Finally, the Edgewater Lobbying Complaint

Even tho the complaint form is actually only one page, there is over 100 pages of attachments to document and explain the situation. All of the complaints can now be viewed here as well if you can't open my links. (Kudos to the clerk's office for making this accessible to the public!)

The only reason this complaint took so long is that I had to compile all my records and there are so many violations if you get technical, it was hard to focus on the bigger issues. Since the complaint doesn't really fit on the form the City Attorney provides, I included Attachment A (final) which outlines the biggest violations, along with the providing the ordinance. Obviously, the City Attorney knows what the ordinance says, but I put it there first, for my reference as I was writing. Second, it is there because I knew several people would be reading it and I wanted to not only educate people, but I felt it was important for people to see, I'm not just making this stuff up - this is in the weak, gutted lobbying ordinance that we passed.

Attachment B includes all the emails that I have from 2008. This attachment is because Landmark X did not register their lobbyists until February 6, 2008. I felt it necessary to show that this wasn't just a casual contact here or there, but nearly constant communications.

Attachment C shows that they had meetings in 2009 prior to registering. And it includes the ludicrous statement that they spent less than $1,000 on lobbying.

Attachment D is the late registrations with notations from Attachment A on multiple violations, include the lack of disclosing that they were applying for TIF, even when the first meeting on TIF was in December 2008.

Attachment E is the TIF Application which they just turned in last Thursday and I just received yesterday.

Attachment F is the documentation that they are a LLC and should have provided the names of the members of that LLC on Attachment D.

It's a little complicated, but it all boils down to this:
- They were lobbying in September 2008 but waited five months to register and didn't file an expense statement for 2008.
- They omitted information about the fact that they were applying for TIF, despite the fact that the first meeting was in December 2008.
- They had to have lied about the fact that they only spent $1,000 on lobbying the first 6 months of 2009.

Those violations alone are more than enough for them to be fined. For people who are putting in this much effort (225 meetings before the project even ended up in the paper and created a whole new organization) on a $100 million dollar project, this isn't just a little detail that they overlooked. Or if it is, I greatly underestimated the thoroughness in which they doing this project, which I highly doubt.

We'll see what the City Attorney does with this complaint, but if he tries to blow it off and not file in Municipal Court with all this documentation, he clearly isn't doing his job and blatantly ignoring the ordinance. If he discovers something in his investigation that leads him to not file in Municipal Court, I hope he has a really good explanation.

If the City Attorney chooses to "educate" once again and not file then, some Alder should change the ordinance so that the process that the City Attorney is using matches the law. Or, if the City Attorney doesn't want to go through the work, they should figure out a different process for enforcing the ordinance.

Next week, a few more, but not the hundreds I could file, I'm just looking for some basics - getting people who hired lobbyists or who lobby, who deal with the system on large projects or on a regular basis to register and fill out their expense statements so the public has full disclosure on what happens in City Hall. I've been there, and I know, and it should be public.

And if that's not enough for you, just think about this . . . these 6 companies (5 others here) were asking for $6.3M, plus the use of the land in the right of way at Wisconsin Ave, plus and additional $10M or so in city TIF to build the Edgewater parking ramp and public spaces, the $1.4M in land for Biolink, plus whatever Marcus is looking for, which I've heard is another $12M. So, perhaps up to $30M in taxpayer dollars which is not insignificant given that at the beginning of 2009 we had $239M in debt to be paid back at the rate of $10M this year. That, opposed to the $120M where we paid about $6M per year just 5 years ago. We don't have money to be just throwing around, and its painfully obvious when we are looking at cuts for social services for next year, in part because our debt service is so high. If we are going to give this money away, we should at least be able to understand why we are doing it and who we are giving it to. And then be able to make choices about if this is the highest need for our community in these budget times.

p.s. I should probably note, I am neither for or against the project at this point. I believe it has several merits and depending upon what the final project looks like at the end of the land use approval process and how much TIF and what it is used for and how the public spaces are operated, I may actually support it in the end. What I am against, is the lack of transparency with this project and the utter disregard for the lobbying laws.