[ Report Home | Previous Page | Next Page ] Austin’s Oldest Profession: Texas’ Top Lobby Clients & Those Who Service Them 2002 Edition III. Lobbyists B. Fattest Lobby Contracts

Lobbyists reported 17 mega-contracts in 2001 worth unspecified amounts of “more than $200,000.” The public has no way of knowing whether these contracts were worth $200,001 apiece or $5 million. In another disclosure failing, only five of these 17 mega-contracts revealed full information about both sides of a conventional lobby-client relationship. Eleven lobbyists who reported huge contracts listed their own lobby firm as the source of their mega-contract. For another such contract, the Texas Association of Realtors listed itself as both the lobbyist and client. There is no way to know if unethical lobbyists and firms abuse this kind of disclosure to conceal the identities of other paying clients. Texas’ No. 1 hired gun, Baker Botts’ Pamela Giblin, is the only lobbyist who reported two mega contracts: one with her employer and one with the Brownsville Public Utilities Board.

Fattest Contracts With Real Clients (Contract Value Exceeds $200,000) Client Lobbyist Assoc. General Contractors Karen A. Johnson Brownsville Public Utilities Bd Pamela M. Giblin Swisher International, Inc. Jim Short TX Association of Realtors ???? TX Electric Cooperatives Campbell McGinnis TX Trial Lawyers Assoc. Nicholas K. Kralj

Fat Contracts With Lobby Firm 'Clients' (Contract Value Exceeds $200,000) Lobby Firm 'Client' Lobbyist Baker Botts Robert Strauser Baker Botts Kim Sherman Baker Botts Larry F. York Baker Botts Pamela M. Giblin Baker Botts Mary Keller Bicameral Consultants, Inc. Johnnie Rogers Jr. Locke Liddell & Sapp Gary D. Compton McGinnis Lochridge & Kilgore Robert C. Wilson McGinnis Lochridge & Kilgore Gaylord Armstrong Vinson & Elkins Joe Bill Watkins Winstead Sechrest & Minick Kent A. Caperton

Sweet Victory

The nation’s top producer of premium snuff and chaw tried to snuff out its competitors in 2001. Since U.S. Tobacco’s (UST’s) Skoal and Copenhagen brands sell for much more than competing discount brands, it would benefit if Texas taxed these goods by weight rather than price.  Spending up to $360,000 on Texas lobbyists in 2001, UST (backed by its McLane Co. distributor and Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander) floated such a tax bill (HB 3382). A year earlier, Rylander broke from her predecessors by agreeing to settle a $27 million lawsuit over smokeless tobacco taxes with the McLane Co., which was owned by Rylander campaign Treasurer Drayton McLane. 18 Yet the UST tax give away was defeated with opposition from the Smokeless Tobacco Council trade group and Swisher International. Having never hired a Texas lobbyist before, the producer of Swisher Sweets cigars and many smokeless tobacco products suddenly took out a mega-contract of “more than $200,000” with Houston lobbyist Jim Short.