Quite frankly, it’s quite hard to tell. It’s quite the mess and there is more information missing than available. There is very little information about who paid whom and how much to lobby for which matters.

WHY DO LOBBYING REPORTS MATTER?

I’m pretty sure my regular readers don’t need to have this explained to them. Think of that project in your neighborhood – what went on behind the scenes? Think of big projects in the city like Judge Doyle Square? No reports. MG&E has 5 lobbyists? Clean Lakes Alliance who worked on the James Madison Park plan – no lobbyists in 2018? All those construction projects? Liquor licenses? Who is being influenced to make those decisions? Funny thing is, I have yet to find one lobbyist who reports meeting with the mayor in the past 6 months. Hmm. I know he’s out of town a lot, but that seems highly unlikely. Likewise, I find no reports of lobbyists meeting with Mike Verveer, or Marsha Rummel or Ledell Zellers. With all the liquor licenses and development projects downtown, I hardly think that could be true. And let me be clear . . . the problem isn’t the people who have expense reports shown below. How many lobbyists do you think are missing from this list? Who do you think they are? And who do you think they influence? And how much did that cost?

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