Ethics Review Commission OKs pandemic-era changes to lobbying ordinance

The Ethics Review Commission last week voted unanimously to recommend changes to the city’s lobbying rules. The rules ensure phone calls and video conferences are properly recorded as appearances before a city official.

The changes to City Code Chapter 4-8 concerning the regulation of lobbyists first came before the commission at its regular meeting in May. The city overhauled its lobbying rules in 2018. As part of that overhaul, the Office of the City Auditor was tasked with ensuring lobbyists remain in compliance with reporting requirements.

City Auditor Corrie Stokes told commissioners that the office has conducted three such audits since the changes to the ordinance were adopted. The auditor’s office found two main issues with the current system.

The first issue, Stokes said, is that the city does not currently have any way of capturing or logging virtual meetings. Since the pandemic, many meetings between lobbyists, City Council members and other city employees have been virtual.

“So the first provision will show we’re just adding that, yes, if you have a meeting virtually, it still counts as a meeting,” Stokes said.

The second issue with the ordinance concerned the section that enumerates the auditor’s responsibilities with regard to compliance reviewing. Stokes said that over the past three audits, her team found only a few small compliance issues. Those issues can be handled going forward by the City Clerk’s Office, Stokes said, which has established and has “a really good handle” on the lobbyist registration system.

“(The compliance issues) were all very minor. I think one person owed us $50. That’s what we came up with three audits in,” Stokes said. “And that’s not where I want to be focused. I would rather focus on people who should be registered as lobbyists and aren’t. That’s a harder audit, and a bigger audit. So what we’re proposing in this work is to do that periodically.”

The comprehensive audit will involve the office looking at public testimony and identifying individuals and groups testifying before City Council. “We know they’re being paid by so-and-so. They probably should have registered as lobbyists,” Stokes said. “It’s just taking a step back and looking at the whole program comprehensively versus zeroing in on the people who are voluntarily compliant but made a mistake.”

At the May meeting, several commissioners expressed concerns about the language and whether it might contain loopholes that would allow for lobbyists to potentially evade the rules in the future. Due to those language concerns, the resolution went back to the Law Department for tweaking. A simplified version of the resolution was returned to the commission at its June 28 meeting.

Commissioners at the June meeting agreed on the streamlined language but further tweaked the resolution to include a fixed period for the frequency of those audits. The change addressed concern from commissioners about leaving that discretion in the hands of Stokes or any future auditor. The resolution, which passed unanimously, calls for an audit at minimum every three years.

The Austin Monitor’s work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here.