A top network neutrality advocacy group is weathering a flap over its sketchy lobbying disclosures after it was reported last week the group had taken numerous unreported meetings with senior aides at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).
Free Press, among the fiercest and better funded Beltway groups lobbying for the adoption of net neutrality rules, has taken great pains to criticize industry groups for holding off-the-record meetings with FCC officials. But the group’s staff had lobbied FCC officials on more than two dozen undocumented occasions since January 2009. Additionally, discrepancies were discovered between the group’s filings relating to lobbying.
Federal legislation mandates the disclosure of lobbying efforts directed at federal employees with regard to the formulation of federal rules and laws. According to recently-obtained ex-parte data, serious discrepancies were discovered between filings with the Internal Revenue Service–which are to disclose generic, grassroots lobbying expenses–and those figures reported under the Lobbying Disclosure Act–which is to monitor federal-specific lobbying expenses.
Between the years 2005 and 2010, Free Press LDA disclosures showed the group had spent little more than $150,000 on direct lobbying of legislators and federal employees. But tax filings with the IRS–only presently available up to the year 2008–revealed the organization had spent nearly $1 million on lobbying in little more than half that time.
When it was reported recently that senior FCC officials were taking off-the-record meetings with leaders in the telecommunications industry over the agency’s proposed redesign of the nation’s broadband system, Free Press cried foul, claiming that top federal regulators were “meeting exclusively with industry representatives.”
But federal regulators were not holding exclusive meetings with industry figures: As early as 2009, Free Press aides were meeting with senior officials at the NTIA; the meetings were never disclosed in the group’s quarterly LDA reports.
Emails obtained by the Daily Caller revealed one senior Free Press staffer had requested meetings with NTIA’s chief of staff Tom Power to discuss the administration’s net neutrality agenda. It was agreed that the men would meet at a Capitol Hill Starbucks — conveniently at a location where the meeting would go unreported.
According to Power’s public schedule, the pair met privately a total of three times in 2009. And on a separate occasion, Power and an aide met with a Free Press agent in August.
None of the meetings were disclosed.
Separate to the undisclosed NTIA coffee house rendezvous, FCC visitor logs revealed Free Press staff visited the agency on nearly 30 separate occasions between February 2009 and October 2009.
None of those meetings, either, were included in Free Press’ LDA reports.
“It’s a tough sell to argue that on 30 separate visits, Free Press staffers only went to the FCC–the gatekeeper of net neutrality–to talk about the weather,” one keen observer of telecommunications industry told Capitol Confidential. “Pretty obvious that Free Press willfully broke federal disclosure laws.”