DISPATCHES By Hank Kalet Relying on buying lobbyists is only hurting the average citizen’s ability to have their voice heard on Capitol Hill.
Everything that is wrong with the way politics works in this country can be gleaned from this comment from lobbyist Dian Copelin:
"A (Capitol) Hill staffer’s average age is 26 and has been in the job for 18 months," she told the South Brunswick Township Council last week. "They turn over quite frequently and we step in and bring them up to speed."
As Ms. Copelin’s comment shows, the key to success on Capitol Hill and in the State House is access. And average citizens just can’t compete for access with the likes of Ms. Copelin and her colleagues in the lobbying industry, many of whom have long-standing connections to the elected and appointed officials working in the corridors of power.
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Ms. Copelin’s firm, Austin, Copelin & Reyes, is a case in point. It is being subcontracted by Cavarocchi, Ruscio and Dennis of Washington, which was hired Tuesday night by the South Brunswick council to lobby state and federal officials to get Route 1 widened and garner some cash for a local bus route. Like CRD, ACR has influential ties to the powers-that-be in federal governments. Which is why the town has retained their services.
Township Manager Matt Watkins is betting that the lobbying firms carry the kind of high-powered clout necessary to cut past years of indifference from the state to finally turn the widening of Route 1 into a reality. He may be right.
While not a last-ditch effort, the decision to bring in the big guns can be read as a frustrated response to inaction on the part of the state to the township’s long-standing request to widen Route 1. The seven-mile stretch of the highway in South Brunswick is the lone four-lane section in the region, creating a bottleneck on the highway. An extra two lanes is needed just to bring the road into conformity with the township’s neighbors. So Mr. Watkins decided to call in the big guns.
The Post already has weighed in on the proposal in an editorial last week, we said the money slated for the firms could be put to better use locally.
In relative terms, the $120,000 is a rather small expenditure, equal to about a third of a tax point and about $6 in taxes for the owner of a house assessed at $180,000. On a micro level, that’s not a lot of money.
On a macro level, however, the money spent on lobbying is distorting the political process.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan group that researches lobbying expenditures, registering lobbyists spent $1.6 billion lobbying Congress in 2002, while New Jersey lobbyists spent $26.7 million lobbying state legislators and the governor in 2003. Altogether in 2003, lobbyists spent $889 million "wining, dining and influencing state lawmakers" in 2003.
The money, according to CPI, buys face time with lawmakers, giving their clients a level of access that the average resident cannot match.
That access, as an array of groups committed to changing the way we pay for our elections has been saying for a long time, tends to skew the priorities of legislators.
Public Citizen, which advocates public financing of elections and tight controls on lobbyists, says there is a direct link between the money spent on candidates and legislators and the legislation that is crafted in Washington and the states. For instance, the group has been critical of the way lobbyists and big campaign donors have influenced legislation on corporate accountability, media ownership, health care and the environment.
The Center for Responsive Politics has identified the main players in the current Social Security debate led by a political action committee called The Alliance for Worker Retirement Security made up of companies likely to benefit from privatization. The Alliance as a group and as individual members has donated a combined $34.6 million to federal candidates and political parties since 1999, the Center says, not including the nearly $108 million it spent lobbying the federal government during 2003 and the first half of 2004.
The same kind of lobbying goes on for nearly every debate. The Hill, the nonpartisan weekly newspaper that covers the House and the Senate, described the role that health-care industry lobbyists played in 2003 in the drafting of the Medicare prescription drug bill. Lobbyists for the various health-care companies did what they could to keep in touch with lawmakers during the final conference negotiations that eliminated differences between the Senate and House versions of the bill. The rest of us were far from Washington, forced to rely on smaller consumer groups with far fewer resources.
The result was a legislative windfall for the industry and a prescription drug benefit that will do little for seniors.
What all of this means, of course, is that the average citizen is finding it more and more difficult to get his or her voice heard on Capitol Hill or in the State House. The more our political process depends on money for access, the less invested we all become in the process.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post. His e-mail is [email protected].

