There are three big projects going on in the City, where the business community is actively lobbying City officials to get rights to public land and money, but not a lobbyist registration form in sight. Now I know we blew holes in our lobbyist registration law . . . but this is just silly.
As I post this, I have to tell you that there are several things about the way lobbyist registration forms are used that are making finding this information difficult.
1. There is a basket of forms that are sitting in the clerks office that are not on-line, so you can’t only check on-line, you have to check the basket too.
2. The on-line information is cumbersome to say the least. You can see the name of the person lobbying, but not who they are lobbying form unless you open every form. So, in order to find who is lobbying on what, you have to open every single one of the 88 forms to figure out who is lobbying on what. (And look in the basket.)
Out of the 88 registration forms, here’s who is registered:
26 are from non-profit groups
11 are from MG&E
8 are from the Alexander Company
4 from the folks with the Hilldale hole in the ground
And there’s the usual suspects of
Chamber of Commerce (Jennifer Alexander, Delora Newton and Kevin Little)
Smart Growth Madison (Carole Schaeffer)
Realtors Association (Phil Salkin)
Apartment Association (Nancy Jensen and Jeffery Wiswell)
Michael Chrisopher
Bill White and Angie Black
Ron Tractenberg
After you take all of these folks out, you only have 28 others which includes people from WARF, Veridian Homes, Joe Krupp (Midvale Sequoya Commons), Lance McGrath (Union Corners), Adams Outdoor Advertising (lobbying on billboards and advertising on buses) a couple other developers and their planners but what I can’t find is anyone registered on the following:
TRUMAN OLSON
We heard testimony on Tuesday night about the Tom Bunbury, the Sara (sp?) Group and Dean Clinic, the Labor Temple and Copp’s and how they want to redevelop the Truman Olson site that we want to buy (instead of get for free) from the Department of Defense (Army). But there isn’t a single lobbyist registration form. Neither is Steve Schooler from Porchlight registered either.
DOWNTOWN LIBRARY
I don’t see a registration from Terrance Wall who kicked off this hole ridiculous plan to sell our downtown library to a developer. Obviously, someone talked to someone to try to get themselves into the opportunity to buy the library, but there’s no lobbyist registration forms there either.
HOTEL AT THE MUNICIPAL BUILDING SITE
Rumor has it that we are going to sell our parking lot or the Municipal Building so that there can be another hotel downtown. We aren’t moving forward with changes for the one-stop shop because we don’t know if we will continue to have our offices there. But again, not a single lobbyist registration form.
Those are just three items that came up in the last 2 days that I was interested in, but how many other things that the public doesn’t know about are going on?
The other thing of note is there is no one registered from Downtown Madison Inc and the Chamber of Commerce claims they only had 6 contacts in the first 6 months of the year. 2 each on the Economic Development Plan from Jennifer Alexander, Delora Newton and Kevin Little. But nothing about their lobbying for who the next Economic Development Unit Director is going to be, because that is exempt.
As you can see, our lobbyist registration ordinance is completely useless if some of the biggest projects and major decisions being made in the City of Madison is exempt. Now . . . what to do about this problem? 😉
