« Blog Polls Blogs about Supreme Court Nominee Harriet Miers | Main | South of the Border »
October 23, 2005
Public Clarification to Herman Wang on Charles Love
The Chattanooga Times Free Press has quite the alert little "spamcop" providing sentry services at their e-mail gateway. When I attempted to reply to an e-mail one of their reporters had sent me, my reply bounced. (It's probably Comcast's fault for allowing spammers to operate freely on their networks, but that's an entirely different story.) That's okay: there's nothing in the e-mail that I wouldn't say publicly, so I will do just that. I don't have permission from the reporter to post his original e-mail to me (and I can't, er, exactly contact him to acquire it), so I'll just sum it up and hope that works.
Herman Wang briefly mentioned my criticism (and again here) of the CTFP for their use of the term "unregistered lobbyist" to describe ex-School Board member Charles Love. Mr. Wang graciously included an article from June of this year in which one of his colleagues (Ian Berry) reported on the fact that Charles Love and Timothy Willis (whatever happened to him, by the way?) had failed to register as lobbyists for E-Cycle Management, Inc., which, as you all know by now, was the fake company set up by the FBI for targeting black officials investigating corruption in state and local government.
Here is my reply to Herman's e-mail:
Herman,Thanks for sharing the article.
I have been aware that Charles Love did not register as a lobbyist for E-Cycle Management, the fake FBI company, and that this gives anyone the ability to label him as "unregistered lobbyist," but especially when the context is Operation Tennessee Waltz.
I also learned from an article in your paper that Mr. Love was on a list of lobbyists who failed to report campaign contributions -- in fact, he topped the list. I guess that report didn't distinguish between "registered lobbyists" and "unregistered lobbyists" -- it just talked about lobbyists. But what defines a lobbyist? Not much. Merely registering with one paying client provides one with the label, and Charles Love had done so (even though the "client" that was supposedly paying him to lobby was Charles Love & Associates).
The reason this is important to recognize is not specifically that your paper uses "unregistered lobbyist" to describe him. It's important because the Tennessee Lobbyists' Association, which opposes several of the key disclosure recommendations in the upcoming special legislative session on ethics, wishes to put as much distance between its members and the indicted Charles Love as possible, so they misleadingly misuse the term "unregistered lobbyist" to imply that "he's not one of us." (And, truth be told, I am not sure he is or was a member of that organization.) My aim is to point out that, except for the fact that he maybe didn't pay dues to the TLA, Mr. Love was a lobbyist just like they are. So he didn't properly register with E-Cycle? He registered with the required number of clients (i.e., one) and is thus a registered lobbyist. He didn't report a number of campaign contributions; the same is true for other registered lobbyists. He got indicted as a bagman in a bribery sting (and a thieving one, at that) -- there but for the grace of God go some other lobbyists (not all of them, by any stretch, of course).
When the CTFP echoes this potentially misleading terminology that the TLA wants used, it assists the TLA toward their goal of assuaging the public ear with the "we're not like that" message. The CTFP and I are both technically right, depending on context: where E-Cycle Management was concerned, Love was not registered; but as far as the minimum requirements are concerned in general, he was duly registered.
Best regards, and oh, by the way, I enjoyed the Mayor Littlefield piece. They need to give you more real estate.
Joe
That's all. I just wanted to get it out there.
UPDATE: No, that's not all. I'm sorry, but I'm going to nitpick some more. First of all, today's front-page story in the Times Free Press is a good thing. I appreciate what they've done to illuminate the public on the highly interwoven nature of governing and lobbying. However, in an inset about Operation Tennessee Waltz, the authors refer to Charles Love and Barry Myers as lobbyists. Both of them. Obviously, I agree with that description of Charles Love. That's the point I'm trying to make. However, I checked the same files that I found when researching whether or not Love was registered, and the only Myers I can find is a Roland Myers with a Nashville address. All of the news accounts I found concerning Barry Myers refer to him as a "political operative" or simply "Memphis resident." (Interestingly, the same Google search turned up multiple references to Charles Love as a "registered lobbyist" or at least "lobbyist." It seems that Nashville papers and TV stations got it right a long time ago. And again, I do understand that within the context of "E-Cycle Management" Love was unregistered. (In contrast to the Ian Berry story referenced above: "Charles Love of Chattanooga and Timothy Willis of Memphis were registered as lobbyists in 2004, Drew Rawlins, director of the state Registry of Election Finance, said[...].") But Myers wasn't registered or unregistered. He just wasn't a lobbyist, apparently.)
The only reason I have for harping on these seemingly insignificant misprints is that they spur wonder at how many other such details are mishandled. And, let me be clear, I am not attacking the paper. I am simply saying to them: "You have an important job to do. You're doing it well. Now go and do it better."
Miscellaneous | By joe lance | 02:31 PM