A peek through the 'revolving door'
Students investigate lobbying, legislators

By Katrin Madayag
J-School Web Reporter

The Investigations class on the J-School front steps. Back, l-r: Hannah Heimbuch, Bree Rafferty and Caitlin Copple. Front: John Andrulis and Mark Hebert.

During the spring semester, four students have taken on the mantle of “muckraker” to get to the bottom of lobbying in Montana, publishing their findings on a Web site, “Lobbying Montana.”

The project was the semester-long effort of professor Dennis Swibold’s Investigations class. “This is a hunt,” Swibold reminded his class.

During the 2005 legislative session and special session, about $5.5 million was spent to lobby members of the state legislature. Montana’s 150-member legislature meets every other year for 90 days.

Pulling together information through long distance phone calls, trips to Helena and government files, print students John Andrulis, Caitlin Copple and Hannah Heimbuch and broadcast major Bree Rafferty wrote stories that reflect the different aspects of lobbying in Montana. 

In part, the project responds to Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s proposed initiative for the 2006 ballot, which aims to shut the revolving door of former legislators becoming lobbyists. It would require former government officials to wait two years before becoming licensed professional lobbyists. If passed, it would be the strongest limitation in the United States.

"Montana is following the trend,” said Swibold. More than half of the states have some kind of revolving door law.

Each student handled a different angle of lobbying in the state. Copple, a grad student, looked at which legislators became lobbyists and how most oversaw or had intimate experience with the industry for which they now lobby. Heimbuch, a senior, compared how other states handled lobbying, and Rafferty, also a senior, interviewed Schweitzer about his initiative.

Andrulis focused on the problems of disclosure and access in Montana – how the state doesn't’t keep files of lobbyists’ practices online and has deadline dates that don’t inform voters during the session.

“It involved some legwork,” the graduate student said; he traveled twice to Helena to interview Gordon Higgins, Montana’s commissioner of political practices. 

photo by Michelle Gomes

Students Hannah Heimbuch, foreground, and Caitlin Copple edit their final project in Dennis Swibold's Investigations class.

Based on the 2003 report, “Hired Guns,” from the Center for Public Integrity, an institute for investigative journalism in the public interest, his article needed deeper digging by Andrulis to find out why Washington had the best disclosure rating of all 50 states. 

He found that Washington keeps detailed lobbying records online, while Montana has a file cabinet in Helena. People who want to monitor lobbyists’ spending must travel to the capital and tediously sort through paperwork, as Andrulis, Copple and Swibold had to do.

It was kind of antiquated, Andrulis said.

The students and Swibold spent a lot of time building databases and identifying details that the state doesn’t require, such as what kind of lobbying different businesses do and what constitutes “gifts.” These missing details make lobbyists nearly unregulated.

When they first got lobbying disclosure information from Helena, the class found it incomplete.

“Dirty data,” said Andrulis. They sent the information back, and Helena mailed them more accurate numbers. After reexamining the files, they created categories and distinctions that made the information more useful to them and Montana voters.

With what they learned on how to filter and organize information and statistics, “they have enough to be dangerous,” Swibold said.

photo by Michelle Gomes

Bree Rafferty looks over her final project for Dennis Swibold's Investigations class.

The launch of the Web site, designed by Spectral Fusion will be right before the governor’s proposed initiative goes to the people, making its rounds around the state. For it to appear on the 2006 election ballot, it must garner 22,308 voters’ signatures, which includes 5 percent of the voters in 34 of the 100 state House districts.

In Investigations class, it’s this kind of information that Swibold urges his students to follow. He tells them to go after “stories that aren’t apparent,” he said. 

Andrulis now knows this go-get-‘em attitude. While the hardest part was “sifting and distilling the political spin on things,” he feels that after all his reporting, he’s become somewhat of a pundit on Montana lobbying, he said.

Another professor teased the students, calling them “muckrakers.” Andrulis doesn’t disagree.

“I feel like a muckraker,” he said with a smile.

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