... committee of investigation of the House reported: "It is a fact beyond denial that a body of professional lobbyists has for years formed part of the machinery of legislation, . . . and has been growing in numbers and influence," and again they denounced its methods. The evils of the lobby have become so flagrant and disgraceful that for the purity of legislation, the protection of the legislature, and the fair name of our commonwealth, they demand your serious consideration and some stringent and radical remedy. This is a matter which especially concerns the legislature, and therefore one which the executive approaches with some embarrassment. Yet I feel I should be derelict in my duty if I failed to do all in my power to aid you in its solution. It is far easier to state the evil than to suggest the remedy. Clearly it is impossible and improper to prevent a constituent or any other person from having the freest access to a legislator. This constitutional right guaranteed to the people gives opportunity to the lobby to do its work. Prevention by nonintercourse is therefore impossible. Prevention by publicity is possible, and I would suggest for your consideration whether a remedy may not be found in this direction by making it easier than it now is publicly to investigate the methods used and money spent on pending legislation; and also, by giving power to some proper officer, before a measure finally becomes law, to demand under oath a full and detailed statement as to these matters. The fear of publicity, and through it of defeat, may stop improper practices by making them worse than useless. Your immediate predecessors, with an earnest desire to cure the evil, and believing in the remedy of publicity, passed an act requiring all counsel and agents employed by any special interest on matters pending before the legislature to be registered, and a statement under oath of all expenses incurred to be made within thirty days after the adjournment of the legislature. I believe that good will come from this act if fairly and thoroughly enforced, but that it falls short of being a sufficient remedy. It makes public the names of all persons employed, but not the acts of the lobbyist. It makes public the expenses incurred, but too late to affect the legislation for which they were incurred. I ask you also to consider whether something cannot be done to relieve the legislature of much work that seems to be honest and unnecessary, to prolong its sessions, and to give life and strength to the lobby. Recent amendments to your rules have been made, I am informed, with this purpose. You may deem it wise to make further provision for an earlier introduction of business and for its more systematic conduct. Any steps which would tend to reduce suggested legislation to a specific form, and to give the fullest possible notice to the public of the exact status of any matter pending, would, I am confident, restrict the employment of the lobby. LOBBYING1 To the Honorable, the Legislature: State of Wisconsin, Executive Office Upon the assembling of the Senate and assembly in joint session at the opening of this legislature on the twelfth day of January, 1905, in the message then submitted, among other things presented for your consideration, I said: I am not unmindful of the fact that members of the legislature are the agents of their constituents; that they must ever be ready to be made acquainted with their wishes and with the interests of the public. But that a system of lobbying, more reprehensible in its character than has yet been suggested to the public, has been maintained about this legislature for many years is well known to every man in public life. That it is desirable to put an end to this evil, all will agree. That it is possible, all should be anxious to demonstrate. I desire to be distinctly understood as favoring the fullest and freest discussion before committees, and, under proper regulations, before either or both branches of the legislature, by individuals or the representatives of interests affected, or which claim to be affected in any manner by proposed legislation, but I urge upon your consideration the enactment of a law that shall make it an offense, punishable by the heaviest money penalty and by imprisonment as well, for any lobby agent or lobby representative, employed and paid for his services by others, to attempt personally and directly to influence any member of the legislature to vote for or against any measure affecting the interests represented by such lobbyist. No one acquainted with the facts will venture to deny that the lobby has been very potent in legislation for many years in Wisconsin. Session after session the schoolbook lobby has suppressed or defeated legislation inimical to the interests of the schoolbook monopoly. Our laws upon trusts are weak and impotent. They serve merely to foil the enactment of something better. For three successive sessions I have urgently recommended revision and have submitted plain and specific recommendations for effective legislation. A hostile lobby has found a way to block all legislation upon the subject. A telephone monopoly has for years, through the services of a paid lobby, prevented the enactment of a statute which would have given the people of this commonwealth a competitive service and assured them a reasonable rate. Without going back over that period of time covered by the impudent boast of a railway lobbyist, proclaimed in this capitol, that "No bill has been enacted into law during the sixteen years last past in the interests of the people when objected to by the railroads," without going back further than the service of many members of this legislature extends, 1 Message of Governor La Follette to the Wisconsin legislature, May, 1905. it admits of no denial that the railway lobby defeated the bill to increase railway taxes in 1899, that it defeated the bill to increase railway taxes again in 1901, that it defeated the bill to create a railway rate commission in both of those sessions and again in 1903. The railway lobby maintained at this capitol since 1899 has cost the people of Wisconsin millions upon millions of dollars. At this session, and at every session for years, paid lobbyists have been employed about this legislature, by the railroads, who are incompetent to argue any proposition before a legislative committee. They are a grade of men with whom the railway companies would not trust the trial of a petty damage suit in a justice court. They dog the footsteps of legislators in and out of the capitol, they follow them to their rooms and hotels, they are free with entertainment. It is their business more especially to see legislators personally. Their special talent seems to fit them more particularly for private argument. Their presence is an annoyance and a nuisance. Their employment here should constitute a statutory offense. The experience in Wisconsin is duplicated in every state in the Union where effort is made to emancipate legislation from corporate control. Governor Larrabee, writing of the long struggle which preceded the establishment of the Iowa Rate Commission, said of the railway lobby the following: "If the items annually expended upon railroad lobbies were reported, these lobbies would soon be frowned, or even hissed, out of legislative halls." This legislature can at this session, — and who will assume the responsibility of saying it is not high time that it should at this session put all paid lobbyists under regulations that will make such scenes as have been notorious in the capital city of this state for years, impossible for all time to come. I would neither recommend nor approve of a law interfering with free and full public discussion of all measures of proposed legislation. Every opportunity and every courtesy should be extended to those who favor and to those who oppose any pending bill for open public discussion, before committees and in either chamber before legislators and the public. Every legitimate argument which any lobbyist has to offer, and which any legislator ought to hear, can be presented before committees, before the legislators as a body, through the press, from the public platform, and through printed briefs and arguments placed in the hands of all members and accessible to the public. Corporate interests can maintain a strong lobby composed of able men at the capitol throughout the entire session. Those who would be heard in opposition cannot. How unjust it is to hold a public hearing, invite both sides to present arguments, and then when the hearing is over to allow the permanent lobby to continue the discussion with individual legislators personally through weeks of the session thereafter, without those opposed being present to hear and refute arguments, Leaving aside all question of any improper suggestion or inducement being presented in a personal or private interview with a legislator, consider how unjust it is to the opposition and to the public to accord to one side such an advantage when it is denied, or impossible, to the other. The legislation which I most earnestly recommend is right in reason and is sanctioned by the highest authority. The most eminent writer in this country upon constitutional law has said: The law also seeks to cast its protection around legislative sessions and to shield them against corrupt and improper influences, by making void all contracts which have for their object to influence legislation in any other manner than by such open and public presentation of facts, arguments, and appeals to reason as are recognized as proper and legitimate with all public bodies. While counsel may be properly employed to present the reasons in favor of any public measure to the body authorized to pass upon it, or to any of its committees empowered to collect facts and hear arguments, and parties interested may lawfully contract to pay for this service, yet to secretly approach the members of such a body, with a view to influence their action at a time and in a manner that do not allow the presentation of opposite views, is improper and unfair to the opposing interest; and a contract to pay for this irregular and improper service would not be enforced by the law. The chief justice of an appellate court, ranking second to none in the Union, says in a leading opinion on the subject, the following: By the regular course of legislation organs are provided through which any parties may fairly and openly approach the legislature, and be heard with proofs and arguments respecting any legislative acts which they may be interested in, whether public or private. These organs are the various committees appointed to consider and report upon the matters to be acted upon by the whole body. When private interests are to be affected notice is given of the hearings before these committees, and thus opportunity is given to adverse parties to meet face to face and obtain a fair and open hearing. And though these committees properly dispense with many of the rules which regulate hearings before judicial tribunals, yet common fairness requires that neither party shall be permitted to have secret consultations and exercise secret influences that are kept from the knowledge of the other party. The business of "lobby members" is not to go fairly and openly before the committees and present statements, proofs, and arguments that the other side has an opportunity to meet, and refute if they are wrong, but to go secretly to the members and ply them with statements and arguments that the other side cannot openly meet, however erroneous they may be, and to bring their illegitimate influences to bear upon them. If the "lobby member" is selected because of his political or personal influence, it aggravates the wrong. If his business is to unite various interests by means of projects that are called "logrolling," it is still worse. The practice of inducing members of the legislature to act under the influence of what they have eaten and drunk at houses of entertainment tends to render those of them who yield to such influences wholly unfit to act in such cases. The tendency and object of these influences are to obtain by corruption what it is supposed cannot be obtained fairly. We have a statute requiring lobbyists to register with the Secretary of State before engaging in the business of lobbying. If lobbying privately and secretly with the individual is made an offense, it will go far to prevent any lobbyist from seeing or attempting to see a legislator alone. If, after a hearing is ended before any committee, further information is desired by the committee, or any member or members of the committee, or of the legislature, lobby counsel upon both sides will always cheerfully respond to a call for a further public hearing in committee rooms or in either chamber of the legislature. No fear need be entertained that the members will be denied all of the information which it is possible for those interested in legislation upon either side to furnish. To exclude lobbyists from the legislative halls may promote the comfort and convenience of members of the Senate and assembly. It would, in no measure, tend to eradicate the injustice and evil resulting from private and secret lobbying. Indeed, it might tend to increase instead. No. This legislature owes it to itself and to the people of the state to destroy the secret lobby, root and branch. Under the vigilant eyes of an awakened public the operations of the lobby have not been so openly offensive to decent morals at this session as at previous sessions. But the personal appeals of paid lobbyists have been persistently made to legislators throughout this session after hearings have been closed, after those representing the other side have retired from the capitol and from the city, believing, as they had the right to believe, that the discussion had closed. Personal, private lobbying is wrong in principle, and is absolutely certain to be vicious in practice. No legislation which has been enacted will be secure, and that which the public interests will require in the future will never be reasonably certain of attainment until the secret lobby with its misrepresentation and its wrongdoing is prohibited by law. I commend to your considerate judgment the enactment of a statute making it a penal offense for a paid lobbyist to approach a legislator privately or personally upon any matter which is the subject of legislation. Respectfully submitted, ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE, Governor POPULAR GOVERNMENT IN OREGON 1 Mr. President: BY SENATOR BOURNE The justice of all laws rests primarily on the integrity, ability, and disinterestedness of the individuals enacting them, those construing them, and those administering them. On this assumption I believe the remarks 1 From the Congressional Record, May 5, 1910. |