Peter Schorsch
Susan Glickman has been a fixture around the Florida Capitol for a long time. And when you have been around that long, you make friends – and a few enemies.
So it’s probably a good idea to dot your i’s and cross your t’s, especially when the law requires it.
If records are correct – and we have checked them thoroughly – she may have committed the kind of rookie error that draws attention.
And shes done so in a strikingly ironic way.
Appearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday, Glickman spoke of the importance of making sure lobbyists register.
At the time, she was speaking only about lobbying the PSC nominating council, but you get the picture.
Her testimony is available for all to see on the committee meeting video, at the 4:45:50 minute mark.
According to Glickman, who has been director of the Southern Alliance Clean Energy Fund since 2013, registering lobbyists is the right thing to do.
Florida Politics agrees.
When it comes to lobbying in front of the Florida Legislature — something Glickman does on a regular basis — we already have pretty clear laws about registering.
You lobby. You register. And you report how much you were paid.
However, a search on FloridaLobbyist.gov does not show Glickman as a registered lobbyist for anyone this Session, despite records showing she appeared at least three other times this session:
- On March 4, before the House Energy Subcommittee
- On March 16, before the Energy & Utilities Subcommittee
- On March 24, before the House Energy Committee
Each time, she indicated she was a registered lobbyist, although nowhere in the state’s online tracking system does it show Glickman actually registered for 2015.
Florida Politics also examined compensation reports as well as the lobbyists’ registration system. There too, she is nowhere to be found.
Oops.
Although there are literally hundreds of compensation reports from this most recent quarter, as of this writing, Glickman’s not among them or from the fourth quarter of 2014.
Oversight? Possibly. Forgivable error? Perhaps.
But to stand before the lawmakers and tell them that it’s good public policy to require registration of all those who lobby – while you yourself appeared to have not done the same – is not just ironic and hypocritical, it’s just plain dumb.
