The Suffolk County legislature has voted to hold a special election on January 15, 2013 to replace outgoing legislator Ed Romaine.

Mr. Romaine was recently sworn in as the town supervisor of Brookhaven, New York.

Sean Walter, the republican candidate, and Al Krupski, the democratic candidate, will vie for the vacant seat in the county’s first legislative district.

Campaign Finance

“2012: Reviewing the year of the super PAC” by Nancy Marshall-Genzer on American Public Media’s Marketplace.

California: “FPPC to enforce county’s campaign finance reform law” in the Victorville Daily Press.

Lobbying

Alaska: “Alaska lawmakers will likely see more bills inspired by outside groups” by Richard Mauer in The Sacramento Bee.

Utah:  “Former Utah senator Bob Bennett will return to Capitol as lobbyist” by Matt Canham in The Salt Lake Tribune.

Ethics

Kentucky: “Kentucky Ethics Commission Judge Awarded Internationally” by Paul McRee in SurfKY News.

Missouri: “Secretary of State Scott Gessler rebuts ethics complaint” by Tim Hoover in the Denver Post.

Q. I am an in-house employee; however, I am not a registered lobbyist in my responsible state. Although I engage in lobbying activities from time to time, I do not meet the state’s registration threshold. However, other people from my company are registered. Do I have to disclose my expenditure and/or compensation for lobbying activities on company reports?

A. In some jurisdictions, although you are not a registered lobbyist, you may be required to include your expenditure and/or compensation information on company lobbying disclosure reports. There are 27 states requiring some level of reporting for non-lobbyist employees, including Arkansas, California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Every state treats non-lobbyist reporting differently. For example, in California, you are only required to include your compensation and reimbursed expenditures on a quarterly employer report if you spend more than 10% or more of your compensated time in a calendar month engaging in lobbying activities. In states such as North Carolina, Illinois, or New Jersey, permissible expenditures on behalf of public officials must be reported by the employer or registered lobbyist.

In the above jurisdictions where your company has an active lobbying presence, monitoring potential reportable activity is incredibly important. Although your level of activity may not necessitate registration in a state, you must become familiar with the state’s non-lobbyist reporting requirements, and carefully track activity, which may include the following:

• Compensation for lobbying activity;
• Personal reimbursed expenditures for food, travel, or lodging in connection with lobbying activity;
• Expenditures on behalf of public officials or employees;
• Sponsorships for events where public officials or employees will be present and receive a benefit; and/or
• Subject matter lobbied, including agencies contacted.

In sum, as you are reviewing your potential lobbyist registration obligations for the new year, it is just as important to review your potential reporting obligations as a non-lobbyist employee in the jurisdictions where your level of activity does not require registration.

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

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 the State and Federal Communications’ digital encyclopedias for lobbying laws, political contributions, and procurement lobbying, and can be found in the client portion of the State and Federal Communications’ website.

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

If you are registered as a state lobbyist, there is a good chance you have received notification for the state to conduct an audit on your lobbying reports. California, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia are just a few states with random acts of audit.

But, are you ready for an IRS audit of your federal reports?

According to State and Federal Communications friend and client, Ken Gross from Skadden Arps, about 75 percent of the filings to the US Secretary of the Senate are filed using the LDA method, as opposed to the IRS method. That’s fine in practice, but your organization’s IRS filings need to show everything but lobbying activities.

When we are speaking with clients and audiences we emphasize the importance of keeping track of time, not only for your lobbying reports, but for your company’s filing with the IRS since the time devoted for lobbying is not deductible. It is impossible for anyone to spend 100% of time on lobbying because there are other administrative things people have to do, meetings to attend, and conferences to attend.

It is important companies keep two sets of books.

No, this is not The Producers where Matthew Broderick has two books—one to show the government and one not to show the government. It allows your organization to file its LD2 report without having to disclose lobbying expenditures for state and grassroots activities and still have the information to include in the IRS filings.

Take the opportunity to ask the accounting department if they are keeping track of time two different ways to insure your LD2 reports are accurate and, more important, when the IRS is a’knocking you can rest assured your reports are A-OK.

Until next month, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

We have many things for which we are thankful at State and Federal Communications. Before the day gets away from us, we would like to thank you for following Lobby Comply Blog.

We have had a great year and look forward to giving our very best service to our clients in 2013. Health and happiness to you and to your families.

From all of us at State and Federal Communications, we wish you Happy Holidays!

National:

NRA Power and Money Goes a Long Way in States

The GOP’s Electoral College Scheme

Federal:

Colbert Super PAC to Give to Charities

Crossroads GPS Claim: What Karl Rove’s dark money nonprofit told the IRS

From the States and Municipalities:

Alaska

Legislative Aide Resigns after Anti-Islamic Agenda Crosses into Public Role

Arkansas

Admitted Inappropriate Relationship Threatens McDaniel’s 2014 Bid to Become Arkansas’ Governor

California

More Valuable Gifts, Contributions Allowed to Politicians in 2013

California

State Political Watchdog to Enforce San Bernardino County’s Campaign Finance Ordinance

Louisiana

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu to End Contracts with Firm Tied to Ray Nagin Bribery Probe

New York

Cup of Coffee Limit Perks Up Again

New York

NY State Urges Aetna to Reveal Political Spending

Washington

House Bill Would Impose Fees on Lobbyists, Others

State and Federal Communications produces a weekly summary of national news, offering more than 80 articles per week focused on ethics, lobbying, and campaign finance.

News You Can Use is a news service provided at no charge only to clients of our online Executive Source Guides, or ALERTS™ consulting clients.

On December 19, 2012, the Jersey City, New Jersey City Council adopted a number of new pay-to-play measures while tabling another competing version of changes.

City ordinance 12-158 limits vendors winning no-bid contracts from making political contributions over $200 to committees for local state senate, local state assembly, and school board candidates, and to other entities, associations, and forms of association required to register annually with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission.

Vendors are also prohibited from participating in voter-registration drives, get-out-the-vote activities, and advertising for municipal candidates.

Once signed by the Mayor, the ordinance takes effect on January 8, 2013. City ordinance 12-157, with alternate pay-to-play measures, was tabled by the city council.

Photo of the Jersey City skyline by Gryffindor on Wikipedia.

Thank you to our intern Zack Koozer for creating this video.

The General Assembly held a one-day special session December 19, 2012, to approve budget cuts to close the state’s budget deficit.

The session also included a one-hour memorial for the Newtown shooting victims.

Photo of the Connecticut State Capitol courtesy of Ragesoss on Wikipedia.

A special election for Senate District 28 has been scheduled for February 5, 2013.

The seat was left vacant by the death of Sen. Alice Harden on December 6.

Campaign Finance

“D.C. Council pushes campaign finance to ’13” by Tom Howell, Jr. in The Washington Times.

Rhode Island: “R.I. House Speaker’s November opponent cleared of campaign wrongdoing” by Philip Marcelo in the Providence Journal.

Lobbying

“K Street Files: Progressives Come, Single Out ‘Naughty’ Lawmakers” by Kate Ackley in Roll Call.

“Clock running out for passing big bills” by Kevin Bogardus and Bernie Becker in The Hill.

“APOC complaint accuses Coffey of failing to register as a lobbyist” by Lisa Demer in the Anchorage Daily News.

“Cup of coffee limit perks up again” by Rick Karlin in the Albany Times Union.

Governor Bentley has set the special election schedule for House District 97. The seat was formerly held by Rep. Yvonne Kennedy, who passed away December 8.

The election timeline will be as follows:

• The primary election will be held February 26, 2013, unless the major parties have only one candidate, in which case the general election will be held that date;
• A primary runoff, or the general election if no runoff is needed, will be held April 9, 2013; and,
• If both a primary and runoff are required, the general election will be held May 21, 2013.

If a primary and runoff are both needed, the seat will remain vacant for the entire 2013 legislative session.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the Council on Government Ethics Laws (COGEL) for a great conference in Columbus. Eleven of our staff from State and Federal Communications attended, and we had a terrific experience. There were so many information-packed sessions and it was nice to see old friends and make some new ones.

Here is a little video montage we made about our COGEL 2012 experience.  Enjoy!