Capitol Briefs: How do you keep a lobbyist in suspense?

Lobbyists fees could skyrocket under Glazer bill: California lobbyists could see one of their annual fees rise as much as 900 percent if an under-the-radar bill by Sen. Steve Glazer survives Suspense Day.

Under the Political Reform Act, audits of political committees and lobbyists are conducted by the Fair Political Practices Commission or the Franchise Tax Board. Glazer’s SB 1404 would make the audits the sole responsibility of the FPPC.

But that would give the small political watchdog more work to do, so the bill also allows the state to raise an annual fee it charges registered lobbyists from $50 to up to $500.

As suggested in a bill analysis of SB 1404, Glazer is proposing this change because the FTB has said it doesn’t have the resources to conduct the audits required by the PRA. That same analysis projects the FPPC incur $840,000 to $956,000 in first-year costs if it took over responsibility for all audits and $798,000 to $907,000 in annual costs thereafter.

With more than 350 lobbying firms earning at least five figures through the first 15 months of the 2023-24 legislative cycle, a bumping the annual fee to $500 in theory shouldn’t be too onerous for most registered lobbyists.

Still, nobody likes to see their fees increase – and certainly not by that much.

SB 1404 was passed out of the Senate Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments on April 2 and was placed on suspense in Senate Appropriations on April 15. We’ll know on Thursday the 16th what happens from here.

Number of lobbyists rise after lower-than-expected registrations earlier in the legislative cycle: In late August, Capitol Weekly reported on a weird anomaly: after five cycles of growth, the number of registered lobbyists had inexplicably dropped for the 2023-24 legislative cycle.

You see, for six cycles (1999-2000 to 2009-10), the number of lobbyists in Sacramento hovered around 1,200. Then, in the 2011-12, the number grew by about 1,000 after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 1743, by then-Assemblyman Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, which required placement agents to register as lobbyists.

In the five cycles that followed, the number of registered lobbyists steadily grew:  to 2,373 in 2013-14; to 2,452 in 2015-16; to 2,537 in 2017-18; to 2,539 to 2019-20; and to 2,618 in 2021-2022.

But when we tallied up the number of lobbyists through the first quarter of 2023, we found something strange, the first drop in the number of lobbyists in 14 years, with just a little more than 2,160 registered.

At the time folks at the Fair Political Practices Commission and the Secretary of State’s office were at a loss to explain what may have caused the decrease, but it was generally agreed that the majority of lobbyists register at the beginning of a two-year session.

Well, that might not exactly be the case. Because we re-tallied the numbers after the fifth quarter and now the count is 2,666 lobbyists registered, which is right in line with the only trend we’ve seen, a steady increase in the number of lobbyists registered in Sacramento.

The bottom line: lobbying is alive and well under the dome.