The administration should require disclosure of all outside contacts with agency officials regarding the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act). In February, President Obama signed the Recovery Act, which provides more than $350 billion in spending. To ensure that all Recovery Act funds are expended in a transparent and responsible manner, President Obama issued a memorandum on March 20, 2009, restricting registered lobbyists from having oral communications with executive branch officials about particular Recovery Act projects, and requiring disclosure of other oral and written communications with lobbyists about the Recovery Act.
The administration can increase transparency by rescinding the restrictions on oral communications with registered lobbyists, and expanding the disclosure requirements to include all communications with executive branch officials related to the Recovery Act. Although the ban was imposed for a laudable goal, it leaves in place a major loophole by continuing to permit lobbying by those who are not federally registered lobbyists, but who still have a direct pecuniary interest in the disbursement of Recovery Act funds.
A much stronger alternative is for the administration to disclose any and all communications – written and oral, over the phone and in-person – regarding Recovery Act funds. Agencies should post on their websites the names and business affiliations of all persons engaging in the communications, the names and positions of the government officials with whom the conversations took place, the dates of the communications, and the subject matter of the discussions. These expanded disclosure requirements will not impose a significant burden on agency officials, who are already required to make these disclosures for communications with registered lobbyists about general Recovery Act issues.
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