Just who is the 'L' word?

With ordinance in effect, Portland gets a look at who's lobbying City Hall

By Jim Redden

The Portland Tribune, Aug 4, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

When it comes to city government, is there such a thing as too much transparency?

That’s the question raised by the diverse reactions to Portland’s new rule on reporting lobbying at City Hall.

Proposed by Commissioner Sam Adams, the lobbying ordinance was approved by the City Council in December. Intended to track influence-peddlers’ interactions with top city officials, the first round of reports was filed late last month by groups ranging from Portland General Electric to C-SPOT, Citizens for Safe Parks with Off-leash Territories.

The topics they lobbied ranged from dog parks and sidewalks to street lighting to water rates, and their activities ranged from sending e-mails to meeting in person with city commissioners and their top aides.

The ordinance is not up for review yet – that will happen after the next round of reports is filed in three months’ time. Adams said he plans to take a thorough look at the ordinance to see, among other things, who is reporting and who isn’t. “I think we’re off to a good start,” he said, “but I see some potential areas for refinement.”

He’s not the only one.

Some people say it should be tightened up to require more reporting, while others think it should require less. In particular, some good-government and grass-roots types are not overjoyed that they are caught up in the new ordinance – which requires all “lobbying entities” to file detailed quarterly reports if they spend 16 hours or more lobbying in that three-month period.

Since many entities don’t know if they are going to spend that much time, it has the effect of requiring just about everyone who regularly participates in Portland’s political process to track their every contact with top officials at City Hall.

Rule tracks time, manure

More than 130 individual lobbyists registered, leading to a surprising result: The City Club, a Portland good-government group, dominates the list with 30 individual citizen-volunteers, as compared with only eight lobbyists registered on behalf of the Portland Business Alliance.

Wendy Radmacher-Willis of the City Club says her organization has not taken a position on the ordinance. But she says she’s heard from volunteers who are not wild about being listed as “lobbyists.”

From her perspective, she says: “I feel like citizen participation is somewhat jeopardized by this. …. To add one more layer of paperwork I think is a lot to ask.”

Dan Handelman, a volunteer with Portland Copwatch, said he is glad that the new rule tracks the lobbying of monied interests, but he’s not happy that it acknowledges no difference between those interests and a citizen grass-roots lobbyist such as himself. “I think that’s a mistake,” he said.

While groups like the Portland Business Alliance reported the bulk of the lobbying, it was land-use consultant Peter Finley Fry who provided the entertainment in the ordinance’s first go-round.

That’s because City Hall aide Rich Rodgers, to comply with the gift-reporting requirement of the new ordinance, dutifully disclosed a trailerload of horse manure that Fry, a friend of his, had given as a wedding gift.

Fry, who reported his lobbying on behalf of Ron Tonkin auto dealerships regarding a city rezoning proposal, isn’t sure the ordinance is worth much more than his wedding gift to Rodgers.

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