By HERB JACKSON
Wednesday, January 5, 2005

From NorthJersey.com, which features stories from The Record and Herald News.

When a state agency seeks bids for a contract or grants a permit, the public has no way of knowing whether a lobbyist was involved behind the scenes to influence the permit decision or shape the bid specifications. That was supposed to change this year through a law passed in June that expanded disclosure rules. Previous rules required disclosure only of efforts to influence laws and regulations, but the new law added a broad array of day-to-day "governmental processes." The Election Law Enforcement Commission's Web site says the new rules would take effect this week, and the first public disclosure would be in April, when first-quarter reports are due.

But that's not going to happen now. Lobbyists have raised enough questions about what needs to be disclosed, and how, that ELEC decided to delay things at least six months to hold hearings and sort things out.

in a telling sign of Trenton culture, ELEC Executive Director Fred Herrmann said the commission, the state agency responsible for enforcing disclosure laws and punishing violators, did not want to mandate too much disclosure.

"We felt it was not fair to do that," Herrmann said. "There's a lot that has to be clarified. Is every contact, even to ask for basic materials, lobbying? These are things we'll have to flesh out."

The delay was a surprise to some lobbyists.

"We read the new rules and found them pretty straightforward," said Peter Lillo of the Stewart Agency.

Paul Anzano of the law firm Pringle, Quinn, Anzano agreed.

"We have a lawyer here and all she does is insurance regulatory work at the Department of Banking and Insurance and we're registering her" as a lobbyist, Anzano said. Registration requires paying $425 for a license.

For other law firms, however, the rules were not so clear.

Richard Van Wagner of Sterns & Weinroth said his firm has three registered lobbyists in a 43-lawyer Trenton office. Many of the other lawyers represent clients before the government, but he's not sure how many of them will now have to register as lobbyists and disclose their clients and fees.

"There was some ambiguity in the definition of what an attorney-client privileged matter might be," Van Wagner said.

ELEC's proposed regulations note that when then-Governor McGreevey signed the bill in June, he said it would not require attorneys to register for representing clients "in the regular course of a routine litigation or administrative proceeding." But what if the routine administrative proceeding is a permit application, which is subject to new disclosure rules?

And if a lawyer doesn't have to register in situations where another lobbyist would, is that going to drive clients who don't want their activities disclosed to hire more lawyers as lobbyists? That can't be what the Legislature had in mind.

No one dared to suggest that if lawyers' confidentiality rules get in the way of public interest disclosure laws, lawyers should get out of the lobbying business. Instead, the Legislature created an exemption, and confusion.

There were also simpler problems with putting the law into practice. ELEC's rules said lobbyists had to file a notice of representation before they try to influence a "governmental process."

Lobbyist John Torok said he called ELEC on Monday to find out what form to use to file that notice, since he needed to know how much detail to provide.

"They said go to this page on the Web site, and that was just the letter they sent out in November telling us about the new rules," Torok said.