Towards Voluntaryism (Part 20)
3.3. Government: Transparency and Regulation of Lobbying Instances
Towards Voluntaryism (Part 20)
Proposed Legislation for Transparency and Regulation of Lobbying Instances
The following proposed legislation is intended to provide for maximum transparency to lobbying efforts that seek to influence public servants in the execution of their duties. This is to enable the public to exercise oversight by eliminating closed-door lobbying efforts, mandating the public disclosure and publishing of all lobbying efforts in transcript form and to provide for restrictions on private entities to provide financial incentives to public servants. Further, public servants are mandated to seek public input on any and all lobbying efforts.
The goal of Article 2 is to limit lobbyists from influencing public servants with anything of financial value and ensure that lobbying efforts are fully disclosed to the public with sufficient time for feedback prior to any change in legislation, regulation or ordinance.
To those ends, I propose the following:
Article 2: Constraints upon lobbying instances and special interest groups in their interaction with and provision of information to public servants, both elected and appointed.
§2.1. All lobbying of public servants must be a matter of public record and are required to be in written or spoken form. All financial compensation per Article 1, direct or derived, of public servants by private instances in the lobbying process are strictly forbidden. Under no circumstances shall lobbyists or private moneyed interests provide, loan, sell at reduced rate or gift anything of any value to any public servant in exchange for consideration as to how the public servant performs their duties.
§2.2. All lobbying of public servants must take place in a building owned and maintained by a branch of the relevant municipal, state or federal government within the jurisdiction to be most affected by any proposals, plans or suggestions by the lobbying instance.
§2.3. All lobbying of public servants must take place in a forum open and freely accessible to the general public, publically announced no less than 14 days in advance by both the lobbying instance and the public servant's office. This announcement must include the topic to be discussed, the goals of the lobbying instance and disclose the business interests that it is intended to benefit. Further, the appointment book of public servants interacting with lobbying instances shall be freely available online and updated daily. This shall include the name of the lobbying instance, the entity they represent and the specific purpose and intent of the meeting (e.g. "lobbying" is insufficient, "lobbying to permit/restrict XYZ").
§2.4. All closed-door lobbying, lobbying which takes place without the opportunity for public observation, scrutiny, input and comment, is strictly prohibited. All lobbying events must be open to the public and the public must be allowed to provide feedback at the end of the lobbying event. Public servants are required to verbally respond to any questions and concerns the public might have.
§2.5. All lobbying of public servants that does not take place in written form must be video and audio recorded. The written correspondence between the lobbying instance and the public servant, as well as audiovisual recordings and a written transcript of all spoken lobbying efforts or reasonable facsimiles thereof must be made a matter of public record. This record shall be made freely available online within three days (72 hours) to the general public without access restrictions (e.g. registration or log-ins) of any kind. Comment sections must be provided for on pages that provide the lobbying records. The online presence of this information shall be maintained indefinitely as a public service, preferably on an immutable blockchain.
§2.6. Any legislation, regulation, ordinance or rule changes drafted that financially or materially benefits any lobbying interest may not be voted on prior to publication as detailed in §2.3 and §2.4 and a period of 90 days thereafter. During this time period, public servants shall be obliged to hold at least two (2) open public meetings at least 30 days apart, financed by the lobbying instance with the express purpose of gathering feedback from the public.
§2.7. The opportunity for the public to provide feedback per §2.5. shall, per individual, not be involuntarily limited to less than 10 minutes of speaking time regardless of public servant wishes, standing regulations or rules of procedure for public hearings.
§2.8. All speakers in said public feedback forum per §2.5 must disclose any personal financial interest or compensation that is in any way related to the issue at hand, including any role as proxy for any lobbying instance. Failure to abide by these strictures with the intent to unduly influence the public or the public servants involved shall remove any legislation, regulation or ordinance change from eligibility for consideration for no less than two years.
§2.9. Corporate or private expenditures to any public or private institution, group or individual that directly or indirectly benefits a public servant with the intent to influence the execution of the public servant in their duties are forbidden.
§2.10. Transgressions of the constraints detailed in §2.1-2.6 shall result in the lobbying individual and the individual or entity they represent, contract or proxy for, being charged with the crimes of bribery, solicitation, perjury, obstruction, perverting the course of justice and extortion for each offense.
This is very much a working proposal and I welcome feedback. I am trying to find the correction formulation for the proposed legislation so that it can ultimately be introduced as a ballot measure. The following sections will postulate changes to campaign financing and public servant salaries.
Next: [Towards Voluntaryism (Part 21) - Restructuring Campaign Financing]
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I would add some kind of a public registry of person/representing entities that visit public servants in lobbying efforts. It would be mainly the Name, entity of representation, and a brief subject of the purpose or the meeting. Like an open to the public appointment book.
That's a good idea, will append it to §2.3. Thanks for the input!
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Corporations do everything for their own interests. They are not doing businesses for charities. Hence, they should not be supported blindly. Every effort to make lobbying transparent should be encouraged. Governments should be made more responsible and their working should be transparent.