Lobbying Or Public Relations Work? You Be The Judge.

E-mails raise lobbying questions
PR exec urged state policy shift
By Tom Loftus

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- Recent e-mails from a Lexington public relations executive to Gov. Steve Beshear's office have raised new questions about what constitutes lobbying.
Advertisement

The executive, Phil Osborne, made a detailed case on behalf of a client, the Plantmix Asphalt Industry of Kentucky, in an e-mail to Beshear's communications director last month.

Osborne warned of dire implications if policies being written in the Transportation Cabinet resulted in the state doing more road projects with concrete, asphalt's rival surface.

He sent an e-mail to Beshear's scheduler the next day asking for a meeting at which the asphalt group could make its case directly to Beshear.

Osborne, chief executive officer of Preston-Osborne, is not registered to lobby executive branch officials for the asphalt group.

He said state law does not require him to register because the asphalt group hired him for public relations, not lobbying. He said he was only giving an opinion to his friend, Beshear's communications director Jay Blanton.

"The fact that I offered my opinion to Jay based on institutional knowledge of the industry is not lobbying," Osborne said.

But the head of the association representing concrete contractors said he believes the e-mail indicates Osborne should have been registered.

"That's called a lobbyist, isn't it? Trying to influence someone for a certain product or a certain way of doing things?" said Barry Sanders, executive director of the Kentucky Concrete Pavement Association.

He added: "Everybody has the right to express their concerns to any public official, but if you're trying to influence a policy decision or do something like that, I feel like you need to be registered."

State law requires executive agency lobbyists to register with the Executive Branch Ethics Commission. It defines a lobbyist as "any person engaged to influence executive agency decisions or to conduct executive agency lobbying activity as one of his main purposes on a substantial basis."

Osborne said he does not fit this definition because the association does not pay him to lobby and has instead retained the firm since 2000 for public relations work.

Dana Nickles, general counsel for the Executive Branch Ethics Commission, said she could not address the matter.

But she said that when the commission reviews such questions it considers issues such as whether a specific agency decision is involved and whether the person involved has been hired to lobby as a main purpose.

Richard Beliles, chairman of Common Cause of Kentucky, said he believes Osborne should have been registered to lobby before sending his e-mails to the governor's office.

"The whole point of registration is for the public to be able to see who's representing various interests before government," Beliles said. "And there's big bucks involved in the Transportation Cabinet's decisions on this question, millions of dollars."

Osborne is not just another public relations executive in terms of his relationship with the Beshear administration. He was the partner of Tommy Preston -- senior adviser to Beshear and director of homeland security -- at Preston-Osborne. Preston has left the firm, though it still carries his name. Blanton formerly worked for Osborne at the firm.

And Beshear announced soon after his election last November that Osborne would be the administration's chief communications officer. But after questions arose about the interests of Preston-Osborne clients in matters involving state government, Osborne decided not to take the state job.

His e-mail to Blanton came after comments earlier this year by Transportation Secretary Joe Prather and then-State Highway Engineer Gilbert Newman about doing more projects with concrete because the costs of most asphalt contracts were high due to lack of competition.

Osborne's Aug. 10 e-mail to Blanton, obtained by The Courier-Journal through an open-records request, began on an unrelated topic but then turned to the asphalt-versus-concrete issue. Osborne went on for eight paragraphs about the advantages of asphalt.

The meeting with the governor that Osborne sought for the asphalt group never took place. Beshear's scheduler forwarded Osborne's e-mails to Newman, asking him to conduct the meeting for Beshear.

Newman forwarded the e-mails to Prather and added this comment: "I don't know that the industry wants to hear me as they have heard both you and I talk about competitiveness!"

At this point the asphalt group, which had already met with Prather and Newman, dropped its request for another meeting, Transportation Cabinet spokesman Chuck Wolfe said.