Evergreen Freedom Foundation formally filed complaints with the Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) against sixty-eight public agencies for failing to disclose the hiring of lobbyists with taxpayer dollars. You can view the video showing delivery of the complaints to the PDC by clicking on the image to the right.Similar things happen in other states. Local government lobbies the state government, or state governments lobby the federal government. Then the "little" governments get some project to spend money on. Never mind the project is something the people never wanted, the government officials crow they are "doing something" for the people at no expense.
When people think of lobbyists, they usually imagine big businesses buying off corrupt politicians. They probably don’t imagine government agencies hiring lobbyists to buy votes at the capitol. It sounds absurd—and it is—but here in Washington public agencies spend millions of our dollars every year hiring lobbyists.
Unfortunately, the flagrant use of tax dollars to lobby for bigger government is a growing problem. While conducting research for the Freedom Foundation’s just-released report detailing taxpayer-funded lobbying in Washington, Preston Mui of EFF found that public agencies spent over $42 million on lobbying in the last decade. And with unreported lobbying, hidden administrative costs, employee benefits, and lobbying at the federal level, the true cost of government lobbying is much, much higher.
Not only do city governments, county governments, public utility districts, and other public agencies spend millions of dollars every year lobbying the state, sometimes they don’t even tell us about it.
View the EFF reports (in pdf)
View the PDC complaints (in pdf)
Yeah, right. All we lose is our freedom and we still pay the taxes in the end.
We the People must require smaller, less controlling, government.
Couldn't agree more Bob. Our economies are being slowly choked to death by ever-growing government.
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