Nonprofit Lobbyists Protest Restrictions Imposed by Obama Administration

People who hear about President Obama’s efforts to curb the influence of lobbyists on government might conjure up the image of someone like Jack Abramoff, the high-profile lobbyist who was convicted of corruption in 2006.

But a “lobbyist” can also be someone fighting for human rights, the environment, or consumer safety — and some nonprofit leaders argue that the White House has gone too far in restricting how those lobbyists deal with the administration.

They are especially concerned about the impact of the president’s executive order on ethics, issued his second day in office, which prohibits lobbyists’ holding certain administration jobs. Those rules, they argue, deprive the government of expertise and give nonprofit advocacy a bad name.

“There are organizations out there doing really good work that have leading experts who have done lobbying, and you’re really closing them out,” says Patrick Lester, senior vice president for public policy at the Alliance for Children and Families.

Mr. Lester’s organization is among more than 15 nonprofit groups that signed a letter to President Obama asking him to ease some hiring restrictions on nonprofit lobbyists — and to “clarify the fundamental difference between civic engagement for public purposes and lobbying to advance pecuniary self-interests.”

Tax-Code Status

In a follow-up memorandum, Larry Ottinger, president of the Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest, and Stephen Rickard, executive director of the Open Society Policy Center, said the groups support the overall goals of the ethics rules but propose some exemptions for lobbyists who work for nonprofit organizations that fall under sections 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) of the federal tax code, or charities and advocacy groups.

They argue that the tax code provides an objective way to identify which groups have been designated as working for the public welfare.

But that does not sit well with David Wenhold, a lobbyist who is president of the American League of Lobbyists, a trade association. “That’s very subjective,” he says. “You’re putting lobbyists in classes of people; these people are good and those are not.”

In a separate effort, two nonprofit groups — the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the American Civil Liberties Union — have joined with the American League of Lobbyists to protest rules the White House issued in March that restrict contacts between lobbyists and federal officials tied to the $787-billion economic-stimulus law.

The rules, designed to ensure that spending decisions are not made “in response to improper influence or pressure,” say registered lobbyists may communicate with administration officials about specific stimulus projects only in writing — no phone calls or in-person contacts.

Why apply the rules only to lobbyists, the groups ask, and not to other people who may have enormous pull in Washington — thanks to campaign contributions, for example — but don’t happen to be registered lobbyists?

“The right to petition the government is a constitutionally protected activity,” says a letter the groups sent to Gregory B. Craig, the White House counsel. “To state that one class of individuals may not participate in the same manner as all others is clearly a violation and discriminates against an entire group.”

That effort does not distinguish between nonprofit and for-profit lobbyists, proposing as an alternative simply that all communications with officials over specific stimulus projects be disclosed.

When asked about the stimulus issue, the White House press office sent an article in the newspaper Politico that includes a statement by Elizabeth Alexander, press secretary for the vice president, who is overseeing how the stimulus law is carried out.

Ms. Alexander pointed out that lobbyists can still talk to administration officials about the stimulus policies, just not specific projects.

“That fully respects freedom of speech — while at the same time ending closed-door lobbyist deal-making in favor of sunlight,” she said.

Tarnished Image

Some nonprofit lobbyists are bristling at the barrage of rules that seem to suggest the work they do to promote the public interest is tainted.

“You almost feel as if you walk through the door with a big ‘L’ on your chest,” says Patricia Adkins, who is both chief operating officer and director of public policy at the Home Safety Council, a charity in Washington that works to prevent home injuries.

Ms. Adkins first ran up against Mr. Obama’s ethics rules when she served on a committee during the presidential campaign that was asked to offer guidance for the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission should Mr. Obama win. She had deep knowledge of the agency because she had worked in a top position there during the Clinton administration. But because she now had dealings with that agency as a registered lobbyist, she was not allowed to offer any substantive advice. “I was limited to an administrative role,” she says.

Now it rankles her that she feels obligated to state that she is a registered lobbyist when opening a discussion with longtime administration contacts who might involve stimulus money, even when she is acting in her capacity as chief operating officer and not public-policy director.

“It’s awkward,” she says. “I could see that happening with other nonprofits because we have multiple responsibilities.”

While the rules governing the stimulus money will have a short-term impact, nonprofit advocates worry that the hiring restrictions will cause broader harm.

Those rules, which apply to political appointees, say registered lobbyists may not take jobs with any agency that they lobbied during the previous two years. And they may not work on “any particular matter” that they lobbied on during the previous two years — nor in any “specific issue area” that the matter falls under.

That means that a human-rights lobbyist, for example, who had met with a State Department official once during the previous two years could not be hired by the department to work on human-rights matters.

Not only does the restriction deprive the department of the person’s expertise, nonprofit leaders say, but the rule is causing some people to swear off meetings with administration or Congressional officials for fear they will jeopardize their future job prospects.

The attitude is, “We don’t know if we want to work in the administration, but we also don’t want to start a two-year clock at this point,” says Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a government-watchdog group.

Mr. Rickard of the Open Society Policy Center — the advocacy arm of the Open Society Institute, the grant maker — says half of the center’s approximately 24 staff members are registered lobbyists.

But some of the others are now wary of activities that might require them to register.

Doug Varley, a lawyer in Washington who represents nonprofit groups, says some of his clients have contacted him about whether they need to be registered at all.

The Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 requires people to register if at least 20 percent of the activities they perform for a client or organization is spent on lobbying.

But nonprofit groups have tended to “overreport,” he says, because “it’s easier to list people as lobbyists rather than going through the burden of identifying who’s meeting the thresholds or not.”

White House Meeting

Mr. Rickard say Norm Eisen, the White House ethics adviser, and other officials met with representatives of the nonprofit coalition in March, and asked them to propose alternatives to the hiring rules. They then drafted the memorandum proposing the exemptions. Mr. Eisen has also agreed to meet with the groups that drafted the letter on the stimulus rules, says Mr. Wenhold of the American League of Lobbyists.

The White House already allows for waivers when it is “in the public interest” — and has publicly announced two for former nonprofit lobbyists: Jocelyn Frye, former general counsel at the National Partnership for Women and Families, who is director of policy and projects in the first lady’s office, and Celia Muñoz, former senior vice president at the National Council of La Raza, a group that promotes opportunities for Hispanics, who is director of intergovernmental affairs in the White House.

John Wonderlich, policy director at the Sunlight Foundation, an open-government group, says his organization supports that approach. He says setting up nonprofit lobbyists as “a proxy for the public interest” would be tricky. Some companies, for example, could argue they are acting in the public interest. “That’s going to be a really tough distinction to hold,” he says. “All paid lobbying is lobbying.”