Lobbyist group lobbies White House for guidance on lobbying loophole
According to the American Lobbyist League, some regulations enacted by the Obama administration to create government transparency have actually had the opposite of their intended effect. Now the organization, a Washington-based trade group, is asking president for guidance in creating a more open system, reports this post at BLT: The Blog of the Legal Times.
ALL president Howard Marlowe has written to President Obama saying that one rule in particular has resulted in something of a free-for-all on Capitol Hill. The administration has specified that individuals who spend less than 20 percent of their time lobbying do not currently have to register with Congress as lobbyists.
For Lisa Rosenberg of the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to government transparency, this is a problem.
“The twenty-percent rule is certainly the most obvious loophole,” she said, in that it allows some of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington to work without registering and to operate entirely unmonitored. Also, it’s left up to the lobbyists themselves to police whether or not they adhere to the twenty percent limitation on their time.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/15/lobbyist-group-lobbies-white-house-for-guidance-on-lobbying-loophole/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story%29
