The special session of the New Mexico Legislature adjourned on September 24, 2011.

The Legislature failed to reach a compromise on congressional redistricting, but passed a bill strengthening the preference given to New Mexico businesses bidding on state government contracts.

National:

Election Spending to Exceed $6 Billion Thanks Partly to Jim Bopp

Twitter to Launch Political Advertising

Federal:

K Street Cool to Obama Lobbying Plan

Watchdog Spotlights Lawmaker Ethics in ‘Most Corrupt’ Report

From the States and Municipalities:

Alabama

Former Governor Riley Gets Ethics Training He Pushed

California

California Pension Managers Fined for Unreported Gifts

Connecticut

‘Shock Jock’ Hal Turner Acquitted in Connecticut Threats Case

District of Columbia

Wells Drafts D.C. Bill to Limit Lobbyists’ Influence

Illinois

The Price of Influence in Chicago

Louisiana

Sugar Bowl in Violation of Tax Law with Purchases to Fundraiser

Missouri

T.D. El-Amin Gets Record Ethics Fine

Montana

Supreme Court Looks at Campaign Finance for Political Spending

Oklahoma

Oklahoma High Court Hears Former Senator’s Appeal

Pennsylvania

Soon, Lobbyists Must Register

Wisconsin

Judge: Wisconsin campaign law is unconstitutional

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.

Jim Sedor is editor of News You Can Use.

Here is an item I saw first on TechPresident’s blog. The Obama Administration has launched We the People, an online petitioning service where you can voice your opinion on policies or issues by creating a petition, garnering support, and sending the president your feedback on ways to improve the service.

This is how it works. The website says:

“Welcome to We the People on WhiteHouse.gov. This tool provides you with a new way to petition the Obama Administration to take action on a range of important issues facing our country. If a petition gets enough support, White House staff will review it, ensure it’s sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response.”

Today the Indianapolis Office of Finance and Management begins implementation of its new Enterprise Resource Planning software, which will cause a temporary halt on generating request for bids or quotes, and vendor payments.

The new system will allow informal quotes to be e-mailed as long as the Office has a vendor’s current contact information and a valid e-mail address. Invitations to bid will be formatted differently but contain the same information. The vendor notification of this change can be found here and the Purchasing Division home page can be found here.

The conversion is expected to be complete by October 3.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office in Chicago is now offering a Google map on the City of Chicago website that allows citizens to follow the mayor’s travels.

The City Hall in Your Community page has markers on its map showing where the mayor has visited. They give us the date of the visit, a picture of the mayor at the event, a link to the original source of the picture, and a description of the event as well as the mayor’s role. It appears there are over one hundred of those markers on the City Hall in Your Community map.

I think this is a good idea for other cities to imitate. It looks like a powerful tool to demonstrate government responsiveness and accountability.

Govtech.com has a great article with much more information about the site. It is called “Where’s Rahm Emanuel? Online Map Tracks Chicago Mayor’s Travels” from September 20.

Elizabeth Bartz, President and CEO of State and Federal Communications, is attending the State Government Affairs Council’s Board Meeting.

She was elected president of SGAC in August.

The meeting is being held from September 21-22.

The Philadelphia Board of Ethics has approved proposed regulations that define lobbying activity and describe how lobbyists must register and report expenditures.

If the regulations are approved by the Law Department, they could become effective in early October. A previous board decision to provide a 30 day grace period would not require lobbyist registration until November.

Additionally, registration could begin only when the board has an online registration system in place.  Shane Creamer, executive director of the board, stated he hoped the online registration system would be ready in November.

An amendment to the U.S. Constitution seeking to reverse the ruling of the Citizens United decision has been reintroduced in Congress.

Congressman John Conyers and Congresswoman Donna F. Edwards, co-sponsors of House Joint Resolution 78, want to give Congress and the states specific authority to regulate corporate expenditures on political activity. The amendment reads “nothing in this Constitution shall prohibit Congress and the States from imposing content-neutral regulations and restrictions on the expenditure of funds for political activity by any corporation, limited liability company, or other corporate entity, including but not limited to contributions in support of, or in opposition to, a candidate for public office.”

In Congresswoman Donna F. Edward’s press release she states, “Justice John Paul Stevens warned that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United threatened ‘to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation’ and how right he was. Since that flawed ruling was issued, campaign spending by outside groups including corporations surged more than four-fold to reach nearly $300 million in the 2010 election cycle.”

The amendment also reads “nothing contained in this Article shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.”

Salant begins with: “Attorney James Bopp Jr. has spent 30 years fighting limits on campaign spending, and next year’s political landscape could be transformed by his labor: An election season in which at least $6 billion is likely to be spent, more than $700 million higher than 2008.”

The article assesses the increase we are seeing in political spending. It also details Bopp’s landmark legal challenges over the years,  his loyalty to his home state of Indiana, and how free speech is at the heart of his mission.

For the full text of the article, got to “ Election Spending to Exceed $6 Billion Thanks Partly to Jim Bopp.”

Politico today reports that Twitter will be offering the opportunity for political campaigns to run ads on it social network.

The article, “Twitter to launch political advertising” by Ben Smith, says Twitter has had five years of observing online behavior. Like Google with its ads, Twitter wishes to cash in on what should be a great money-maker.

As for the issue of disclosure, Smith spoke with Twitter’s government liaison Adam Sharp, who said disclosure statements probably are not legally necessary for their ads. But Twitter will offer the ability to show “paid for by” information via a mouse-over on the paid Tweet.

It will be interesting to see if any regulation springs from this new development.

The Office of Government Ethics (O.G.E.) has issued proposed lobbyist gift ban rules, which would apply to all executive branch employees.

Most of the proposed rules deal with limiting, for lobbyists, the exceptions of the ban on gifts. For example, executive branch employees would not be permitted to accept invitations extended by lobbyists for free attendance at widely attended gatherings that would normally fall under the gift ban exception. Non-profit professional associations, scientific organizations, and learned societies, which are also sometimes registered lobbyists, would still be afforded the exception. The O.G.E. based much of its reasoning on the notion “the cultivation of familiarity and access that a lobbyist [gains]” may be used in the future by lobbyists to obtain more sympathetic hearings for clients.

Another change would preclude lobbyists from the gift ban exception of social invitations, such as invitations to cocktail parties and movie screenings, if the invitations were extended because of the employee’s official position, even if the lobbyist is not a prohibited source. The O.G.E. argues in its proposal that “the lobbyist could use social events as a way to build general good will with a class of employees in case access is needed for a future issue or client.”

The proposed rules arise because an earlier Presidential Executive Order regarding gifts to non-career political appointees, which had called for the O.G.E. “to apply the lobbyist gift ban set forth [in the order] to all executive branch employees.” Written comments about the rule must be received by the O.G.E. before November 14, 2011

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie renewed calls on the Legislature to pass ethics reform. In a press release, the governor stated, “New Jersey’s ethics laws remain a patchwork of ineffective half measures and loopholes that fail to apply a uniform standard of rules of conduct for all levels of government in our state.”

Highlighting a report issued last week by the State Comptroller which emphasized the failure of the state’s pay-to-play laws, the governor reiterated the need for the changes in his proposals, which include imposing a uniform standard for awarding contracts at all levels and branches of government in New Jersey. His proposals would also end ‘wheeling,’ a practice of transferring political donations to circumvent campaign financing laws.

Governor Christie has pushed pay-to-play reform in New Jersey by linking financial Transitional Aid to municipalities with the requirement the municipalities adopt local pay-to-play ordinances.

A post about the State Comptroller report can be found here.

Here is an interesting article on Law Technology News (Law.com) that surveys the landscape of government agencies and their use of Twitter.

You’ll find the Twitter handles of many government agencies and more than a dozen examples of government tweets.

The article is called “Your Government, on Twitter” by Jesse Londin.

The Montana Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear the state’s appeal of the 2010 decision in Western Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. State of Montana finding the state’s ban on direct corporate spending for or against political candidates unconstitutional.

Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock found the Montana law unconstitutional.

Attorney General Steve Bullock, who has stated the overturned law guaranteed citizens the right to participate in elections without their interests being overshadowed by corporations, will argue the case.