"It is my understanding that I meet the requirements and I don't need to register as a lobby," Connors said. Asked who she represented during legislative hearings she said, affably: "I don't identify clients ever unless the clients say so."
Didisheim finds this explanation perplexing. "There's no conceivable way that she spent less than eight hours working on this issue during each of several months of the 2011 legislative session," he says. "It is mystifying that a Pierce Atwood attorney who has played such an active leadership role with a piece of legislation is not registered as a lobbyist and that the public and legislators are thus deprived of any information on who she is representing."
Pierce Atwood's lobbying clients include several clients with possible interests in the takings bill, including Casella Waste Systems, Horizon Wind Energy, Nestle Waters North America, and the Maine Real Estate and Development Association.
It is not clear if Pierce Atwood has found a loophole in the state's definitions of what constitutes lobbying, or if they are claiming Connors never exceeded the eight-hour monthly quota.
The episode has also exposed an additional weakness in the state's transparency laws. Until 2008, registered lobbyists were required to disclose their clients even while serving on task forces or study groups, such as the one Connors now serves on. But that requirement was quietly stricken from the law at the behest of lobbyists. Once appointed to serve in such a capacity by a friendly governor or lawmaker, lobbyists are now free to draft bills, influence legislators, and even lead study sessions without revealing who may have hired them to do so.
"There was a suggestion that this sort of activity should not be counted as lobbying in order to encourage the involvement of lobbyists in the various types of stakeholder groups and task forces to which people are appointed to represent various points of view," says Jonathan Wayne, executive director of the ethics commission, whose staff tacitly endorsed the change.
Former representative Marilyn Canavan (D-Waterville) pushed through the original language and expressed surprise that it had been stricken. "I've always been on the side of more reporting," said Canavan, a former executive director of the ethics commission. "As a citizen I'm even more concerned about it, because a lot of what goes on happens behind the scenes."
