Oregon flunks the lobbying test

Despite all the focus on ethics in government during the 2015 legislative session, one key element of the lawmaking process got little attention: lobbying. A report released last week by the Sunlight Foundation, an open-government group, gives Oregon an F grade for its rules governing lobbyists and what they must disclose.

Lobbyists play an important role in the Legislature, advocating for their clients and for and against bills, and in many cases educating busy legislators about the details of often complex legislation. There is nothing wrong with that — as long as the public knows who is doing the lobbying, for whom they are working and how much they are spending. The Sunlight Foundation report says Oregon is one of four states with the most lenient rules for what lobbyists must disclose.

Lobbyists must register in Oregon, but they need not report the causes they are advocating or their positions on specific bills, as many other states require. When it comes to money, Oregon allows lobbyists to spend up to $50 per year on any individual legislator before reporting any expenditures. That means a lobbyist can buy meals, drinks or small gifts for lawmakers without disclosing it as long as it doesn’t reach the threshold. Other states have a threshold of zero, or set it very low, such as $5.

The biggest lack of disclosure, however, doesn’t directly involve lawmakers. It’s the amount of money lobbyists spend lobbying other lobbyists.

If that sounds confusing, it’s really not. When a lobbyist is trying to build support for a particular bill, or organize opposition to one, it’s helpful to enlist other lobbyists in the effort — a coalition of industries, for example, to oppose new requirements on employers. And because lobbyists aren’t public officials, there is no limit on how much can be spent to influence them. What’s more, lobbyists have been specifically exempt from reporting these expenses since 2013, and a bill passed this year extends that exemption for two more years. Gov. Kate Brown signed it on Wednesday.

The bill originally would have made the exemption permanent, but Ron Bersin, executive director of the Oregon Government Ethics Commission, urged lawmakers to amend it to include only the two-year extension, because a new online reporting system for lobbyists is due to be finished in 2016, making the reporting easier and muting opposition on those grounds.

Bersin noted that industries, organizations and other interests reported spending a total of $26 million on lobbyists in 2014, but the lobbyists themselves reported spending only $92,000 on people they lobbied.

That huge difference would shed a great deal of light on who is spending what to influence Oregon government.

— The Mail-Tribune, Medford, Aug. 16

Amazon, Gravity Payments take opposite paths

Two Seattle companies have taken roughly opposite approaches to building a workplace culture. Their founders sought to create an environment that they thought would help the companies succeed while also holding true to strongly held personal philosophies. And each corporate leader has faced recent blowback from employees, followed by national media attention.

The two companies are Amazon and Gravity Payments. Amazon grew to become the world’s largest retailer by following founder and CEO Jeff Bezos’ Darwinian management formula that values creative conflict and long hours and encourages employees to hold each other to ever-higher standards. Gravity founder and CEO Dan Price made the unprecedented decision to increase his much-smaller company’s starting pay to $70,000 a year.

Each company has suffered defections — Amazon for some time and Gravity since its change in pay philosophy earlier this year, according to recent New York Times articles. Some driven, ambitious Gravity employees were upset by the company’s decision to pay workers who had less responsibility and contributed less to the company’s success as much — or almost as much — as they received, according to the Times and other media reports. At Amazon, on the other hand, it appears that you have to be really driven to want to stay at the company for the long haul, according to a Times report based on interviews with more than 100 current and former employees.

There are lessons in these two technology companies’ experiences for other businesses, as well as for the Oregon Legislature and other state and local governments. The most obvious message is that extreme management approaches often have extreme, and undesirable, consequences. The less obvious point illustrated by the companies’ experiences is that workplace culture cannot be controlled by government rules and regulations. That’s the lesson the elected leaders need to study.

The Oregon Legislature just finished a session defined to a large degree by its attempt to force businesses to treat employees better. It required most employers to provide sick leave and forced them to adjust hiring practices with a law preventing businesses from asking about criminal history on job applications. The Legislature also created a retirement plan for workers without access to one. Businesses will have to administer payroll deductions for the plan, which will be operated by an entity selected by the state. Legislators did not take action on the minimum wage, but House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, has pledged to push for an increase to $13.50 in the 2016 session.

But consider this: Amazon offered employees sick leave, as well as vacation time. According to employees, though, using all of that sick leave and vacation time — even for cancer treatments or to recover from a miscarriage — could limit their careers. Amazon also pays its employees well and offers retirement plans, but many employees don’t stay long enough to accumulate much money. And how would a worker with a criminal history — even if hired — fare in Amazon’s culture, where employees are encouraged to criticize co-workers?

Gravity, on the other hand, likely would receive a seal of approval from the Legislature. CEO Dan Price chose to make a statement about equality by not only boosting the company’s minimum wage but also cutting his own pay to $70,000. Not all well-paid employees were willing to sacrifice to allow less-skilled co-workers to get their big raises. Some left when they got smaller raises or none at all, despite shouldering more responsibility, the Times reported. The company’s unique pay scale also reportedly upset some customers who viewed it as a political statement.

Both of these companies offer pretty much everything the Legislature wants businesses to provide employees. But at Amazon, those benefits come at a high cost to work-life balance. At Gravity, the question is whether the company can attract the high-level workers and maintain the relationships with customers that will be essential to long-term business success.

The tension at the two Seattle companies can’t be solved by legislative edict. The best thing government — whether in Washington, Oregon or elsewhere — can do for workers is to create an environment that allows a wide range of companies to thrive. Then workers have a better chance of finding a company that fosters the type of culture in which they will be comfortable.

— The Oregonian, Portland, Aug. 23