Syracuse has a new champion in Albany’s legislative halls — and his name is Dan McNally.
“I’m working to be sure our city has a presence and a voice on a large stage,” said McNally in a phone interview from his office in City Hall.
McNally, 25, is the newly appointed lobbyist for the city, and his task is to promote Syracuse’s interests to lawmakers in the state capital. McNally joins 5,887 lobbyists registered in 2009 with the New York State Commission on Public Integrity, the state registry for lobbyists in Albany.
Those lobbyists represent diverse groups and causes, including labor unions, private corporations and school districts. Lobbyists advise lawmakers on the effects of legislation on the lobbyists’ clients. They promote communication between the government and the constituents the lobbyists represent. They compete for the legislators’ attention and favor. Lobbyists are sometimes a source of scandal and corruption, when their tactics cross ethical or legal lines. But lobbying itself is protected by the First Amendment.
The First Amendment’s right to petition the government for a redress of grievances is the root of lobbying’s protection, said David Rubin, a First Amendment scholar and communications law professor at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. The constitutional right applies to both individuals and to those representing special-interest groups, he said.
“Lobbyists are citizens, too,” said Rubin. “They can speak to legislators about any issue. If one is getting paid to do it, he or she must register as a lobbyist. But that doesn’t strip a lobbyist of First Amendment rights.”
The men and women who petition the government with private agendas were dubbed “lobbyists” because of their tendency to wait in the lobbies of legislative buildings to speak with and influence legislators, Rubin said.
And lobbyists are deeply woven into the legislative fabric. Lobbyists, for example, help legislators draft laws.
Jeffrey Stonecash, a political scientist at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, describes lobbyists’ and lawmakers’ relationship as mutually helpful. Legislators , Stonecash said, often approach lobbyists for concise information about the lobbyist’s constituent group.
“Legislators and lobbyists need each other,” said Stonecash. “Before legislators make laws, they’ve got to know how those laws affect people. And nobody knows more about the people those laws affect than the lobbyists that represent them.”
For example, business groups are now lobbying congress in hopes of amending or repealing parts of the new health care bill that they say would be an unnecessary burden on their industries, Stonecash said.
A lobbyist also acts as a liaison between the government and the special-interest group the lobbyist represents. Margaret Susan Thompson, also a political science professor at the Maxwell School, describes lobbyists as keen students of how government works.
“You need somebody who both knows the needs of the people represented and who knows how the government works,” said Thompson. “You have to know where the various resources are, who to talk to about particular programs, and where to find the programs that your people might benefit from.”
The pay-off for that understanding of government can be new opportunities for the lobbyist’s client. For example, lobbyists that represent school districts can alert district administrators to new federal- and state-backed education grants, Thompson said.
Some tactics lobbyists use to gain legislative influence are sometimes decried as unethical. Ted Traver is a project coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group, an advocacy organization that lobbies on behalf of what it considers to be broad public issues instead of special private interests.
He warned that lobbyists representing wealthy interest groups almost always get more attention than those with smaller bankrolls. They accomplish that through large campaign contributions to the legislators they hope to influence.
“It has basically become a pay-to-play system,” Traver said. “Lobbyists contribute money.”
Lawmakers and lobbyists both strongly deny that the campaign contributions from lobbyists’ clients influence the lawmakers’ votes. But the combination of lobbyists and money sometimes becomes a corruption scandal. For example, in 2008, former federal lobbyist Jack Abramoff was sentenced to four years in prison after testifying that he bribed congressmen with expensive gifts and trips in exchange for political influence.
Traver’s organization is — no irony intended — lobbying the legislature to reduce new york’s limit of $100,000 that a lobbyist can contribute to a campaign. That limit is the highest in the country, Travers said.
To lobby for Syracuse, Dan McNally is the city’s first in-house lobbyist. In hiring him, Mayor Stephanie Miner broke the city’s custom of hiring private lobbying firms.
McNally comes to the $50,000-a-year position in City Hall with significant political experience. McNally graduated from SUNY Geneseo with a degree in political science. He was Miner’s campaign manager during the 2009 mayoral race, and in 2010 he managed the unsuccessful re-election campaign of then-U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei, D-DeWitt.
McNally will make the 120-mile trip to Albany weekly. He will stay in the capital for days at a time, meeting with legislators and making connections meant to benefit Syracuse.
“On my list of priorities,” McNally said, “the top goal for the coming months is advocating for a municipal airport authority.”
(Michael Leess is a senior newspaper and online journalism major.)
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