Fla. fails to track lobbyist payments (despite law requiring it)

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http://www.gainesville.com/article/20091206/ARTICLES/912061013/1002?Title=Fla-fails-to-track-lobbyist-payments&tc=autorefresh


No audits have been conducted despite a 4-year-old state law.


Florida's efforts to track how much money is flowing into the state capitol to influence state laws and other public business is missing a major step: verification.

Four years after passing a law requiring the roughly 2,000 lobbyists to disclose how much they are paid, the state has ignored its own mandate to independently verify the disclosures.

Not a single audit has been conducted, even though regular audits were written into the state law.

Instead, the state has been relying on an "honor system" to determine whether those who lobby state government are truthfully telling how much they are being paid and by whom.

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Legislators say one reason they haven't conducted any is that they didn't want to spend money to hire accountants.

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Last year the state estimated that lobbyists who deal exclusively with the Legislature earned as much as $116.5 million.

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But when it came time for legislators to hire those auditors they disagreed about what auditors should look for. Some accountant firms also told the state they weren't interested in doing the audits because the law said they could not be hired by the lobbying firms to do other business.

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Adams, however, suggests that there is really no reason to go forward with the audits since it appears that lobbyists are filing the reports they are supposed to.

Adams added that if anyone really suspects a lobbyist of lying they can file a complaint with the Legislature.
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a bunch of criminals.

"honor system"! Florida's honor system honors the criminal.

[Bitwit1234]

1. That's republicans for you

and Hatch has the gall to call democrats arrogant and that they could fix what has happened in this country if they had the majority. Well hell's bells. From 1994 to 2007 they had the majority in the house and senate. And had the presidency from 2000 to 2007. Seems to me THEY CAUSED THE MESS. And look at Florida. The republicans are in charge of everything, and they don't even follow a law THEY PASSED.