BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 71
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Date of Hearing: April 6, 2011
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Felipe Fuentes, Chair
AB 71 (Huber) - As Amended: December 20, 2010
Policy Committee: ElectionsVote:7-0
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
No Reimbursable:
SUMMARY
This bill amends the Political Reform Act (PRA) to:
1)Require the Secretary of State (SOS), within 90 days following
the end of each calendar quarter, to display on their website
a list of the lobbying interests containing a specific
reference to a bill number that were reported on a lobbying
disclosure report, accompanied by a list of all lobbyist
employers who reported each of those lobbying interests for
the prior calendar quarter.
2)Clarify that when a filer describes his or her lobbying
interests on a periodic lobbying report, the lobbying
interests shall include the bill number, if any, of
legislation lobbied for or against during the reporting
period.
FISCAL EFFECT
Costs to the SOS will depend on the type of information system
developed to review, sort, and post the lobbying reports online.
Lobbyist filings per quarter currently exceed 3,000. To review,
sort, and manually enter these filings into the database,
generate a report and post on the SOS website will cost up to
$100,000 annually. A more advanced system allowing users to
search lobbying firms by entering a specific bill number would
entail one-time costs of $150,000 and up to $100,000 annually.
A completely automated system that sorts electronically-filed
documents would cost about $500,000 one-time for system
development with minor ongoing costs.
COMMENTS
AB 71
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1)Purpose . According to the author, current law requires
lobbyist employers to report quarterly to the SOS on all their
lobbying interests. This information is then posted on the
SOS website, thus making it easy for the public to review all
of the lobbying activities of a particular employer. These
reports are only helpful, however, if a person wants to review
lobby activity conducted by a specific lobbyist or lobbyist
employer. If someone wants to identify all lobbyists active
on a specific issue, they would have to review the quarterly
reports of every lobbyist employer. For the 2007-08 Session,
there were 3,253 lobbyist employers. AB 1274 is intended to
make such an exercise much simpler by identifying on the SOS
website all lobbyist employers reporting activity on each
lobbying interest on a quarterly basis.
2)Prior Legislation . This bill is substantially similar to AB
1274 (Huber) of 2009, which was held on Suspense in Senate
Appropriations.
3)Opposition . The American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees expresses concern about the potential cost
to the SOS of creating the reports required by this bill and
argues that the bill lacks sufficient technical details about
how the report would be created.
Analysis Prepared by : Chuck Nicol / APPR. / (916) 319-2081