Opinion: Want to End Lobbyist Influence in Sacramento? Cut Big Government

A recent data analysis shows that Sacramento is headed toward another record year of spending by lobbyists. This will be taken widely as bad news, evidence that legislation is too often the product of special interests, and corruption is widespread if not the primary factor driving decisions.

A more thoughtful response, though, would say that the money being thrown around means California’s government has grown too big, and its lawmakers are too powerful.

According to CalMatters, “Special interest groups spent more than $114 million to lobby California officials and legislators in the first quarter of this year.” This matches last year’s pace “when a record $480 million was spent to influence” legislators.

“So far, nearly $600 million has been spent since the current two-year session of the Legislature started in January 2023. This year’s pace so far is about $1.25 million per day,” the report concludes.

The top 10 spenders include groups at cross purposes. Some want Sacramento to spend more, increase regulation and provide favors for particular businesses and industries. In many instances, organizations are using taxpayers’ dollars so they can get their hands on even more public funds. Others seek the opposite, lower taxes and limits on government growth and power.

It’s not hard to see which side is getting more for its money.

Government at no level should be so massive and wield so much leverage and control that hundreds of millions are spent in hopes of influencing lawmakers’ decisions. But that’s the way it is.

Two decades ago, economist Dan Mitchell noted that “lobbyists exist because many people cannot resist the temptation to try to redistribute resources in their direction — while others seek representation because they don’t want to be the chumps footing the bill.”

Or put in somewhat more earthy terms from Cato Institute senior fellow David Boaz, “when you lay out a picnic, you get ants.”

The Naderites have also noticed that big money attracts big interest. Craig Holman,​​Public Citizen’s congressional lobbyist on ethics, lobbying and campaign finance rules, said during the Great Recession that “the amount spent on lobbying” is entirely related “to how much the federal government intervenes in the private economy.” Replace “federal” with “California” and the point loses none of its validity.

If good-government types don’t like lobbying and want it restricted, they should be advocating for smaller government.

California’s state government is massive. It will spend $455 billion in the fiscal year that ends June 30. That’s dangerously close to a half trillion. To paraphrase Mitchell, there are groups out there that desperately want to get a slice of that bloated pie.

But some are on the other side. They spend private dollars to try to slow the stream of public dollars into and then out of Sacramento (minus the usual bureaucratic handling fee). It’s a “tough fight, but winnable,” says Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which appears on the CalMatters list of lobbyist spending. “Even the Berlin Wall came down.”

The regulatory state is another battlefield for lobbyists — some fight for its expansion, others to roll it back — and all have to be especially engaged in California because no state has more rules, red tape and administrative procedures. Researchers at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University have documented nearly 404,000 restrictions that must be complied with (and another 600 or so proposed every year). The next most regulated state would be New York, a distant second with almost 300,000 restrictions.

There are so many rules in California that it would take a person more than 29 weeks to read the entirety of the California Code of Regulations, says the Mercatus Center.

It’s not hard to find groups and individuals who want to “fix,” and even altogether bar, lobbying (which is a First Amendment right). They can themselves lobby lawmakers all they want with reform plans and recommended bans. But as Mitchell said of Congress, California could “​​pass thousands of laws to limit lobbying, but none of them will work so long as government has power to seize resources from one person and give them to another.”

The only way to limit lobbyists’ influence is to slash the size of the prize. If lawmakers were at the wheel of a limited government rather than one that continues to grow recklessly, hardly anyone would give lobbying a second thought.

Kerry Jackson is the William Clement Fellow in California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute.