Deciding budget and policy proposal for us today.

But before we get started, let's go around the room and do introductions, and I'll start to my right.

Hi, Kevin Flynn, South West Denver's District 2.

Hello, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4.

Jamie Torres, West Denver District.

Hi, everybody.

Serena Gonzalez Cucheras, one of your council members at large.

All Cashman, South Denver District 6.

Daryl Watson, fine district 9.

Amanda Sawyer, District 5.

And then thank you all.

We have a proposal for oh, Councilman Parity.

Go ahead.

Okay.

We have a proposal for a lobbying ordinance, an update to our lobbying ordinance.

So councilman Torres, I will let it I'll let you take it away.

Thank you so much, Madam President.

And I'll let the clerks' uh team, clerk and recorders team introduce themselves, and then we'll kind of do I'll do an intro.

Andy Secaris, Chief Deputy City Clerk.

I'm Ben Schlair, Senior Policy Advisor for the Court's Office.

Nick Mayo, the campaign finance administrator.

So we've been working with this team for the past several months.

Council members uh Gonzalez Cutieres and Lewis are also signed on as co-sponsors of this effort.

Um Andy and I started talking before last year budget around um the need to update the lobbying ordinance.

And they've done incredible work diving really deeply into what exactly needs to be updated because it's um having been on council for uh seven years now, the number of really controversial things that we've taken on, none of them have garnered lobbying activity in their reports as of yet because of the way that the law is written.

And um, so it's giving no um no visual as to who's were who's lobbying on what um issue or how much they might be spending on it.

Um and so uh I think that uh the work that's been done so far in um uh amendments to this um really get at I think the point of it without being um over cut overwrought or cumbersome.

Uh but there are a couple decision making points that we want to get your feedback on as well before we file for committee on Thursday.

Um we'll be going to commute uh community planning and housing committee.

Um you think that doesn't relate to lobbying, but it totally does.

Um but it's also the committee we could get in before August.

Yeah, um uh but um I'll turn it over to Andy.

I'll stop and see if my co-sponsors want to say anything.

Okay, yeah, all right.

I'll turn it over to Andy and his team.

Great.

I'll try to go through this promptly because I think most of you have received a variation of this, but please stop me.

Um and I also added a slide to sort of explain some of the mechanisms at the end as well.

Um that I've gotten some questions about both from the lobbying community and some of the members of council.

All right, so um why we really looked at why reform is needed.

Um our laws are a little dated, um, they are confusing.

Um I've heard that from the media, I've heard that from you all, I've heard that from the lobbyists quite frankly.

Um, and they really don't provide a lot of meaningful transparency to the media and the public about um other than the client lists that the lobbyists represent, are really the only things that are getting reported.

Um, there's been some opportunity that we sort of noticed in some policy gaps around some of the high profile lobbying um that where there was spending done to influence you before you referred it to a ballot measure.

We saw it around tobacco um on both sides.

I think we've seen it on some surveillance stuff where they're asking their members or their uh supporters or they're going into paid media to tell you to vote no, vote yes.

Um that's not captured anywhere at all.

Um because it's not on the ballot, it's not captured in our campaign finance.

So they can spend as much as they want right now to influence you all or ask the mayor to veto something or or not veto something, and that doesn't get captured anywhere.

Um, and you know, it's just sort of a clear case based on sort of modern reforms to track this.

It's we're seeing it as a trend across the whole sort of lobbying community.

They're trying to sort of influence it before it goes to a campaign which is more expensive.

Um really the goals of the rewrite, increase transparency in local government, government decision making, provide clear and relevant information to the public, and to the lobbyists, quite frankly, um, align with, you know, other jurisdictions, and then really create a fair and consistent enforcement uh mechanism that is a little unclear in the current law, which I'll talk about in a little bit.

Um, new disclosure requirements, compensation, on how much lobbyists make per client per reporting period in a range, so it's not an exact dollar figure.

Um we heard from the lobbying community that they were concerned about sort of business issues of dollars and cents, and so we figure a range, and then we can run a report of how much was spent on a certain category over the period.

So lobbying activity disclosure, so uh disclose which covered officials were lobbied in the reporting period along with the client represented.

So we sort of went and looked at how that would look, which I'll talk about in the end a little bit, and disclose a lobbying topic if it if it is available.

Um grassroots lobbying, which I was just talking about, it's also known as astroturfing or grass tops lobbying, activating a membership base.

Um we set a limit or at least a trigger of $5,000 to sort of start that.

Um that's what gets you in the paper, that's what gets you on TV or on radio.