NIC Blog
Lobby Stats in Washington, D.C. Running With the Big Dogs?
Posted by Robert L. Burns
NIC has involved itself in lobbying efforts regularly at the federal level and less often at the state level. It is prudent to know something about the environment we enter when making these efforts.
A thumb-nail sketch of lobbying activities in Washington for last fall (2009) reported in The Washington Post showed that there were at that time 12,500 registered lobbyists in D.C., which is 23 lobbyists per member of Congress. This does not include amateur folks like us who are brought in on special efforts. The 23 lobbyists per member of Congress includes only those who do so much lobbying that they are required to register. In late 2009 it was estimated that health-care interests alone were spending $1.4M per day lobbying Congress. That number of lobbyists and that level of expenditure likely have increased this year.
Include in this level of lobbying activity the annual efforts of our host institutions on their own behalf and on behalf of the projects and priorities their governing boards (local and state level) establish and maintain.
Our host institutions, almost all of them, maintain at least one full-time staff person who has professional responsibility for "government relations." The larger and more complex the institution, the larger and more active the government relations staff. Whatever else these staff do, a part of the assignment is lobbying at the state and federal levels. If the host institution is part of a state system, it also works with the government relations professionals who are employed by those state systems, often in the state capital, often also in Washington. Both the individual college's Board and the Governing Board of the state system establish legislative priorities on a regular basis, and those priorities are central to the work of the government relations staffs-lobbyists. It goes without saying that the campus president, system chancellor, and other executive officials are involved regularly in direct lobbying activities as well.
At the same time, our host institutions generally are members of at least one higher education association, often depending on the type of institution: state colleges and universities, land-grant/research universities, private institutions, church-related colleges, etc. These higher education associations, generally headquartered in Washington, maintain their own staffs of professional lobbyists to work on those associations' lists of legislative priorities and regarding specific House of Senate bills.
Thinking about these levels of professional lobbying in Washington can help us understand the environment we enter as we keep our appointment at a Congressional office on The Hill. It also can aid us in understanding typical responses from universities and colleges when we request letters of support and ask for help in working on our own specific lobbying efforts.
