New York Times: Abuse Victim’s 3 Billboards Called for Stronger Laws. Then the State Showed Up.
New York Times: Abuse Victim’s 3 Billboards Called for Stronger Laws. Then the State Showed Up.
When Kat Sullivan rented a billboard last year in upstate New York to call for stronger protections against child sex abusers, she believed she was engaging in the democratic process, using her own time and money to make her voice as an abuse survivor heard.
So she was shocked when state regulators afterward sent her a letter ordering her to register as a lobbyist.
New York State defines a lobbyist as, in part, someone who spends money to influence lawmakers. But Ms. Sullivan, a registered nurse, has argued that she was exercising her rights as a citizen.
She is now locked in a battle with the state’s ethics commission, which has warned that she could be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined more than $40,000 if she continues to refuse to register.
Ms. Sullivan’s case is unusual; few unpaid advocates spend more than $5,000 on an issue, the annual threshold for registering as a lobbyist in New York. Ms. Sullivan has said that she spent $14,000 on three billboards, plus about $2,000 on a website. …
“Almost every jurisdiction I can think of is grappling at some level with how much is covered and at what threshold,” Beth Rotman, the director of the Money in Politics and Ethics program at Common Cause, a government reform group, said of social media and grass-roots mobilization.
She called the dilemma the “million-dollar question” for ethics officials.
“At a certain smaller threshold, these activities are not the same as paid lobbyists,” Ms. Rotman said. “The challenge becomes how we as a democracy track this when it becomes more than small dollar.” …
Still, ethics experts acknowledged the challenge of disentangling lobbying, activism and normal speech.
New York’s law leaves a loophole for individuals who spend copiously on a campaign without tying it to a specific bill or call to action, Ms. Rotman said. If Ms. Sullivan had not identified the Child Victims Act and only mentioned sexual abuse broadly, she would not have fallen under the state’s definition of lobbying. …
Still, even as modes of exerting influence have proliferated, regulators should be judicious with the label of lobbyist, said Susan Lerner, the director of Common Cause’s New York arm. Some experts have argued that overregulation strangles grass-roots activism.
“There’s been a long tradition of Americans being concerned about lobbyists,” Ms. Lerner said. But “there is a history here of a distinction between a paid lobbyist and a passionate citizen. And our laws properly should reflect that.”
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