Protesters gathered outside City Hall. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
Seattle City Council passed a new bill Monday, strengthening transparency for indirect lobbying efforts from third-party organizations.
Indirect lobbying occurs when organizations or individuals accept money from outside political interests, and in turn use that money to shape public opinion regarding an election.
“Indirect lobbying happens unfettered without knowing who is responsible for organizing a campaign, how much was spent, and who paid the bill,” Council President Lorena Gonzalez said in a written release. “With this legislation, we have the opportunity to align our city’s lobbying rules with better practices, including those currently spelled out at the state level and other big cities nationwide.”
The Seattle City Council is probably going to get more heat over the Black Brilliance Research Project.
Despite months of work and $3 million from the city s budget, the project s goals are still pretty amorphous, and the presentation researchers gave to the council on Monday didn t do much to answer questions reporters raised earlier this month.
The project, spearheaded by King County Equity Now (KCEN) but contracted through the Freedom Project because of a 501(c)(3) complication, will consist of many individual research projects from a team of around 100 researchers from local communities of color. The research aims to create a list of budget priorities around issues that impact marginalized communities for the council to follow through on, kind of like a budget priority vision board.