The home page for the Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn., included a note last week exhorting Catholics to tell Gov. Jodi Rell, R, to repeal the death penalty. By the standards of Connecticut government officials, this was an illegal act of influence peddling in violation of the state’s lobbying laws.
As the Constitution State fights to exert more control over the Catholic Church there, lobbying laws are the state’s latest weapon. Top officials at the Office of State Ethics have, according to sworn affidavits filed by the local bishop, informed the diocese that it violated state ethics laws and engaged in unauthorized lobbying by holding a statehouse rally and using its Web site to call on citizens to take action.
The lobbying skirmish — which highlights problems inherent in lobbying regulations — grows out of two recent successful efforts by church officials to keep Connecticut’s government out of church affairs.
First, the Bridgeport Diocese fought to ensure that a law instituting gay marriage included a provision protecting the right of churches to set their own rules. In effect, the church wouldn’t resist gay marriage as long as nobody would force the church to conduct or recognize gay marriages. The Bridgeport Diocese home page encouraged Catholics to call for a conscience-protection amendment to the gay marriage bill, which was eventually included.
But the state soon grabbed for the church’s purse strings. In early March, two state lawmakers proposed a bill explicitly and solely targeting Catholic parishes. It would have regulated church finances and stripped the clergy of financial control.
Church officials mobilized against the bill, with the Bridgeport Diocese Web site again asking Catholics to call their lawmakers. But then the church committed the cardinal offense, the act that compelled the Office of State Ethics to crack down: The diocese rented buses to bring parishioners to the state Capitol in Hartford for a rally against the bill on the day of the public hearing.
The public uproar spurred the bill’s sponsors to withdraw it and cancel the hearing the night before. But the church-sponsored rally went on anyway, making the diocese a renegade lobbyist.
Six weeks after the rally, the Office of State Ethics informed the diocese that it may have violated state law by lobbying without being a registered lobbyist. In a meeting between the bishop and the OSE the next week, an OSE official said he had enough evidence to file a formal complaint against the diocese. A complaint could trigger multiple fines of $10,000 or more.
State law defines lobbying as “communicating directly or soliciting others to communicate with any official or his staff in the legislative or executive branch of government or in a quasi-public agency, for the purpose of influencing any legislative or administrative action. …”
Anyone who spends more than $2,000 “lobbying” — for instance, renting buses to organize a statehouse rally against an unconstitutional assault on one’s liberties — is a “lobbyist,” according to the OSE, and must register as a lobbyist.
Registering to lobby is no small matter of filling out a form and paying a fee. Registered lobbyists must, thrice a year plus once a month while the legislature is in session, file detailed reports on all their activities and expenditures related to lobbying. They are also required, whenever lobbying, to wear a badge identifying themselves as lobbyists.
I asked the Office of State Ethics about the ramifications of dubbing the diocese a lobbying organization. Would priests need to fasten “LOBBYIST” badges to their vestments whenever speaking from the pulpit about the death penalty, abortion or future state attempts to micromanage parishes? Who would enforce this? Would the state deploy ethics officers to regulate Masses so that no unauthorized lobbying occurred?
Would the diocese Web nerd need to clock in as a lobbyist for the time it takes him to write, “Tell the Governor to Repeal the Death Penalty” and upload that message to the site? A spokeswoman said, “We really don’t have opinions that specifically address those matters.”
The diocese has sued in federal court to block the state from enforcing the lobbying laws against it.
Connecticut recently ramped up its ethics enforcement in response to government corruption and abuse of power by former Republican Gov. John Rowland. Today, the lobbying laws look like another tool for government to use to control meddlesome priests who resist the politicians’ agenda.
