.
2023 is looking quieter so far, he said, but “there’s still always federal money being disbursed and there’s always good reasons to hire people.”
While the wave of cash is substantial, it’s also finite.
“At some point, the size of the pot is fixed,” Payson said. “And if one city or town is getting a grant, that means another place isn’t getting it.”
But that doesn’t mean that cities that have the most to spend on lobbying will rake in the most federal money, she said.
“One solution ... is to put eligibility criteria in place to ensure that a certain amount of the funding is going to the communities that need it,” Payson said.
Even with such criteria in place, municipalities have growing interest in approving contracts with lobbyists.
In fact, Fagan said the real question in his eyes wasn’t why municipalities are spending so much money, but why they’re not spending more.
In addition to the municipalities mentioned, other Illinois cities and villages that spent money on federal lobbying recently include:
Aurora spent $30,000 so far in 2023 on lobbyists for help with municipal infrastructure, technology and public safety. In 2022, Aurora spent $60,000 for needs in transportation, housing, urban development, community project funding and a municipal airport improvement program.
Lake Barrington spent $20,000 so far this year, and $40,000 in 2022, for Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funds, energy and water appropriations and development.
Lemont spent $80,000 in 2022, and another $40,000 so far this year, for outreach to members of Congress and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regarding USACE projects on the Illinois Waterway. The 2023 spending was also for advocacy for Community Project Funds (no bill number).
Lockport spent $40,000 this year, and $80,000 last year, for outreach to freight railroads and members of Congress regarding grade-crossing safety and train noise issues in the city.
Plainfield spent $60,000 so far this year, and $100,000 in 2022, for grade separation projects and funding for Will County.
Waukegan spent $40,000 in 2022 for city priorities.
Methodology: To reach the total amount spent on federal lobbying by Illinois municipalities, Pioneer Press/Chicago Tribune used OpenSecrets.org, a nonprofit, nonpartisan website that tracks money in politics, to compile a list of municipalities that lobbied Washington between 2020 and 2023, then checked that list against federal lobbying disclosure records available through the U.S. Senate. The City of Chicago and its subsidiaries such as the Chicago Department of Aviation are not included in the total spent on lobbying, nor are subsidiaries of other municipalities such as departments of transportation or forest preserves.
