Our 2015 Guidebook is out and on its way to all of our clients. This quick-reference guide has information we have pulled from our website. It does not include everything from our website, but you can easily see information about the following:

1. Lobbying reports due date;

2. Key dates for PAC reports;

3. Election cycle;

4. Applicable laws for lobbying, campaign finance, and procurement laws; and

5. Pay-to-play updates for all of the states.

We are sending six copies of the Guidebook to the key contacts for our subscription clients and one copy to each of our consulting clients. We do have additional copies if needed for these groups.

Unfortunately we will not send out the publication to anyone who is not already a client. The information inside must be used in conjunction with our website. And, in 2015, when every state will be in session, it is important for everyone to have a subscription to our website. Find more information at www.stateandfed.com. You can also call our office for additional information, 330-761-9960.

From the staff at State and Federal Communications, we hope you all have a Happy New Year and look forward to seeing you out and about in 2015.

Thank you,

Elizabeth Z. Bartz
President and CEO
@elizabethbartz

If you are a government relations professional looking for information about the upcoming 36 Gubernatorial Inaugurations, State and Federal Communications has got you covered!
Watch the video below to see what our research team provides for you in this definitive Inaugurations Guide.

Click here to sign up for your own Inaugurations Guide.

We are sending out the 2015 State and Federal Communications, Inc. Executive Source Guidebooks today! For all of our clients who receive them, they will arrive in early January.

If you would like to know more about our Guidebooks and our compliance services, send a request to marketing@stateandfed.com.

 

Q. For federal income tax purposes, our organization has been using the aggregate amounts reported on our quarterly LD-2 lobbying activity report as our nondeductible lobbying expenses.  Can the expenditures we compile for LDA reporting be used interchangeably for tax purposes?

A. In a word: maybe – It depends on the method of LDA reporting you’ve opted to follow.  If you file your LD-2 report using the IRC definitions (method C), then the number you compile and report on your LD-2 can be used interchangeably for tax purposes.  However, if you compile and report your quarterly lobbying expenditures using LDA definitions (method A), the results will not accurately reflect nondeductible lobbying expenses as defined by the IRS.  Because the definition of “lobbying” differs between the LDA and the IRC, the two compilation methods will produce very different results.  If you use LDA definitions to compile your quarterly LD-2, your organization must employ a second process by which to determine your nondeductible lobbying expenses for tax purposes.  A lobbying registrant can determine each year which method they will use to compile the LD-2 report.  Once a method has been selected, a registrant must use that method for all four quarterly reports during that year.

 

You can directly submit questions for this feature, and we will select those most appropriate and answer them here. Send your questions to: experts@stateandfed.com.

(We are always available to answer questions from clients that are specific to your needs, and we encourage you to continue to call or e-mail us with questions about your particular company or organization. As always, we will confidentially and directly provide answers or information you need.) Our replies to your questions are not legal advice. Instead, these replies represent our analysis of laws, rules, and regulations.

 

If you are in a panic about 2015, relax, we have you covered. The list attached shows all of the jurisdictions included in the State and Federal Communications website. Every state in our country will be in session in 2015 and those cities and counties are not going to sit back and do nothing. They will all be busy.

We are happy to report our list of municipalities continues to grow and many more will be added along with the U.S. territories of Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

So many of our clients are drilling down from the states and going to cities and counties, and those jurisdictions do not always follow state rule. We have always emphasized doing your homework before venturing into a state, and our website can help when you are planning your municipality work.

Stay tuned…We are venturing into unknown territory in 2015 and reviewing international lobbying and campaign finance laws.  Who knows where this will take us.

In the meantime, State and Federal Communications wishes our clients and friends a very happy holiday season and we looking forward to seeing you in the New Year.

click here to view

Thank you,

Elizabeth Z. Bartz
President and CEO
@elizabethbartz

Elizabeth Bartz, president and CEO of State and Federal Communications, is offering her expertise today in Washington, D.C. at the Association of Government Relations Professionals Lobbying Certificate Program session on State Lobbying. Congratulations, Elizabeth!

One of the attendees gives this reaction on Twitter:

 

 

 

 

If you would like to know more about today’s training, here is a decription from the AGRP website:

The states are a breeding ground for new legislation and regulations that will affect your stakeholders and can potentially lead to federal action. Influencing legislators and policy makers at the state level can be a critical component to your overall lobbying efforts. In this upcoming AGRP LCP course, you will learn:

• How to successfully identify whether or not you need to engage at the state level
• Best practices in finding and working with state lobbyists
• How to evaluate your state lobbying efforts
• Making sure that your efforts are compliant with state rules and regulations

State and Federal Communications is pleased to announce the addition of 2015 legislative session and key dates information to its website.

In the Lobbying Laws publication, the key dates information addresses all of the reports and registrations due in 2015. In the Political Contributions publication, the key dates address the reports due, the scheduled statewide elections, and, where dictated by the state, scheduled local elections.

This information has been added for the federal government, the states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Continue to watch the website for updates to the 2014 and 2015 key dates and for the addition of key dates information for local jurisdictions and for Canada.

The number of municipalities and regional governments our research associates track continues to grow. We now cover more than 230 municipalities and local governments. This is part of a continuous effort to better serve the needs of our clients.

In that effort, we have recently added abridged jurisdictions to our website. These entries, condensed due to the limited number of relevant local laws, provide the core information our clients need for their government relations work.

The new jurisdictions are:

Alameda County, California

Canton, Ohio

Clackamas County, Oregon

Jackson County, Oregon

Sparks, Nevada

The Mission of State and Federal Communications is to make sure that your organization can say, “I Comply.”

We are the leading authority and exclusive information source on legislation and regulations surrounding campaign finance and political contributions; state, federal, and municipal lobbying; and procurement lobbying.

Contact us to learn how conveniently our services will allow you to say “I Comply” for your compliance activities.

At any given time, more than 1,000 legislative bills, which can affect how you do business as a government affairs professional, are being discussed in federal, state, and local jurisdictions. These bills are summarized in State and Federal Communications’ digital encyclopedias for lobbying laws, political contributions, and procurement lobbying and can be found in the client portion of our website.

Summaries of major bills are also included in monthly email updates sent to all clients. The chart below shows the number of bills we are tracking in regard to lobbying laws, political contributions, and procurement lobbying.

The number of municipalities and regional governments our research associates track continues to grow. We now cover more than 230 municipalities and local governments. This is part of a continuous effort to better serve the needs of our clients.

In that effort, we have recently added abridged jurisdictions to our website. These entries, condensed due to the limited number of relevant local laws, provide the core information our clients need for their government relations work.

The new jurisdictions are:

Bakersfield, California

Putnam County, Florida

Stark County, Ohio

In the monthly State and Federal Communications staff meetings, each department provides an update of what’s new so the entire staff can get a picture of what each department is up to. One of the things the Research Department likes to share with the staff is statistics that provide some insight as to the volume of information we track and update.

The information on our website is contained in a database, which contains 223 individual questions that need to be addressed in each of the more than 300 jurisdictions available on our website. In round numbers, this means there are roughly 70,000 individual “chunks” of data in our database, which may be as short as one word or as long as the approximately 3,900 words it takes to explain California’s complex campaign finance reporting system. One interesting statistic we like to share in each meeting is the number of these individual questions “touched” since the last staff meeting, as a rough measure of how many pieces of information were updated on the website. Between our April 21and May 29 staff meetings, the Research Department updated 15,245 questions in our database, either as part of the normal review process or as part of updates made to the website due to changed information, such as the passage of a new bill or a new phone number for a contact. Mind you, not every question processed through the system gets changed, as it is sometimes necessary to look at a question just to verify the information, but this statistic gives a good idea of the volume of information being looked at during the period in question.

Another interesting statistic involves the number of what we call “supplemental documents,” that is, the documents you can find in under the “Statutes, Regulations, Forms…” link on our website. These are the statutes, opinions, guides, and forms we keep on our website as both a quick reference and a ready source of forms to assist with registration and reporting. As of our May 29 meeting, we had 5,814 such documents available on our website. In the 12 months preceding the meeting, 2,022 of those documents had been updated.

Join me on June 3 for “Mid-term Elections, High-stake Races: Get the Story on State Compliance,” a webinar hosted by the Association of Government Relations Professionals.

I’ll be speaking about:

• How to utilize direct corporate dollars when contributing to state candidates.
• Knowing the ins and outs of using a federal PAC to contribute to state candidates
• McCutcheon vs. FEC: Understanding the impact on the states
• Becoming familiar with navigating complex state pay-to-play laws
• Discerning the elements of an effective compliance strategy: Pay-to-play and corporate contributions

The mid-term elections are around the corner. Make sure you have the information you need to stay compliant.

See you on June 3,

Elizabeth Bartz

President and CEO of State and Federal Communications, Inc.

If you are a government relations professional who is interested in the latest news on compliance, we encourage you to join our Government Relations Compliance LinkedIn Group!

You can discover what colleagues are talking about, and how they are solving the challenges in complying with government rules and regulations for lobbying, grassroots lobbying, political contributions, and procurement. Take a look and join the conversation!