Complaint filed over water compact lobbying
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HELENA – State officials say they intend to spend the summer re-writing some rules for legislative lobbying, after a complaint was filed April 3 against agencies working for passage of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Water Compact.
The complaint, filed by Flathead County Republican Central Committee Chairman Jayson Peters, alleges unethical lobbying practices were employed by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, grassroots organization Farmers and Ranchers for Montana (FARM), FARM spokeswoman Shelby DeMars, lobbyist Mark Baker, and Washington-based public relations firm Mercury LLC.
“CSKT, Mercury, DeMars, and FARM have chosen to use dark money and skirt Montana lobbying laws to hide the full amount of funds to lobby the Montana Legislature and other elected officials,” the complaint reads. “This is a breach of the public trust and open government. Currently CSKT principal has not listed any grassroots lobbying nor have they listed any payments to Mercury as their grassroots organizer.”
The 68-page complaint does not give a specific indication of which legislators were allegedly lobbied through any of the organizations, though it does show that the groups are loosely tied through financial contributions that paid for media campaigns meant to sway the general public toward supporting the water compact.
Montana Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl said that the parties named in the complaint will have 20 days to respond, and the commission will then have to decide whether or not an investigation is warranted. Motl said the commission generally prefers issuing an opinion, although it is not obligated to.
Regardless of the outcome of the complaint, Motl said it has brought a “gray area” to light in regards to state lobbying rules.
“Lobbying is an undeveloped area at the Commission of Political Practice,” Motl said. “We get hundreds of campaign practice complaints and we’ve got hundreds of decisions. That’s not true for lobbying. The law is pretty open or undeveloped.”
Motl said if the organizations involved in the complaint were “cherry-picking” what was reported to the commission through their own judgment and interpretation of the law, then it would not be surprising.
“That’s pretty consistent with the way most groups are doing it,” Motl said.
His office intends to re-work the rules this summer, and that changes are likely overdue.
“There’s a lot more lobbying going on right now,” Motl said. “And there’s a lot more money going into lobbying.”
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes spokesman Robert McDonald said that the Tribes were reviewing the complaint.
“We haven’t reviewed it at this time, but we will respond in a timely fashion,” McDonald said. “Given the contentious tone of this whole process, it’s not surprising to be faced with a baseless accusation like this. This complaint seems like another effort to take thoughts away from the facts of the compact.”
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Water Compact is pending in the legislature and would settle the Tribes’ federally reserved water rights. The $55 million bill has been highly contentious in recent years as more than a decade of negotiation produced a version of the bill in 2013 that failed to make it through the legislative session. After renegotiation in 2014, a more recent version of the bill passed the Montana Senate and was debated in the state’s House of Representatives on Saturday.
The bill was voted down in committee on Monday 10-11. Democrats tried to blast the bill to the floor, but were unsuccessful. A House Rules Committee meeting to review the motion to bring the bill to a vote was scheduled for Tuesday.
If the compact passes it must also be ratified by the United States Congress and Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. If it does not pass, the Tribes have said they intend to file as many as 10,000 claims in the state’s water court in basins as far east as Billings.
