The Daily News’ blog covers public financing efforts in New York.
The Campaign Finance Reform Act passed the Democrat-dominated Assembly, but not the GOP-controlled Senate. The WFP [Working Families Party] is trying to drum up support with an on-line petition, noting that if the Senate Democrats take control this fall, the bill “has a good chance of being passed in both houses.”
The Times discusses robocalls.
More companies are buying automated dialers, or contracting with call centers to do the work, because the price per call has fallen to as low as half a cent, from 25 cents in the 1980s, said Paul Kowal, an industry consultant. Dialers can call thousands of phone numbers in seconds.
The growing number of “robocalls” has alarmed privacy lovers, people who need their phones constantly and those who resist the onslaught of commercialism. Amid thousands of complaints, the Federal Trade Commission expects, as soon as this summer, to revise its regulations to bar such calls unless customers have given express permission.
The Las Vegas Sun covers lobbying in Clark County, Nevada.
On more than 170 occasions this year, lobbyists failed to file disclosure forms when they visited Clark County commissioners, leaving the public in the dark about what issues they were pushing and on whose behalf.
The failures expose flaws in the disclosure policy — and confusion about that policy among commissioners and lobbyists alike. Although the county requires more than federal and state governments do, it doesn’t impose penalties for violations.
As a result, lobbyists are regularly flouting the rules, failing to disclose their private meetings with commissioners, sometimes on controversial issues, such as new regulations for payday loan stores and Republic Services’ proposed rate increase on trash collection.