A ride-sharing illustration. Photo: PP77LSK, via Shutterstock)It’s as if they can read your mind: Before customers even ask to be picked up, apps let Uber or Lyft know you’ll need them. That’s because personal data housed in smart phones tell ride-sharing companies when and where their customers most frequently need rides. It’s innovated the car-service industry, critics say, at the expense of users’ privacy.
Lobbyist Bev Hansen, left, and her fellow advocates in an Assembly corridor just days before the end of the 2014 session. (Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)While most people have heard of lobbyists and have a general idea of what the lobbying profession is about, few understand the breadth and complexity of this work and the important role that lobbyists play in developing state policy. When I first began lobbying, long-time relationships ruled the process, there was far more bipartisan collaboration, and individual legislators wielded enormous clout.
A state Senate security officer, whose residence was the scene of a night of drinking and drug use that ended in gunfire and a death, was accompanied during police questioning by a lawyer for a politically connected lobbying firm who said he was a “family friend,” court records show.
The 10 lobbying firms in Sacramento brought in more than $40.4 million during 2013, including more than $11.5 million during the final quarter of the year alone. The figures were listed Monday in the Capitol Morning Report, which provides detailed scheduling, employment, campaign and job information to elected officials, government employees, trade groups and lobbyists, among others.
Capitol Alert: FPPC fines Kinney, Areias, Hickox for covert lobbying
“Three well-connected partners in the prominent California Strategies public affairs firm have agreed to pay fines to California’s political watchdog agency for trying to influence state government decisions without registering as lobbyists.”
“Jason Kinney, Rusty Areias and Winston Hickox violated state law when they “crossed over the line which