Lobbyists

The top development official for the city of Long Beach has been demoted after coming under scrutiny for going on junkets with a lobbyist with business before his office, officials announced Friday afternoon. Director of Development Services Craig Beck has been reassigned as a manager of the Oil and Gas Department's Business Operations Bureau. He will start the new post Monday, earning a salary of $140,000 a year -- a 20% pay cut -- said Debbie Mills, the city's acting human resources director.

Following the recent conviction of a major lobbyist on political corruption charges, a small but growing number of Capitol lobbyists are saying they will no longer make campaign contributions to candidates or play any role in arranging them. Some state officials and lawmakers are responding as well, arguing that unless action is taken to cut lobbyists out of political fund raising, either voluntarily or by legislation, public confidence in state government will continue to erode.

In the gilded state Senate chamber one morning, Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) bemoaned the liquor industry's sway in the Legislature. She named booze lobbyist Aaron Read as a key opponent of her push to raise liquor taxes by $700 million a year. But days later at a nearby restaurant, there was Read -- who wants lawmakers to spare liquor as they look for ways to relieve the state's fiscal woes -- in a crowd of lobbyists at a reception for Romero's reelection campaign.

A proposed Los Angeles ordinance that for the first time would require disclosure of the names of all lawyers who lobby on behalf of their clients was sent to the City Council Thursday as part of a sweeping lobbyist reform measure.

Of the 363 lobbyists who worked the corridors of Los Angeles City Hall last year, no one took the city to court more than Benjamin Reznik. By his own calculation, the veteran land-use lawyer and lobbyist has filed more than 150 lawsuits against the city's boards, commissions and elected officials over the course of his 32-year career, more than any of his peers.

Doug Heller is aware of their presence: the lobbyists for Edison, Dynegy, Enron, Pacific Gas & Electric and other big-energy interests. There are dozens of them; he doesn't even know how many. He passes them in hallways, sees them in hearing rooms, broods over their inscrutable faces. "No matter where you are, what time, there are always six of them huddling," he says with a trace of hyperbole. "I'm always worried, because they're strategizing, and then you see them go off to find legislators."

It was the "sleeper" ballot initiative of California's election season: Few paid heed to Proposition 26, besides the oil, tobacco and alcohol companies that funneled millions of dollars into promoting it in the final weeks of the campaign. Now, from the Capitol in Sacramento to the boardrooms of county supervisors and city councils, lawmakers and lobbyists are scrambling to assess the fiscal and political effects of the measure, one of the most sweeping ballot-box initiatives in decades.

Having failed to block financial reform, Wall Street is now focused on the next best thing: ensuring that the law is loosely interpreted and weakly enforced. Lobbyists for banks, hedge funds and other firms have logged hundreds of meetings with federal regulators since the reform bill was signed into law July 21. The lobbyists are often pushing for exemptions to the bill's key provisions, including measures that would limit risky Wall Street trading and shield consumers from excessive bank fees, records and interviews show.

The city has granted its Washington lobbyist a one-year, $92,000 contract extension despite concerns that the expense is a luxury at a time when Anaheim has had to reduce employees and cut services. E. Del Smith & Co., which has represented Anaheim since 1982, promotes the city's interests before Congress and the Bush Administration on such topics as energy, taxation, transportation and municipal improvements. The firm's greatest success for Anaheim in the past year was securing a $14.

Everyone knows the stereotypical lobbyist: a pot full of money for campaign contributions, quick reflexes for picking up a lawmaker's dinner bill, tickets to send officeholders on free "educational" trips to Europe or Asia. But if you think that's all there is to this much-maligned business, don't try to play the game. You'll get beat. The goodies must be dispensed as tickets of admission to the legislative arena, of course, but the game's more complicated than that.