DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

For as long as I can remember, people have been saying that lobbyists serve a purpose of providing information to legislators. It was in government or civics class textbooks when I was growing up. And legislators, lobbyists, reporters, and scholars cite it repeatedly.

Last week Las Vegas City Life writer Cathy Scott attended a forum on political ethics and reported that Washoe County Sen. Randolph Townsend said, "They have information we don't have. Most of them, you'd like to be able to avoid. But the key is to get information from both sides. [But] you know they come from advocacy backgrounds."

Clark County Assemblymember Robert Seale said, "Let's face it, folks, those people are probably writing some big checks. [But] they have the facts."

State Legislatures Magazine reported in September 2001: "Lobbyists provide information to legislators on many subjects they never expected to have to make decisions on."

In the Athens (Ga.) Banner-Herald, lobbyist James Toney was quoted in 2005: "Lobbyists provide information and perspective."

In the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, Carol Weissert writes about health care public policy making: "Anecdotal information from Michigan indicates that lobbyists provide information needed by new legislators..."

Federal judge and political author Richard Posner argues that curbing lobbyists as a result of recent influence peddling scandals would also curb political expression: "Lobbyists provide information to members of Congress and other officials, and campaign contributions are used to sponsor political advertising, efforts to register voters thought likely to support the candidate on whose behalf the efforts are made, and other political activities, most of which are broadly informational in the sense of seeking to familiarize the electorate with the candidate and his program. Hence restricting lobbying and campaign contributions is likely to reduce the flow of information to government officials and to voters, and this might seem a substantial interference with the political marketplace."

There is something sort of hoary and stale about this idea that legislators need lobbyists to give them information. I don't doubt that there was a time when it was true. Once upon a time, legislators were solitary figures with few resources. In Nevada they didn't even have offices for most of their history, just a desk on the floor of the legislative halls, which meant they didn't have individual telephones.

But in the postwar years, there was a massive change in state legislatures as well as Congress. Lawmakers were given massive shots in the information gathering arm. They now have fiscal analysts, researchers, legislative libraries, and investigators. In the Nevada Legislature are a research division, a fiscal analysis division, and a library. The necessity for lobbyists to handle that function has declined to a minimal level. Lobbyists now serve mostly the purpose of lobbying. Millions of dollars have been invested in freeing lawmakers from the necessity of relying on lobbyists for information.

In addition, watching the Nevada Legislature up close for the past thirty years has convinced me that lawmakers are showing fewer critical thinking skills today than they once did and that's vital when faced with the kind of information provided by lobbyists. It's not so much needing to spot inaccurate information. It's more a need to be able to detect misleading or incomplete information.

New Jersey's American Reform Party has a great idea for taking advantage of the vaunted information gathering function of lobbyists. If it's so important for lobbyists to serve this purpose, the party says in its platform, then restrict its legal functions to just that: "Lobbyists provide information, not money."

I have a feeling we'll start hearing about some of the other worthwhile functions of lobbying real fast.