The City's Municipal Lobbying Ordinance requires certain individuals and entities to register with the City Ethics Commission and to publicly disclose their lobbying activities, including money received and spent.
Any individual who directly communicates with a City official for the purpose of influencing "municipal legislation" (as defined in the ordinance) and who is compensated to spend 30 or more hours in any consecutive three-month period engaged in lobbying activities must register as a lobbyist with the City Ethics Commission.
A lobbying firm must register once any owner, partner, shareholder, officer, or employee qualifies as a lobbyist and the firm earns $1,000 during any consecutive three-month period from its clients for municipal lobbying.
An “in-house” lobbyist - an employee compensated to lobby only on
behalf of his or her employer - is required to register. An in-house lobbyist’s employer (lobbyist employer), however, is not
required to register.
Lobbyists, lobbying firms, and lobbyist employers must disclose lobbying
activity for each calendar quarter during which a qualified lobbyist is registered.
These reports include information about matters a lobbyist attempted to influence, compensation received by a lobbying firm for its municipal lobbying
activity, and expenditures made in connection with a lobbying firm's or
employer's attempts to influence City decisions.
Other disclosures include campaign contributions and payments a lobbyist
or lobbying firm receives for other services provided to the City or to a City
candidate or officeholder.
Effective January 1, 2006, the law requires all lobbyists, lobbying firms and lobbyist employers to file registrations and quarterly disclosure reports online via the Lobbyist Electronic Filing System.
In September 2009, following 2 years of intensive study, the Ethics Commission recommended to the City Council a set of comprehensive changes to the city's lobbying laws. The status of the recommendations may be monitored through the City Clerk's online Council File Management System (Council File No. 07-3005-S2).
