Aiming to influence legislators and government administrators, California employers of 2,191 in-house or contract lobbyists spent over $144 million in 1997, as reflected in the Secretary of State's Lobbying Expenditures report. Of the $144 million in lobbying costs, more than $52 million - or 36 percent - was spent by public employee, education, health, and local government interests largely to convince decision makers to spend more tax dollars. These public-sector employers have become known as "The spending lobby."

As reflected in the accompanying graph, "local government" (the spending category most apt to fund its advocacy with taxpayer dollars) topped the chart with $20.7 million in lobbying expenses. This means that cities, counties and special districts spent nearly 40 percent of the $52 million spending lobby amount - or 14 percent of the $144 million expenditure total for lobbying services rendered. The costs to local government ranged from $206 by the Redding (Indian) Rancheria - to $753,579 by the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. State agencies also spent taxpayer dollars to lobby the Legislature. However, their lobbying expenditures are unknown since they are exempt from filing lobbying expenditure reports.

Lisa Martin is a policy analyst for the California Taxpayers' Association.

The second-highest category of the spending lobby was the health industry, at $18.4 million: 35 percent of the spending lobby total or nearly 13 percent of the annual expenditure total. The greatest individual lobbying expenditure in the health category was nearly $1.3 million funded by the California Healthcare Association and affiliated entities. Trailing this organization was the California Medical Association, which incurred a lobbying expense of more than $1.2 million.

Education lobbyists, including school districts, spent a total of $7.4 million to advance their agenda, including enhancing education funding. Among many accomplishments by education spending advocates was an increase in K-12 per-pupil spending from $5,493 in 1996-97 to $5,789 in 1997-98.

A common goal of public employees is to enhance benefits, boost salaries and increase jobs within the public sector. To achieve these goals, government workers typically finance unions to represent their interests to policy makers. In 1997, groups of public employees spent approximately $5.8 million on lobbying. The top two individual public employee representatives were unions for teachers or school employees, including the California Teachers Association ($961,092) and the California School Employees Association ($821,506). The total spending of these two groups alone equates to nearly 31 percent of the $5.8 million spent in the public employee category.

The expenditures compiled in this report consist of lobbyist payments, activity expenses, contract fees, membership dues, gifts and overhead expenses. Campaign contributions are excluded.