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Weekly Lobbying ArticlesMay 12, May 5, 2017Quakers take aim at Comcast over lobbying disclosures, transparency Quaker money-management firm with offices next to the Comcast Center is leading shareholder activists seeking to have the cable and entertainment giant disclose millions of dollars in "grassroots" state and local lobbying."Our constituents are concerned about dark money flowing into politics," Jeffery W. Perkins, executive director of Friends Fiduciary, said Thursday.Despite federal and state laws, Friends Fiduciary said, there are gaps in what Comcast?— one of the nation's largest political spenders in Washington?— has to disclose about its lobbying, and expenditures either go unreported or the information is difficult for shareholders to find."This proposal has been submitted repeatedly and has been overwhelmingly rejected by the shareholders each time," Comcast spokesman John Demming said Friday. The company said in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that much of the information Friends Fiduciary would like it to disclose is already publicly available or could compromise its competitive position.Friends Fiduciary, a nonprofit with headquarters on the 1600 block of Arch Street, manages about $400 million for Quaker meetings, schools, and retirement communities in a manner consistent with Quaker values. It has backed the shareholders' resolution in the past but has been more assertive this year, meeting with Comcast officials and posting a 2,300-word letter on the SEC website.In the letter, which went live Friday, the group said Comcast spent $30 million on lobbying at the federal level, the 12th-highest among companies.The letter also noted that a recent study indicated that Comcast spent $7 million in state-level lobbying between 2012 and 2015 in six states with good disclosure rules, making it the No. 5 overall spender. Pennsylvania was not one of the six states, but New Jersey was. ??"Comcast's spending at the state level is clearly significant, but because state-level lobbying-disclosure requirements are often cursory, investors have no idea how much the company is spending in 22 states and only a murky picture in others," Friends Fiduciary said in the letter, reviewed by the Inquirer and .Other groups advocating for socially conscious investing that joined the shareholders resolution are Walden Asset Management, the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculata, and the Sisters of the Order of St. Dominic of Grand cast, which owns the NBCUniversal entertainment conglomerate, is recommending that shareholders vote against the proposal.The company said that the political spending information is "generally publicly available in appropriate detail," and that "implementing the proposal would require us to incur unnecessary expense, would divert management attention away from our primary business activities, and would raise potential competitive concerns."Michigan RadioMay 5, 2017Research on term limits shows lobbyists, special interests win, while Michiganders often lose still love the idea of term limits. The idea of “throw the rascals out” after a few terms is supposed to end career politicians and instead give us citizen legislators who are more connected to the people back home.A new book explains 13 years of research into how term limits have worked in Michigan. Its title is?Implementing Term Limits: The Case of the Michigan Legislature. It was written by the husband and wife team of?Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson?and Lyke Thompson.When the issue of term limits was being debated in Lansing, one of the claims was that "citizens legislators" would be more interested in the common good than self-interest. But the research that Sarbaugh-Thompson conducted told a different story."When people have a short time horizon, and they don't have much experience ... they concentrate on things they can fix easily and quickly, and ... they have to try and figure out where to get information on how to do that," Sarbaugh-Thompson said.?She said the big winners of term limits, according to her research, were special interests and lobbyists, because those inexperienced politicians have to get their information from somewhere."Even though voters were promised that term limits would severe the cozy ties between legislators and lobbyists, what we actually found is that legislators are more likely to turn to lobbyists for information," Sarbaugh-Thompson said.Another finding in the research is that when these politicians come into office, they are more ambitious. But not necessarily in a good way, because they have limited time in office and don't focus on long-term solutions.?"They want to concentrate on things that are quick fixes, easy to do," Sarbaugh-Thompson said. "Anything that's really tough, they can kick the can down the road and then the next batch of people have to cope with it."?Listen to the full interview above to hear why term limited politicians are a lot like grandparents who take care of your kids, and why Republican women may have suffered the most from term limits.?The Sacramento BeeMay 8, 2017Here’s who spent the most lobbying California government this year year’s fight over the road-funding package?that will raise fuel taxes and registration fees?involved lobbying from dozens of labor, business and local government organizations.Yet the lobbyist employer that spent the most from January through March, the Western States Petroleum Association, largely had a hands-off approach to the measure that will increase taxes on its product. Lawmakers narrowly approved the increase, Senate Bill 1, on April 6.The association reported spending almost $1.4 million from Jan. 1 through March 31, with about $1 million of that paid to various public relations shops, consulting firms, ad buyers and other expenses that fell into the so-called other payments to influence category. It remained neutral on the tax hike/road repair measure and has been engaged with other high-profile measures to expand cap-and-trade and to accelerate California’s shift to renewable energy.The second-highest first-quarter spender was the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a strong critic of SB 1, the road measure. Much of the money went to marketing and printing costs, the group’s filing shows.Filling out the top-5 in the first quarter was Chevron Corporation, which spent $968,000; the California State Council of Service Employees, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, which spent $868,000; and the California Hospital Association spent just over $777,000.Overall, the first three months of the legislative session featured $75.3 million in total spending, according to filings due last week. That compares to $66.5 million in 2011, $62.4 million in 2013, and $68 million in 2015.Portland Press HeraldMay 8, 2017Lobbyists lining up to influence marijuana laws in Maine sales of marijuana may still be a year away, but cannabis-related cash is already flowing at the Maine State House as businesses jockey to influence the policies that will govern the lucrative recreational market.Between Dec. 1 and March 31, clients paid lobbyists more than $140,000 for representation on marijuana-related issues in Augusta even though lawmakers have only taken up a handful of the roughly 50 bills connected to the drug.MARIJUANA LOBBYISTSWho’s involved in the policy discussions and who’s paying them, according to lobbying expenditure reports filed through March 31 with the Maine Ethics Commission. The list may not represent all lobbying on marijuana issues.Toby J. McGrathMaine Professionals for Regulating Marijuana: $54,338Edward Roy DugayRemedy Compassion: $24,000Daniel W. WalkerWellness Connection of Maine: $23,250Paul T. McCarrierLegalize Maine: $15,000Josh TardyCrockett and Crockett LLC: $12,000Alysia MelnickThe Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol: $6,422Michael V. SaxlNarrow Gauge Holdings: $2,541Michele MacLeanGreenwich Biosciences Inc.: $2,500Hillary ListerMaine Commercial Growers Association: $1,750Keith A. HerrickPatients First: $340In fact, two medical marijuana dispensaries and a group called Maine Professionals for Regulating Marijuana were ranked in the Top 10 in dollars spent, along with companies from other industries known for hefty spending on lobbying: banks, casinos, utilities and tobacco.But observers say it’s no surprise that businesses and interest groups are hiring lawyers and consultants adept at navigating the State House hallways, given predictions that sales of legal marijuana could surpass $200 million within three years.“It strikes me that we are building a regulatory structure from the ground up so people were very concerned about how it gets done,” said Rep. Erik Jorgensen, D-Portland, a frequent target of lobbying as one of 17 members of the Legislature’s Marijuana Legalization Implementation Committee. “I do think when you are starting a whole new industry, you expect to see that.”LOBBYISTS PACK REGULATION TALKSLast fall’s referendum to legalize marijuana for adults age 21 and over was only the first step in the process. Now lawmakers and state officials must craft the licensing, regulatory and enforcement infrastructure for retail marijuana sales to begin in Maine sometime next year. And those proceedings have generated plenty of interest.The twice-weekly meetings of the?Marijuana Legalization Implementation Committee?are often filled with attorneys from many of Maine’s largest law firms as well as paid consultants and people with vested interests in the marijuana industry.At least a dozen groups or businesses have hired lobbyists to represent them on marijuana issues in the Legislature, according to documents filed with the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices. That may represent a partial listing, however, because the current reports only cover expenditures through March 31 and because of limitations in searching the ethics commission database.They include medical marijuana dispensaries and caregivers, a cannabis intellectual-property company called Narrow Gauge Holdings, a California-based pharmaceutical firm, Greenwich Biosciences, that produces “cannabinoid therapeutics,” as well as two of the organizations behind last year’s referendum, Legalize Maine and Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol.Clients spent more than $2 million lobbying the Maine Legislature between December and March 31. So the $142,141 spent on marijuana-related lobbying – out of the hundreds of issues under consideration by lawmakers – represents a substantial chunk of that total. And spending on lobbyists will only grow as the committee continues its work through next year.It is too early to say where marijuana lobbying will rank compared with other issues, although it’s not unprecedented for single issues to rack up six-figure lobbying expenditures. During last year’s debate over a contentious solar energy bill, for instance, more than two dozen companies and organizations lobbied lawmakers. Two national solar energy companies, SunRun and Solar City, spent more than $47,000 alone on lobbying.And in 2015, the New Brunswick company J.D. Irving and its subsidiary spent more than $100,000 lobbying for passage of a bill to revamp Maine’s mining laws.DISPENSARIES AMONG BIG SPENDERSTwo of the biggest spenders as of March 31 – the last date for which financial disclosures have been filed – were dispensaries that grow and supply medical marijuana to patients but are hoping to carve out a piece of the recreational market as well.Wellness Connection of Maine, which operates four of the state’s eight licensed dispensaries, had paid Dan Walker $23,250 for lobbying in the Legislature. A veteran of medical marijuana policy issues in Maine, Walker also had four lobbyist associates listed as working with him on the account. Remedy Compassion, an Auburn-based dispensary, has paid Edward Roy Dugay for representation in Augusta.Patricia Rosi, CEO of Wellness Connection of Maine, said her organization is involved in the policymaking process because it feels “a responsibility to the thousands of people we serve every day.” But Wellness Connection is also looking ahead to the recreational market, Rosi said, because dispensaries are already well-positioned in terms of regulatory oversight, quality control and a proven track record of paying taxes on their products.“Yes, we are here every week and lobbying is a priority because our voices must be heard,” said Rosi. “All of us dispensaries have a vested interest in participating” in the -SPENDING LOBBYIST IS . . .The two dispensary companies are also members of another group, Maine Professionals for Regulating Marijuana, that had wracked up the largest lobbying bill – $54,338 – as of March 31. The recipient of that money, Toby McGrath,?a consultant who leads the government relations and campaigns practice group at the law firm Drummond Woodsum.Maine Professionals for Regulating Marijuana bills itself as a broad coalition of interests – including financial institutions and advisers, attorneys, real estate agents, land use planners and marijuana dispensaries – “who advocate for quality, safety and transparency in the marijuana industry in Maine.” The group has yet to release a full list of board of directors or disclose its donors, who attorney Hannah King said prefer to remain confidential because of the continuing stigma attached to marijuana.That secrecy has fueled rumors, however, that Maine Professionals for Regulating Marijuana is a front group for the dispensaries. But King said the dispensaries are “only part of the organization” made up of a broader group of professionals.“Everyone has the same goal of a professional industry that is well-regulated … and safety, quality and transparency in the industry,” King said.GETTING IN ON THE ‘EARLY SALES’Dispensary operators are lobbying heavily?for the exclusive right to sell recreational marijuana and cannabis products later this year before licensing of retail stores begins in February, providing adults an alternative to the black market. Such an “early sales” program – similar to limited-licensing periods rolled out in other legalization states – would give dispensaries a lucrative toehold into a newly legal economy that the cannabis research firm ArcView Market Research estimated would be worth $220 million in Maine by 2020.But the dispensaries’ political gambit and their heavy lobbying presence are escalating longstanding tensions among the companies and the other smaller but much more numerous players in the medical marijuana industry: the caregivers. While the “early sales” legislation would allow caregivers to sell marijuana to dispensaries, caregivers could not sell directly to recreational users.“It’s interesting that people who had no interest in our campaign and, in some cases, didn’t support legalization are now so interested in getting some of these licenses,” said Paul McCarrier, a lobbyist with Legalize Maine, one of the organizations behind Question 1 on last November’s ballot.McCarrier, a registered lobbyist who has been paid $15,000 by Legalize Maine through March, accuses dispensaries of trying to set the regulatory bar so high that it would “stifle the competition and keep the little guy out.” In turn, that would undercut the small-business job-creation potential of Maine’s new legal cannabis industry.“When you have one business employing 100 people, there’s no competition,” McCarrier said. “When you have three businesses employing 33 people each, you have a lot more competition.”BIG MONEY, SOPHISTICATED EFFORTSMaine is by no means unusual in seeing a still-small but professional and well-funded cannabis lobbying niche. In Colorado, groups on both sides of the cannabis debate spent more than $330,000 lobbying the state legislature in 2013, the year after voters there legalized marijuana, according to the Denver Post.The Marijuana Policy Project, a national organization that has worked on legalization campaigns in Maine and across the country, has spent more than $1.1 million on federal lobbying since 2004, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign finance watchdog group.Gone are the days – if they ever existed – when a cannabis “entrepreneur” resembled the stereotypical, long-haired hippie often portrayed by Hollywood.Today, the entire legal cannabis industry – both medical and recreational – is estimated by ArcView Market Research to be worth $7 billion and has the potential to triple in the next several years, even though marijuana remains illegal under federal law.PRESSURING FEDERAL GOVERNMENTLater this month, 300 people involved in the marijuana industry are expected to gather in Washington, D.C., for “Cannabis Industry Lobby Days,” a two-day event of intensive lobbying of members of Congress and federal officials. The event is organized by the National Cannabis Industry Association, a group whose membership has quadrupled to 1,200 members in the span of three years.Taylor West, deputy director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, said legal marijuana is a “highly, highly regulated industry” at the state and local level, so it makes sense for businesses to be involved in those policy discussions.“The amount of money needed to enter the industry, open a business, has grown substantially,” said West, who is based in Colorado. “It is an industry that now requires a huge amount of work, a huge amount of business smarts and, in many cases, a substantial financial foundation to get started.”The Maine Legislature’s Marijuana Legalization Implementation Committee is expected to meet throughout the summer and into the fall or winter, reviewing the experiences of other legalization states and poring through nearly 50 cannabis-related bills. The committee plans to present next year’s Legislature with a lengthy list of recommendations on regulations, licensing and law enforcement before the opening of retail stores.ASSESSING THE ARGUMENTSAsked about the lobbying on cannabis, a committee member, Rep. Patrick Corey, R-Windham, said it wasn’t markedly different from the professional lobbying he sees as a member of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee.But standing outside the marijuana committee, he added: “There is a lot of money in that room.”Jorgensen, the Portland lawmaker who also serves on the committee, said he wouldn’t say the marijuana lobby “is a good thing or a bad thing,” it’s just the reality surrounding a new industry. But as a part-time, citizen Legislature, lawmakers depend on professionals and subject-matter experts to help educate them about the issues.“You have to figure out where people are coming from and try to see if a grain of salt is needed,” Jorgensen said. “And if you do that, you can benefit from the information that is provided.”The Arizona RepublicMay 8, 2017Months after it was exposed, Phoenix hasn't fixed toothless lobbying law than three months after Phoenix realized it could not enforce its regulations for lobbyists seeking to influence decisions at City Hall, city leaders have yet to fix the problem.The city's toothless lobbying?rules?could get some bite this month under a set of proposals City Council members will debate, but one option under consideration would weaken them even further.The effort comes after?The Arizona Republic?reported in January that a high-profile law firm?hadn't complied with the city's lobbyist-registration rules for?two years and filed falsified documents to make it appear the firm had followed the rules, according to the city.But the episode spurred a bigger eye-opener for Phoenix officials: The City Attorney's Office said the city?couldn't do anything to penalize the firm or others that do?not?comply with its lobbyist regulations because of how they were written.The revelation?means lobbyists who do not register or report meals, gifts or other expenses made on behalf of elected officials currently?face no penalties for breaking the city's lobbying law by not disclosing their activity. And some city leaders and a government watchdog say the delay in making the rules enforceable erodes public confidence.Should a?violation be criminal?Making the ordinance enforceable likely only requires?the addition of several key words stating that it is unlawful to not comply with the lobbyist rules. But the city is now looking at a broader overhaul of its lobbying ordinance.Last week, the city unveiled the basic details of proposed changes. One of the biggest questions for council members: Should a violation be a criminal or civil matter?For years, the city has treated a?violation?of its lobbying rules as a criminal misdemeanor offense, punishable by up to six months in jail, a $2,500 fine and three?years of probation, although few cases, if any,?were?ever prosecuted.Proposed changes prepared by the city's Law Department?asks council members to consider making infractions?a civil offense, and such a citation likely?wouldn't carry the risk of jail time. The department says many other large cities treat lobbyist violations as civil offenses.Mayor Greg Stanton, who called for reforms to the lobbyist ordinance in January, wants the?penalty to remain?criminal."It’s absurd that Phoenix does not have an enforceable lobbying ordinance with consequences for those who violate it," said Robbie Sherwood, Stanton's spokesman, in an email. "Our residents need to have confidence that our lobbying ordinance is enforceable and has teeth."Stanton's office said the mayor wanted to take action sooner and blamed a council subcommittee?for the delay.Other council members aren't so sure the penalty should be criminal, including?Councilman Michael Nowakowski, who chairs the council's?Public Safety and Veterans Subcommittee, which will debate?the item this week."I look forward to discussing the best way forward, and getting more detail on the options available," Nowakowski said in an email.Phoenix's law states that lobbyists must register and disclose their?clients if they are paid?to?contact the mayor or council members to influence official?decisions. The city has about 309 registered lobbyists — a roughly 13?percent increase from the more than 270 lobbyists who registered?last year.One part of Phoenix's lobbying ordinance already carries a criminal misdemeanor penalty. That provision prohibits lobbyists from being paid based on whether a specific action passes or fails a council vote.?But the rest of the law currently carries?no penalty, according to the city.The city's Law Department has?also?asked the subcommittee to determine who would investigate lobbyists for potential violations.Three options are outlined:?The city's Ethics Commission?could investigate and suggest?penalties, though it's unclear who would make the final call to impose sanctions; the Ethics Commission could investigate and refer cases?to the city attorney to file a complaint; or the Police Department could investigate and issue?citations or refer cases to the city prosecutor.Two of those options face a clear?logistic challenge: The city's independent Ethics Commission,?which council members voted to create in February,?isn't expected to be formed until early 2018.Joel Edman,?executive director of the Arizona Advocacy Network, an open-government watchdog group, said he's less concerned about whether the violation is criminal or how complaints are vetted than he is that the city has gone months without real lobbyist rules.He?said he thought?The Republic's?initial reporting would be a "starter’s pistol to get this going quickly.""I am disappointed," Edman said. "In the meantime, there could all kinds of people just not bothering to report or disclose their lobbying spending because they don’t really have to right now.?If there’s no penalty for people to not do it, then there isn’t much incentive for people to comply."Nowakowski delayed hearingThe debate is scheduled to start?in earnest Wednesday, when Nowakowski's subcommittee considers the proposed changes.That subcommittee was supposed to hear the item on April 12, but?Nowakowski canceled the meeting. He?said there were few items on that month's agenda so the items were?"moved to the May 10 meeting to make best use of council members’ time."But Stanton's office?chided Nowakowski for the delay on the issue, which ultimately will go to the full council.Sherwood said the issue was assigned to the public-safety subcommittee because the body previously worked on the city's ethics ordinance and Nowakowski requested to hear it there. He said Stanton is now?disappointed by "the pace of action.""Mayor Stanton is frustrated that proposed reforms to the lobbyist ordinance have not yet progressed through subcommittee, and he finds it unacceptable that last month’s subcommittee meeting on this matter was cancelled for no apparent reason," Sherwood said in an email.The?$1.2 million deal that raised questionsPhoenix officials began reviewing the?lobbyist?law in January after a council vote on a controversial proposal to pay a developer about $1.2 million for storm-water culverts built on its property in Ahwatukee Foothills.The council?denied the request.But?lobbyist conduct drew attention because?the developer had hired two lobbyists who, according to the city,?weren't registered at the time. The developer,?Investment Property Associates or IPA, used lawyer Ed Bull of the firm Burch &?Cracchiolo and political consultant Joe Villasenor, a former city staffer.The law firm had not registered since 2014, and Villasenor was last registered as a lobbyist in 2011, city officials said in January.Villasenor's lawyer Kory Langhofer insisted that Villasenor had properly registered in 2016 and 2017, and said the forms he mailed in were somehow lost or not properly logged by the City Clerk's Office.Burch & Cracchiolo filed a?signed affidavit with the City Clerk's Office contending it had submitted nine separate?filings over?the past two years, which would have put the firm in compliance with the city.??Attached were those filings, with various dates in 2015 and 2016. All bear the signature of?a firm attorney and were notarized by a firm employee with those dates.But City Attorney Brad Holm said he looked?at the documents and compared them with letterhead from official correspondence the law firm sent to the city in previous years and determined the documents had been falsely created and backdated.Burch & Cracchiolo withdrew the forms and?blamed the false documents?on a non-attorney staff member. The firm has since re-registered.The State Bar of Arizona?said last week no complaints had been filed?over the incident.Langhofer said in January that Villasenor would file an original copy of his lobbyist registration, but Villasenor was?still not listed as a lobbyist in city records?as of May 1. Villasenor filed a new registration form with the City Clerk's Office on Friday afternoon.City spokeswoman Julie Watters said Friday evening that his registration?is "still in the approval process."'Don’t give me that excuse'In January, Holm said he?asked the City Prosecutor's Office to review if a?"specific person could legally be prosecuted for failing to register as a lobbyist."He said he referred the issue to the prosecutor after learning that?Villasenor?was not in the city's registry for several years and?hearing that Villasenor recently lobbied council members.Holm said he and the city prosecutor realized the current?ordinance doesn't explicitly say that failure to file proper lobbying documents is unlawful and it doesn't specify the penalty for failing?to register. He had previously said non-compliance could?result in a misdemeanor charge for a?violator."Specifically, the lobbying ordinance did not flatly state that failure to register was illegal. That missing language is the minimum required to trigger (a misdemeanor charge)," Holm said in a statement Thursday."The current ordinance has no penalty."Several council members have since called for the city to overhaul its lobbyist-registration process.Councilwoman Thelda Williams said she had always assumed that lobbyists could face penalties?and was shocked to learn otherwise. She said she?wants?a registration kiosk outside council offices at City Hall. And Williams said the episode should motivate the city to create an online-registration process so?nobody can have an excuse."You could register online at home, your office or here," Williams said. "So don’t give me that excuse ever again."WestwordMay 9, 2017Lobbyist Cindy Sovine-Miller Is a Growing Force at the Colorado Legislature’s 9 a.m.?on the last Friday in April, and under the gold dome of the Colorado State Capitol building, there are just eight working days remaining until the?2017 session adjourns on May 10, and the legislature is buzzing.In the middle of the commotion, lobbyist?Cindy Sovine-Miller?stands at the brass railing in the Capitol’s south atrium, positioned between the imposing entrances to the House and Senate chambers. Dressed in a smart-looking dress and jean jacket, the 37-year-old is flipping through a bill she’s printed out, scanning the arcane language. Like many of the bills she’s been interested in this session, this one concerns marijuana.A Colorado farm girl and lifelong Republican, Sovine-Miller has been working at the State Capitol for eighteen years, nearly all of that time lobbying for health-care companies and other powerful businesses. That changed last year, though. While she’s now lobbying for early childhood, education and alternative-energy interests, the majority of her caseload this session has been devoted to cannabis.Sovine-Miller is far from the only one working with that industry. While Colorado’s legal recreational sales started on January 1, 2014, and its medical marijuana program thirteen years before that, many basic questions regarding how to manage the state’s medical and recreational cannabis markets are still being hashed out at the Capitol. This session alone, lawmakers have pondered how to regulate cannabis consumption in social environments, whether to allow marijuana deliveries, how to scrub criminal records of marijuana offenses that are no longer crimes, whether cannabis and hemp should be treated like other agricultural products, and what to do if the Trump administration decides to shut down legalized marijuana once and for all. Decisions on these matters won’t just shape a state industry that took in roughly $1.3 billion in sales in 2016; they will set an example nationwide as other legalized-marijuana states, from California to Massachusetts, follow in Colorado’s footsteps.“Think of this as, we’ve framed the house,” says Sovine-Miller. “Now we’re having to put the rest of it together.” And the people doing the heavy lifting, the ones really calling the shots over the future of cannabis in Colorado and beyond, are often lobbyists like Sovine-Miller.No wonder the Capitol is crawling with more than two dozen cannabis lobbyists. According to Frank McNulty, the former Speaker of the House who now lobbies for anti-marijuana organizations, marijuana lobbyists outmatch lobbyists on his side by about four or five to one. Nearly all cannabis lobbyists work for marijuana trade groups like the Colorado Cannabis Chamber of Commerce or such major cannabis brands as LivWell and Mindful.Sovine-Miller, however, is different: She spends much of her time working for marijuana patient interests, doing a lot of that work pro bono. For years, the marijuana patient community ceded ground at the Capitol to increasingly powerful industry interests. But over the past two legislative sessions, patients have scored one major victory after another: The passage last year of “Jack’s Law,” which allowed medical marijuana in schools; the recent softening of a legislative assault on home grows that, in its original form, would have triggered upheaval in the state’s patient and caregiver community; and a bill to add PTSD to the list of the state’s qualifying conditions for medical marijuana, legislation ready to be signed by the governor.With all of these issues, Sovine-Miller was pulling the strings behind the scenes. “These things would not have turned out the way they did if she had not been there,” says Stacey Linn, a patient activist and mother to Jack Splitt, the namesake of Jack’s Law. “No one used to lobby for the interests of the patients, because we don’t have any money. But now with Cindy, there’s a new voice that can hold people accountable.”"No one used to lobby for the interests of the patients, because we don’t have any money.”That’s exactly what Sovine-Miller is aiming to do right now — hold someone accountable. The legislation she’s looking at this morning, Senate Bill 275, which is moving through the Senate, is designed to authorize new medical marijuana research. But a single line in the bill has been struck, making a crucial change to the scientific advisory council that for several years has been in charge of determining which research receives funding from marijuana taxes. Up to this point, the council had included a patient advocate who has been exempt from needing to have scientific expertise. But thanks to this single change buried on page three, in the future the patient advocate would need to have scientific experience. Sovine-Miller just learned of this tweak from one of the patient advocates she works with: Teri Robnett, executive director of the Cannabis Patients Alliance, who not only currently serves as that patient advocate, but helped launch the medical marijuana research program in the first place. If this bill goes through as is, Robnett would lose her seat on the council.Sovine-Miller steels herself and marches up to one of her colleagues: Kara Miller, lobbyist for the Marijuana Industry Group, the trade group behind the bill. Miller is the biggest name in marijuana lobbying at the Capitol, having pioneered the field in 2010. But right now, Sovine-Miller is in no mood to show deference.She shows Miller the line in the bill that would remove Robnett from the advisory council. “How did this happen?” says Miller, her face expressionless. “Who asked for this?”“I don’t know,” says Sovine-Miller. “I wasn’t at the stakeholder meeting.” Meaning she wasn’t invited to be part of the group that helped develop the bill.“Let’s strike it and see who complains,” says Miller.“I don’t think anyone will,” Sovine-Miller replies. The subtext seems clear: No one is likely to complain about getting rid of the change because it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Miller or MIG behind it.After this exchange, when Sovine-Miller returns to the railing, she’s so upset she’s shaking. “I’m sad that this has even happened,” she says. “We are so far behind as a patient community that this is acceptable.”To some, the matter might seem minor — a technical tweak to an obscure regulatory board. But to Sovine-Miller, the issue represents a far greater concern: ongoing efforts to remove patient advocates and marijuana activists from the political bargaining table. And as she likes to say, “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” “People always ask, ‘Why don’t you run for office?’”?says Sovine-Miller. “I always say, ‘Why have one vote when you can work with a hundred?’”She’s sitting in her office in an old brick residence just a few blocks from the Capitol, surrounded by parking lots. The room is bare — the walls largely unadorned, the desk empty, a phone, stapler and Yellow Pages collecting dust on a side table. She hasn’t had time to decorate since she moved in at the beginning of the year. Even before the session started in January, her real work was at the Capitol: persuading senators or representatives to sponsor legislation she wants passed and working with bill drafters to make sure the language comes out just right. After that, she has to monitor those bills, tracking their progress and permutations as they wind their way through various readings and committee hearings. She also needs to watch for new bills dropping all the time, any one of which could impact her clients. Through it all, she works with crucial interest groups, folks ready to descend in force on the Capitol to ensure that her legislation gets through — and the ones who plan to stand in her way. Plus she has to identify key lawmakers integral to deciding whether a given bill is killed or becomes law, so she can pull them aside in the Capitol’s rose marble hallways to try to sell them on her position in three minutes flat.The tools of her trade as she works these halls are as uncomplicated as her office: a basic leather portfolio where she keeps copies of bills she’s working on or is interested in, and an honest, friendly, even bubbly manner that belies the slick lobbyist stereotype. “For most lobbyists, it’s a game,” says Kayvan Khalatbari, co-founder of Denver Relief Consulting, which has contracted with Sovine-Miller this session. “Even if they care about the topic, the job has voided their soul a bit. Cindy is different. She still seems fresh, even though she’s also very accomplished. She can rally people and tug on their heartstrings.”Sovine-Miller could have subcontracted a glossy office at a big lobbying firm this session, but right now she wants to be a lone wolf, doing what she needs to do without other lobbyists looking over her shoulder. And then there’s something about this quiet old building, owned by a real estate attorney who worked with her father, that reminds her of all that she went through — all that she lost — in order to get here, doing this work.She grew up in Deer Trail, a sleepy town of 400 on the eastern plains. Her father was a wheat and cattle farmer, her mother a cosmetologist. Raised as a Catholic and a fiscal conservative, Sovine-Miller learned early that it’s best to give people a hand up, not a hand out. Her high school civics teacher noticed her knack for arguing and told her to consider going into politics. When she shadowed her state senator at the Capitol as a high school senior, she realized he was right. “I was sitting in the floor of the chamber, and it was insane,” she says. “Everyone was talking to each other, no one was listening to the person up front, but everyone knew when to vote and what to do. None of it made any sense. It was total chaos, and I wanted to be right in the middle of it.“When you have activists who are leading the charge because of their passion and emotions, sometimes that distracts from the message.”Becoming a single mom at twenty while studying political science at Metropolitan State College of Denver didn’t derail her plans. She took classes online, at night and on the weekends while working full-time at the Colorado Legislative Council, the nonpartisan research arm of the Colorado legislature. There she learned how she could leverage the arcane rules of the General Assembly to her advantage — how she could use the legislative process to bring a bill back from the dead after it had seemingly died in committee, for example. After short stints lobbying full-time for the Colorado Hospital Association and working for a big lobbying firm, Sovine-Miller started her own lobbying company in 2006.She focused on early childhood and health-care issues, areas where she figured she could have the most impact on people’s lives — and also areas that were lucrative. “The money was in big industry — pharma, hospitals, insurance,” she says, “and I was really good at it.” Among her signature accomplishments was a 2010 bill that allowed insurance companies to offer discounts to members who became healthier by participating in wellness programs. “I had forty lobbyists working against the bill,” she says, “and I was among the only ones working for it.” She can count on one hand the number of bills she took the lead on and lost.Because of her health-care work, Kara Miller and another cannabis lobbyist approached her years ago about working for medical marijuana interests. She turned them down. “At that point, I made the decision to stay away from highly controversial issues,” Sovine-Miller says. “I was playing it safe.” She also found her work at the time rewarding: “I felt I was building systems and infrastructure to help people,” she remembers.That started to change when she got a call from her mother in 2012. Her father had cancer — on his tongue, then in his lymph nodes, then everywhere. The chemo treatments did nothing but ravage his body as he became sicker and sicker, and the doctors treated him like one more faceless patient. Still, she criticized her mother when she learned she wanted to give her husband medical marijuana. “There is no evidence,” Sovine-Miller remembers telling her. “You should leave it to the doctors, to the people who know what they’re doing.”Sovine-Miller changed her mind when the tumor on her father’s face shrank from the size of a softball to that of a baseball within three weeks of starting medical cannabis, when he was able to say his goodbyes to his family before passing away in February 2015.She didn’t just lose her father. She lost faith in a lot of the work she’d been doing for nearly fifteen years.“I saw my dad go from being a vegetable in a hospital waiting to die to being at home again, thanks to a plant,” she says. “I had spent my career helping to build a system that was failing people. I said to myself, ‘I can’t do this. I worked for the wrong people.’”Before the end of the 2015 legislative session, she cut ties with every one of her clients. Suddenly she was unemployed, not knowing what to do. She was picking up odd jobs when a woman named Stacey Linn showed up at the Capitol during the 2016 session. Linn had heard that Sovine-Miller was a lobbyist, and she needed help passing a bill. Her teenage son, Jack Splitt, had severe cerebral palsy and used medical marijuana to manage it, but he wasn’t allowed to use it at school. The year before, Linn had worked to pass “Jack’s Amendment,” which gave schools the option to allow medical cannabis, but her son’s school and every major school district in the state still refused to change their policies about making it available to young patients. Now Linn needed to pass something that would require schools to do so.“Here is that moment to redeem yourself for when you were a jerk to your mother when she put your dad on cannabis,” Sovine-Miller thought to herself. So she told Linn she’d help.Sovine-Miller leveraged the connections she’d made over the years, especially with Republicans, explaining to lawmakers that the issue wasn’t about teenagers smoking pot in school parking lots. She navigated opposition from the Colorado Association of School Boards and helped keep health-care interests out of the fight. She also organized moving testimony from medically fragile children from all over the state. That included Linn’s son Jack, whose charisma charmed the most jaded legislators. “I put those families on a pedestal and helped shine a light on them to help them tell their story,” Sovine-Miller recalls. “Those kids and their mothers propelled the bill through.”But Linn thinks Sovine-Miller deserves part of the credit. “I was floored by her tenacity and how good she is at what she does,” Linn says. “She is not a glory hound, but she did a lot of the behind-the-scenes work.”Jack’s Law, requiring that medical marijuana be allowed in schools, passed with the support of 92 of the state’s 100 legislators. The supporters included all 35 state senators, who stood during the bill’s final vote, many of them with tears in their eyes.Two months later, the bill’s namesake passed away. Sovine-Miller supported Linn as she grieved. The two had become close friends, and the lobbyist had found a new cause.“These medical marijuana patients are like my dad,” says Sovine-Miller, her voice cracking. “They are scared, they are sick, they need this medicine to live, and now they’re taking this issue on as their mission.”Now it was her mission, too.“Welcome to ground zero,” says Teri Robnett.?She gestures at her desk, which takes up much of the living room in the cozy bungalow that the 58-year-old shares with her husband, Greg Duran, near Regis University. By this point in the legislative session, it’s piled high with bill drafts, fact sheets and handwritten planning notes, not to mention bottles of pills and a marijuana vape pen that Robnett uses for her fibromyalgia.For years, this room has been ground zero for the state’s medical marijuana patient movement. A former web marketing consultant who co-owned Denver’s Big Tree Pedicab Management with Duran, Teri got a crash course in cannabis in 2009, when she became communications director at the Peace in Medicine Center, one of Denver’s first dispensaries. Then, after Amendment 64 passed in November 2012 and Robnett learned there was no medical marijuana patient advocate on the task force to determine how to implement recreational marijuana in the state, she took it upon herself to become a de facto member. She attended nearly every meeting and spoke up to ensure that medical marijuana concerns weren’t lost in the planning process. Around that same time, she used a $30,000 inheritance she’d received after her brother died of prostate cancer to launch the grassroots organization Cannabis Patients Alliance. Now, while Duran takes the lead in running the Good Lab — a private consulting lab based in their home that tests marijuana for patients, caregivers and others who can’t access other Colorado testing facilities because they aren’t licensed marijuana businesses — Robnett spearheads one advocacy effort after another. Her work has led former state marijuana czar Andrew Freedman to label her “the patient advocate of Colorado.”Robnett can play the political game, shmoozing at fundraisers and speaking succinctly and compellingly during testimony at the Capitol. When it’s needed, however, she’s willing to unleash grassroots passion, filling the Capitol with angry patients when there’s no other way to stop a bill. “People now know we can play nice,” she says, “or we can make things really ugly.”At first, marijuana businesses worked closely with Robnett. “The industry loved me,” she remembers. “I was advocating for good policy, which benefited them.” But that changed as the industry grew larger and more entrenched, and many of the patient protections Robnett was fighting for became a threat to the industry’s bottom line. “We don’t have the financial backing the industry does,” she says. “What the patients have is people and sympathy and media.” But those resources go only so far as marijuana businesses develop political and financial clout and the state becomes increasingly dependent on massive recreational marijuana tax revenues. (The governor has proposed using marijuana revenues to fund affordable housing, and as the session was winding down, lawmakers floated the idea of increasing recreational cannabis sales taxes to balance the state budget.)For years, the best Robnett and other patient advocates could do was hold off truly disastrous legislation. So while new legislation has allowed the recreational market to develop in new and exciting directions, the state’s medical marijuana program atrophied. Doctors now face new penalties for making too many medical marijuana recommendations, and unlike recreational marijuana products, medical marijuana still isn’t required to be tested for pesticides and contaminants. Robnett is afraid that medical marijuana will eventually be subsumed by the adult-use market, where prices are higher, potencies are lower, and products aren’t geared toward patient needs. Last year, Washington state shut down nearly all of its medical dispensaries, forcing most patients to buy their medicine, at a slight discount, from recreational shops. “I think there is definitely a push in that direction here,” says Robnett. “It’s coming.”But when Sovine-Miller first approached Cannabis Patients Alliance about helping stem that tide this legislative session, Robnett balked. While she’d been impressed by Sovine-Miller’s work on Jack’s Law, Robnett’s opinion of the lobbyist had soured when, late in the 2016 session, she’d helped kill a child-welfare bill. Sovine-Miller was worried the bill put a target on the back of every Colorado family that used cannabis as medicine, but the legislation had been the culmination of years of work by Robnett to turn advocates of drug-endangered children from adversaries to allies. “It was incredibly devastating,” Robnett says of the bill’s defeat. For that, the Cannabis Patients Alliance honored Sovine-Miller with its 2016 “Brutus Award,” given to the person who most betrayed them.Still, Robnett could see that Sovine-Miller was gearing up to get things done during the 2017 session. The national drug-reform advocacy group Drug Policy Alliance had hired her to advocate at the Capitol for social-justice issues such as child-welfare reforms. “To have a lobbyist with a personal story like hers who at the same time can play a bipartisan role? That really can’t be beat,” says DPA state director Art Way. And when the Hoban Law Group, a Denver-based cannabis law firm, hired Sovine-Miller to help shepherd a bill to add PTSD to the state’s list of medical marijuana conditions, an issue Robnett had been working on for years, she agreed to work with the lobbyist, too.Sovine-Miller, along with Robnett, veterans’ advocates and parent activists like Linn, helped neutralize opposition to the PTSD bill from several dozen health-care lobbyists, allowing it to eventually pass in both the Senate and the House. But in the middle of that process, a bigger issue dropped: a bill backed by the governor to limit marijuana home grows to twelve plants statewide. The goal was to keep the black market from taking advantage of Colorado’s liberal home-grow laws — until then, patients had been allowed to grow up to 99 plants and consolidate their allowances in untracked greenhouses — to grow and ship cannabis out of state. But the law would have been devastating for medical marijuana patients, says Sovine-Miller. “The only people who need more than twelve plants are the extremely medically fragile,” she says. “Most of them cannot afford the volume of plant material they need from dispensaries for their medical concentrates, and if they did, they’re concerned it would be laden with pesticides.”“The big boys in the industry think they’re being proactive and lobbying for their own protection.”Sovine-Miller went to work. At the governor’s office, she dangled the threat of Robnett marshaling an army of medical marijuana patients at the Capitol, armed with empty pill bottles and bright-orange shirts reading “Medical marijuana patient and future felon.” The marijuana industry, which might otherwise support limiting home grows in order to drive more business to their stores, was kept at bay by the unspoken threat of publicizing the pot business’s role in out-of-state cannabis diversion. (There’s a reason that a border town like Trinidad, population 9,000, boasts more than a dozen pot shops.) The result was the passage of a home-grow bill with major concessions to the medical marijuana community. Once signed by the governor, the bill will allow patients to grow up to 24 plants at home as long as they have a doctor’s recommendation and register with the state; that plant count is high enough to cover the vast majority of existing patient home grows. “This will make us the first state in the country to successfully create a closed-loop regulatory system for home grows,” says Sovine-Miller. The bill also marks the first time Colorado has defined what constitutes a marijuana plant in a home grow; as a result, law enforcement can no longer use seedlings, clippings and clones to inflate plant counts in marijuana arrests.Bob Hoban, managing partner of the Hoban Law Group, thinks Sovine-Miller was critical to these victories. “Cindy was able to create stability and keep the ship together,” he says. “When you have activists who are leading the charge because of their passion and emotions, sometimes that distracts from the message. I’m not saying that would have happened here, but there was a chance for that to have happened here.”Still, Sovine-Miller didn’t win every battle this session. After Initiative 300 passed in November 2016, allowing social marijuana consumption at some Denver businesses, the state’s liquor and tobacco enforcement division passed a rule banning operations with liquor licenses from participating. Denver Relief Consulting, lead backer of the initiative, hired Sovine-Miller to fight the new rule. She says she nearly had the regulation overturned at the legislature’s Committee on Legal Services — but at the last minute, liquor lobbyists rallied in support of the rule, keeping the dual-consumption ban on the books. This was one of her first inklings that she’d be going up against established industries threatened by cannabis reforms. “The alcohol industry is probably our biggest foe right now,” says Khalatbari. According to him, alcohol interests are scared that legal marijuana use could cut into liquor sales. That could be why the anti-marijuana organization Smart Colorado counts among its major sponsors the Adolph Coors Foundation, founded by the multibillion-dollar Coors beer dynasty.Outside business interests aren’t the only ones challenging marijuana reforms. Sovine-Miller’s attempts to remove barriers to entry into the cannabis industry have been opposed on multiple occasions by lobbyists theoretically on her side. Early in the 2017 session, while lobbying for a cannabis trade school, she approached the Marijuana Enforcement Division about allowing out-of-state students to obtain a marijuana occupational license so they could get hands-on training in dispensaries. MED staff offered to go one better, suggesting that they remove the residency requirement for all types of occupational licenses. But when the Marijuana Industry Group’s Miller learned of the proposal, she told Sovine-Miller she’d fight the far-reaching change. “Our position was to support exemptions to the residency requirement for temporary work permits as originally proposed and passed by bill sponsors,” says MIG executive director Kristi Kelly in an e-mail.“Why would anyone in the industry oppose removing the residency requirements when the MED was perfectly okay with it and it would make everyone’s lives easier?” asks another cannabis lobbyist, who requests anonymity.Khalatbari says that established marijuana interests were similarly protectionist when he worked to pass Initiative 300. No major cannabis companies or industry groups supported allowing consumption clubs in Denver. “They don’t want people stepping into their territory — I get it,” he says. “But at the same time, they have completely lost sight of the patient, the consumer, and making sure this is an environment that is best for them.”Along with being the only marijuana lobbyist who spends the majority of her time on patient issues, Sovine-Miller is one of the few cannabis lobbyists who doesn’t also work for clients that many marijuana activists would consider the enemy: alcohol businesses and pharmaceutical firms. And the feeling is mutual: Both industries have supported anti-legalization efforts in other states. Along with the Marijuana Industry Group, Kara Miller represents the Colorado Licensed Beverage Association, the Korean Retail Liquor Association of Colorado, the Colorado Distillers Guild and AbbVie pharmaceuticals. Brock Herzberg, who does marijuana lobbying for Miller, also works for GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson and the Wine Institute. Solomon Malick and Brett Moore, lobbyists for the Colorado Cannabis Chamber of Commerce, count among their clients Astellas Pharma and the Colorado Bar Owners Association. And Peggi O’Keefe of the Cannabis Business Alliance lobbies for the Generic Pharmaceutical Association.“I think this is because the industry is so young; you don’t have many lobbyists at the Capitol who are career cannabis people,” says Kevin Gallagher, executive director of the Cannabis Business Alliance. “For me, personally, it is a concern. I haven’t seen anything super-obvious this session where there was a conflict of interest, but this can certainly be an issue moving forward, depending on what is being passed.”Some conflicts of interest might already be emerging. Brett More, a lobbyist for the Colorado Cannabis Chamber of Commerce, opposed a bill this session that would have created a new state license for marijuana consumption clubs. According to the Secretary of State’s registered lobbyist database, he did so on behalf of another client, the American Heart Association.Most of these cannabis lobbyists declined to respond to interview requests. Miller and Herzberg referred questions to MIG executive director Kristi Kelly, who writes in an e-mail, “Like any business relationship, our contractors and consultants are asked to disclose any potential conflicts of interest. If something arises, we address it. This is something that happens at law firms and other service-based providers all of the time.”Maybe it makes sense for marijuana interests to hire lobbyists with experience in similar industries, like alcohol and pharmaceuticals. But Khalatbari thinks that soon enough, the conflicts of interest between marijuana and larger industries will rise to the forefront, and the current jockeying for power at the Capitol will pale in comparison to political fights to come. “The big boys in the industry think they’re being proactive and lobbying for their own protection, but ultimately they’re going to be trying to protect themselves from bigger industries like tobacco and pharmaceuticals,” he says. “As soon as it’s legalized federally, these marijuana groups are all going to be at a huge disadvantage.”On the afternoon of May 2,?with six days to go in the 2017 legislative session, the Senate Finance Committee is considering Senate Bill 275, the medical marijuana research bill. There’s not much to discuss; the current version of the bill would basically allow medical marijuana companies to transfer cannabis to scientific labs for research purposes. But there is one sticky issue: The current language would eliminate patient advocates like Robnett from the research program’s scientific advisory council. An amendment has been proposed to change that.“We are excited to see the amendment to ensure that we have a patient advocate that remains on the scientific advisory committee,” says Kara Miller, testifying on behalf of MIG. “From what I understand, that was an unintentional drafting piece.”Sovine-Miller, sitting in the front row with Robnett and Duran, doesn’t testify. She’s already done her work: prodding Miller to draft the amendment, then asking a Finance Committee member, Republican Senator Jack Tate, to sponsor the amendment, which passes unanimously.MIG executive director Kelly says neither Miller nor anyone else at the trade group was responsible for the part of the bill that would have excluded Robnett. “We see no reason why patient advocates would be excluded, as they have had a voice in this process from the beginning,” she says. No one else involved in the bill’s drafting claims responsibility for the provision, either. Maybe that language really was unintentional. But even if it was, that part of the bill likely would have stayed in place if Robnett hadn’t noticed it...and Sovine-Miller hadn’t been positioned at the Capitol to fix it.Situations like this have changed Robnett’s opinion of Sovine-Miller. Usually by the end of the legislative session, Robnett is exhausted and wracked with pain from her fibromyalgia, wondering how much longer she can do such work. This year, she thinks she can keep going, thanks to her colleague at the Capitol. “It’s so nice to have someone else who realizes how hard this work really is, sees the shenanigans going on and recognizes how much the deck is stacked against patients,” says Robnett. “Not only does she see it, but Cindy has chosen to do something about it, putting her reputation on the line for patients.”This year, Sovine-Miller will be getting the Redeemer Award from the Cannabis Patients Alliance. The organization hasn’t yet decided who will get the Brutus Award; there are so many possibilities.Robnett testifies at the Finance Committee hearing. She tells its members she appreciates the last-minute fix, but she’s still concerned about what the current bill doesn’t do: require medical marijuana to be tested. “There is no deadline, no guidelines,” she tells the senators. “We hear from patients all the time: ‘Why is recreational marijuana tested and medical marijuana isn’t?’”With such glitches in the system, Robnett doesn’t see Colorado’s marijuana experiment as a resounding success. “We could have done it all differently,” she says. “We had the opportunity to take a different path and birth a new way of doing business. Instead, it seems that compassion and civil rights have taken a backseat to profit and tax revenue.”Sovine-Miller plans to work with Robnett and other patient advocates to change that.Major marijuana legislation still in play just a few days before the session is slated to end include a bill to define “open and public” marijuana use, one to allow for the sealing of misdemeanor marijuana convictions for offenses that are no longer crimes, and one to authorize additional marijuana research and development. Then there’s the last-minute proposal to fix the state budget by increasing recreational marijuana sales tax from 10 to 15 percent. Between that and another recently signed bill that allows cities and counties to levy special local taxes on retail cannabis, marijuana consumers could soon be paying significantly more for their weed. Sovine-Miller worries that sticker shock could lead some consumers to the black market for cheaper prices. “It’s a delicate balancing act,” she says. “This won’t solve our long-term budget problems, and the risks should be weighed carefully given the increased attention on illegal markets.”Along with the PTSD and home-grow bills, several other significant cannabis bills have passed both houses and just await the governor’s signature. These include Sovine-Miller’s bill that allows occupational training across state lines, a measure that provides flexibility in transferring medical marijuana from one dispensary to another, and legislation that repeals the governor’s?Office of Marijuana Coordination?— created to oversee the implementation of the initial recreational marijuana system in this state, and no longer needed.Even as the legislative session ends, Sovine-Miller is getting ready for next year at the Capitol. She aims to tour around the state this summer, learning people’s thoughts about how to effectively regulate businesses that allow cannabis consumption. She’ll be working on potential legislation to allow for cultivation facilities where people can rent out grow space, to help the small number of patients who need to grow more than the 24 plants allowed under the new home-grow law. And she’ll be working on how to pass a “Homeless Bill of Rights” next year, another issue the Republican has embraced and is working on pro bono.She’s also starting to ponder her own marijuana enterprise: a wellness clinic for patients. She doesn’t want to give too much away — she’s learned how cutthroat this industry can be. All Sovine-Miller will say is that it will be a place that showcases “the power that cannabis can bring to our society.”Told that makes her sound less like a lobbyist and more like an activist, she just smiles: “That’s who I am.”Daily PressMay 10, 2017Del Albo joining Williams Mullen lobbying group Del. Dave Albo, R-Springfield, isn’t actually retiring from Richmond’s political fray – he’s joining the lobbying giant Williams Mullen.He won't be lobbying right away -- state law says legislators can't lobby former colleagues for a year after leaving office. Albo will continue practicing criminal defense law, Williams Mullen said.“I have spent 24 years as a legislator helping my constituents let the Commonwealth know their views and problems," Albo said. "I am now looking forward to continuing to help people and businesses communicate with their government.” ? ?Also served as chair of the House of Delegates Courts of Justice committee for the past 12 years, and has been a member of the Joint Legislative Audit Review Commission and the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission. He wrote the portion of the 2013 transportation funding reform act that deal with Northern Virginia issues and has led?General Assembly?efforts to tighten criminal and DUI law.?Albo will join a government relations team led by former Virginia Delegate Bill Axselle.That group which represents a slew of big corporate players, from cigarette-maker Altria to Anheuser-Busch to drugmaker Merck to associations representing health plans, life insurers, mortgage lenders, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. Oh and a couple of wineries.Williams Mullen, in its announcement of Albo’s appointment, carefully noted his efforts to restructure the Alcoholic Beverage Control department. Which, um, regulates the sale and distribution of wine. It’s also the state’s lead agency for enforcing state law on sales of tobacco and nicotine products.“We’re excited to have Dave join our team,” Axselle said. “His legislative experience speaks for itself, and he will be a great advocate at the Capitol for our clients.”The Daily CallerMay 10, 2017NY Dem Charged With Soliciting Foreign Donation For Cuomo Campaign former New York Democratic Party county chair was charged with unlawfully soliciting a campaign contribution from a foreign national and conspiracy to commit such an offense, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.Steven Pigeon previously headed up New York’s Erie County Democratic Committee. He now faces charges that carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine,?according to a statement?from acting U.S. Attorney James P. Kennedy, Jr. of the Western District of New York.“Between 2010 and 2015, Pigeon was working, among other things, as a political consultant and lobbyist and ran various companies that were engaged in such consulting and lobbying activities. One of Pigeon’s clients was an online gaming company based in Montreal, Canada that was founded and operated by a Canadian national. Between 2010 and 2015, that Canadian company paid approximately $388,000 to Pigeon and his companies, for among other things, lobbying efforts aimed at the legalization of internet gambling,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul E. Bonanno said in a statement.According to a complaint unsealed Monday morning, between Jan. 31, 2014, and Feb. 25, 2014, Pigeon sought and coordinated a $25,000 donation from the founder and CEO of a Canadian online gambling company for the re-election campaign of a candidate for statewide public office.Defense attorney for Pigeon, Paul Cambria, told?NY State of Politics?the candidate in question was New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.Under federal law, a foreign national cannot donate to any federal, state or local races.The U.S. Attorney’s Office said that after the contribution was rejected two separate times, it was finally sent through a person from Florida.Cambria told NY State of Politics that the U.S. citizen in Florida?was an attorney for the Canadian businessman who claims he was just made aware of the federal probe.“If somebody’s going to claim that that contribution was illegal, I think there’s a real question about that. Why aren’t all the other participants, direct participants being charged?” Cambria asked.Cambria says?Cuomo’s campaign and the Florida lawyer knew very well about what was happening?and claims his client, Pigeon, is the only one taking the blame.“He’s expressed that, many times and feels that there’s political motivation going on, at least from the state’s standpoint,” Cambria said.However, a Cuomo campaign ?spokesman denied the accusation from Pigeon’s lawyer telling NYS of Politics, “As is made clear in public record, the campaign rejected donations we believed to be out of compliance with campaign finance laws. We are assisting in this inquiry in any way that we can.”CALmattersMay 10, 2017Foes into friends: Lobbyists make amends to lawmakers with “make-up money” after Tim Grayson won election to the Assembly, a Sacramento lobbyist greeted him at a reception with sheepish congratulations. Her client had supported his opponent during the campaign, the lobbyist explained, but now that he’d won, she told him she wanted to move past the election and forge a good working relationship. Oh and by the way, did he need any money to cover costs from the campaign?“Make-up money” is what it’s called in Sacramento—the contributions that flow to newly-elected officials from interest groups that backed a losing candidate during the campaign. It’s a completely legal way of saying, in political terms, “Let’s kiss and make up.”Grayson has not taken advantage of the offer; campaign statements to date show no contributions to the Concord Democrat from clients of the lobbyist who introduced herself in November. But conversations like theirs occur in the months after an election, as interest groups shift from betting on a winner during the campaign to lobbying those who won a seat in the Capitol.“The best way to make amends, fortunately or unfortunately, is a contribution,” said GOP political consultant Mike Madrid. “It’s not uncommon to have a strategy where somebody spent six figures against (a candidate) with approval to write them a check to rebuild the relationship” if that candidate ends up the winner.In other words: make-up money is built into the budget for interest groups that spend big on politics. Those groups had a lot at stake in the 2016 legislative races because it marked the last time for the next eight years that a significant number of Assembly seats were vacant. A review of campaign finance reports from last year’s most contentious races shows plenty of make-up money in the mix. It came from trade associations, corporate interests and labor unions.Some examples:In the race for a Malibu-area state Senate seat, the dentists’ trade association spent nearly $50,000 opposing Democrat Henry Stern. After he won, the dentists gave him $4,200.In the race for a San Jose-based Assembly seat, the Realtors association spent more than $483,000 attacking Democrat Ash Kalra. After he won—and landed a spot on the Assembly’s Housing and Community Development Committee—the Realtors group gave Kalra $8,500.Realtors made another losing bet in the Democrat-on-Democrat race for a Glendale-area Assembly seat, spending nearly $253,000 to support Ardy Kassakhian. After his opponent, Laura Friedman, won, the Realtors group wrote her a check for $6,800.Friedman said she met with the Realtors after the election—just as she met with many other interest groups—for a version of the “let’s move on and have a good relationship” conversation. The money, she said, doesn’t impact how she’ll vote on their issues.“I don’t feel like I’m holding a grudge, but I’m certainly not going to not work with them, not take their meetings or not take in their perspectives,” Friedman said. “My goal is to represent my constituents and my conscience.”The dentists and Realtors associations are among the biggest spenders in legislative races, pouring millions into recent election cycles. Both groups declined requests for interviews. The dental association provided a statement saying its political action committee “puts a great deal of consideration” into choosing which candidates it supports.Interest groups that spend smaller sums of political money have done some flip-flops, too:In the race for a Palo Alto-area Assembly seat, two local labor unions—one for firefighters, another for school support staff—that gave to the losing candidate have since written $5,000 checks to the winner, Democrat Marc Berman.PG&E and the pharmaceutical industry association both donated to the campaigns of the losing candidate for a Salinas-area Assembly seat. Weeks after the election, the businesses wrote checks to the winner, Democrat Anna Caballero.In October, the prison guards union gave $4,200 to Grayson’s opponent in the race for his Assembly seat. Two months later, the union wrote a check for that amount to Grayson.Grayson, who previously worked as the chaplain for the Concord Police Department, said his relationship with the prison guards union stems from his own career in law enforcement—not from the money they donated.For interest groups he doesn’t really know, Grayson said he finds offers of “make-up money” awkward. He said he never followed up to seek a donation from the lobbyist who introduced herself at the post-election reception. “My first desire is to meet and have a conversation in which they can get to know me, who I am, what I am and how I am,” he said. “What they choose to do after that, that’s their business.”There is nothing illegal about giving “make-up money” to a politician, said Jessica Levinson, a law professor who is president of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission. Political contributions break the law only when they involve a direct exchange of money for governmental action.But, she said, giving money to the winner of an election—after backing an opponent—shows that donors are looking to curry favor with whomever has the power to make decisions.“It brings into stark relief what we all know, which is that people give money to get something,” Levinson said. “You’re not expressing support; you’re buying access and influence.”Kansas City StarMay 10, 2017Who are Kansas lobbyists taking to dinner? have spent more than $435,000 treating Kansas lawmakers and legislative staffers to dinner, drinks and basketball games during the first three months of 2017.And their choices of who to take to dinner reflect the political shift that took place in November. Democrats, who gained seats in November, have seen their share of lobbyist spending increase this year.The money spent through March surpasses the total lobbyist spending during the first three months of last year’s legislative session, which stood at about $366,000 after three months, and nearly equals the $472,000 lobbyists spent in Kansas for all 12 months of 2016, according to?data from the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission.The increased spending by lobbyists likely?reflects the stakes of this year’s session.Lawmakers are still grappling with how to close a roughly $900 million budget gap for the next two years and how to satisfy a Kansas Supreme Court order for more funding for K-12 education, two challenges that necessitate some combination of tax increases or cuts to other areas of the state’s budget.Republicans, who hold majorities in both the House and Senate, continue to be the primary beneficiaries of lobbyist spending, but the gap has narrowed and several Democrats are among the top recipients of lobbyist gifts this session.Lobbyists spent $2,044 treating Rep. Adam Lusker, a Frontenac Democrat, to meals and other niceties through March. That’s nearly twice what Lusker received from lobbyists during the first three months of 2016 and $556 more than he received during the whole of the calendar year.No Democrat ranked in the top 20 of lobbyist spending?for 2016, but Lusker is second among all 165 lawmakers after the first three months of the legislative session. House Minority Leader Jim Ward, a Wichita Democrat, ranks No. 12 and Rep. Tim Hodge, a North Newton Democrat and freshman lawmaker, ranks No. 14.“That means we have a little bit of a better voice than we once did,” Lusker said. “At least we’re getting talked to.”Only one lawmaker, Rep. Erin Davis, an Olathe Republican, received more overall during the first three months with $2,105 in lobbyist spending.Jason Watkins, the lobbyist for the Kansas Beer Wholesalers Association and Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce, said the increased spending on Democrats reflects their greater level of legislative influence this session.“I also don’t think it’s any secret that the Democrats and the moderate Republicans have a majority voting bloc in both chambers. And so you’re going to talk to the folks who can form a majority bloc,” said Watkins, who has spent more than any other lobbyist through March with $20,656 going toward gifts and meals for lawmakers.Watkins’ total spending through March is more than twice what he spent all last year. Watkins said that most of that money was used to educate lawmakers — at meals and lunches — as they considered whether to allow beer with higher alcohol content to be sold in Kansas grocery 15 lawmakersOrdered by the lawmakers who received the most in lobbyist spending from January through March of 2017. See "2016 rank" to compare to last year's rank (January through December).2017 Rank (Jan.-March)NameLobbyist spending (Jan.-March)Chamber2016 Rank1Rep. Erin Davis (R - Olathe)$2,105.24House82Rep. Adam Lusker (D - Frontenac)$2,044.39House233Sen. Julia Lynn (R - Olathe)$1,948.56Senate24Rep. Dan Hawkins (R - Wichita)$1,787.65House15House Speaker Ron Ryckman (R - Olathe)$1,636.77House146Sen. Majority Leader Jim Denning (R - Overland Park)$1,488.65Senate197Sen. Ty Masterson (R - Andover)$1,477.74Senate108Rep. Willie Dove (R - Bonner Springs )$1,457.51House69Sen. Mike Petersen (R - Wichita)$1,404.86Senate3210Rep. Tom Cox (R - Shawnee)$1,397.46House166 (elected in Nov.)11Rep. John Barker (R - Abilene)$1,384.66House712House Minority Leader Jim Ward (D - Wichita)$1,372.71House2513Sen. Vice President Jeff Longbine (R - Emporia)$1,328.53Senate2214Rep. Tim Hodge (D - North Newton)$1,321.61HouseN/A (elected in Nov.)15Sen. Rick Billinger (R - Goodland)$1,304.52Senate34SOURCE:?Kansas Governmental Ethics CommissionThe bulk of lobbyist spending — roughly $305,000 — is un-itemized and cannot be tied to a specific lawmaker, reflecting spending on banquets and cocktail hours where all lawmakers are invited.Democrats received roughly 15 percent of the itemized spending during both the first three months and whole of 2016. Three months into 2017, their share of the itemized spending has increased to 25 percent after the party gained 13 seats in the Legislature in November.Lawmakers’ ranking on the itemized spending list “is indicative of influence,” according to Rep. Stephanie Clayton, an Overland Park Republican.Lusker joked that Rep. Jarrod Ousley, an Overland Park Democrat, beat him in lobbyist spending one month and he swore that would never happen again. Lusker, who owns a construction company, is the lone Democrat with a chairmanship, having been elected as chair of the Joint Committee on State Building Construction in January.The top recipients on the list tend to hold leadership positions — House Speaker Ron Ryckman, an Olathe Republican, ranks No. 5 and Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, an Overland Park Republican, ranks No. 6 after three months — or hold large sway over a number of votes in the Legislature.Asked why she was at the top of the spending list, Davis answered, “I have no idea, you’d have to ask the lobbyists.”She said that her spots on three high-profile committees, the House budget, tax and commerce panels, may be the reason. Davis also said “there’s very little time during the work day to get stuff accomplished and talk about different issues,” and that dinners and lunches were “the nature of this business.”“I would guess that the lobbyists are interested in, you know, having a good relationship with you,” Davis said. “This is a relationship business.”Kansas limits the amount of money that lobbyists can spend on gifts to lawmakers at $100, but places?no restriction on the amount that they can spend on food?or alcohol for lawmakers, which makes up the bulk of the spending.Congress passed ethics reforms in 2007 that placed restrictions on lobbyist spending on meals for lawmakers at the federal level after the Jack Abramoff scandal brought scrutiny to lavish free meals for legislators.“Wining and dining has proven to be one of the more effective means of buying influence and it is a means that is only available to those who can afford it,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, a group that advocates for greater ethics and transparency in government and helped craft the 2007 federal law.“It’s a very effective means of influence-peddling,” Holman said. “You and I don’t have those means...The only people who do are the full-time well-paid lobbyists who throw money at the feet of lawmakers.”Davis called lobbyist spending a non-story.“I think I’d prefer my time in the media be spent on actual substantive issues than on, you know, how much has been spent on me,” she saidLusker attributed his high ranking on the list to his role as the Democratic caucus’ policy chair.Lusker called lobbyist dinners a chance for Democrats to “expand our influence” and present their agenda to influential GOP colleagues who are also present at the meal.“The more we’re in front of folks, the more the needs of my constituents will be heard,” Lusker said. “That’s one thing. You sit back in the corner, nobody hears you. And nobody listens to you. And nobody wants to work with you.”Top 15 organizationsOrdered by the amount of money spent on lobbying from January through March of anizationSpendingKansas Bankers Association$19,049.14Heartland Credit Union Association$16,844.31Kansas Beer Wholesalers Association$16,216.47Kansas Cable Telecommunications Association$12,426.95Kansas State Council of Fire Fighters$11,102.72Kansas Wine & Spirits Wholesalers Association$7,993.69Kansas Hospital Association$7,685.41Kansas Livestock Association$7,159.10AT&T Inc & Affiliates$7,122.98Kansas Automobile Dealers Association$7,041.68Kansas Association of Counties$6,878.77Kansas Chamber of Commerce$6,760.68Cox Communications Inc$6,431.70Kansas Association of Realtors$6,359.19Miami New TimesMay 11, 2017FPL Charges Customers Millions in Lobbying Fees Every Year Power & Light, the?ultra powerful?electricity monopoly, and its parent company, NextEra Energy, spend millions lobbying in Tallahassee and Washington.?And those lobbyists spend most of their time?arguing?against?changes FPL's customers actually want, like the right to cheap home solar panels or better clean-air regulations. Sometimes, they even?write entire bills for lawmakers and try to pass them off as legit.Here's the worst part: FPL charges its own customers to pay for those lobbyists who are working against the customers' interests, and state regulators have let the monopoly get away with it.?According to a?new report released Tuesday by the nonprofit Energy and Policy Institute (EPI), the Florida Public Service Commission — the group that's supposed to regulate FPL — let the company recoup $9.5 million in lobbying fees from consumers from 2015 to 2018, despite the fact that those rate hikes did not meet the PSC's own transparency standards."Regulatory oversight of requests by utilities to recover (lobbying) dues from ratepayers has lapsed in many states," the report says.Peter Robbins, a spokesperson for FPL, did not dispute the report. Instead, he criticized the nonprofit that produced it for refusing to disclose its own list of donors to the?Palm Beach Post?for a prior story. He called the group "secretive" and said it was "ironic" that the organization is criticizing energy utilities without revealing its own backers. (The EPI's mission statement says the group is dedicated to advocating for clean sources of energy. Most of FPL's energy comes from carbon-emitting fuel sources.)"Costs related to industry associations have been included in utility rates in Florida and across the country for many decades because they are recognized as important to a utility’s operations," Robbins said via email. "In fact, in our most recent base rate proceeding, none of the customer advocacy groups identified these costs as issues that needed to be addressed."A separate study released in March showed that NextEra receives so many tax breaks that the company did not pay a dime in federal income taxes from 2008 to 2015, and instead received $313 million back from the government. In that time period, NextEra made $21 billion in profit.The report says that across the country, energy companies are increasingly leaning on state regulators to set up sweetheart deals that let electricity firms charge government lobbying costs to ratepayers. To the customer, those fee increases function like added taxes, since, in most cases, there is often only one electricity or natural gas company in town.In turn, those lobbyists have usually advocated against a whole host of things the public generally says it wants, like better clean-air regulations, cheaper home solar panels, or rules that prevent companies from dumping waste into rivers and streams.FPL, for example, is one of the state's four "investor-owned electricity utilities," which function as monopolies in their coverage zones. The PSC is supposed to approve any and all rate hikes from the four companies, but the regulators seem to have stopped caring about how much lobbying money the utilities?bilk?from consumers: In 2008, the report says FPL charged customers $1.45 million in dues for the?Edison Electric Institute, the power industry's trade group. The company is now on track to charge customers?$2.45 million for that same expense in 2018 — a million-dollar increase over 10 years.The Energy and Policy Institute places much of the blame on a national group that's supposed to regulate state?public service commissions — the?National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC). From The 1980s through the 2000s, NARUC conducted regular audits on how the industry's trade group used money from utility customers. In the '80s, NARUC criticized the way the Edison trade group was spending its money, and, as a result, FPL's regulatory body decreased the amount of trade organization lobbying money the company was allowed to recoup from Florida residents.?In 1984, the PSC ruled FPL could only charge customers two-thirds of its EEI dues, down from?98 percent in the years prior.But NARUC, the nationwide group, has since stopped doing those all-important audits. And now, the amount of lobbying money utilities charge back to customers keeps creeping higher, as rate requests to states have gotten less transparent. The Florida PSC says FPL needs to provide rate-hike requests that "adequately segregate" the money the company spends on its trade group lobbying, compared to the other dues the company pays that organization.But the study released this week maintains that the PSC approved FPL's $9.5 lobbying-recovery measure, despite the fact that the company's requests weren't remotely "segregated" or transparent enough."The utility’s request to include its EEI dues went unchallenged despite a lack of transparency or segregation, and its request was approved," the study says.The report also says FPL documents show the company has charged customers?$63,000 to pay dues to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as $157,000 to the Chamber's?Institute for 21st Century Energy in operating expenses."The Chamber, which has also received EEI money, has been a leading voice against the EPA’s Clean Power Plan?and greenhouse gas emission regulations, ozone and fine particle regulations, vehicle emission standards, and rooftop solar policies," the EPI's study?says.Baltimore SunMay 11, 2017FBI raids office of Republican campaign consultant in Annapolis a Republican campaign consultant's Annapolis office Thursday, leading Maryland Republican lawmakers to say they won't work with the firm.Kelley Rogers, president of Strategic Campaign Group, said a half-dozen FBI agents arrived at his Main Street office at about 8:30 a.m. with a warrant to search and seize records.An FBI spokeswoman confirmed the agency conducted "law enforcement activity" along Main Street in Annapolis but would not be more specific.Agents on the scene, dressed in plainclothes, confirmed they were with the FBI but referred all other questions to a spokeswoman. They left the building shortly after 4 p.m., carrying files and a computer with them.Rogers, whose firm has worked with campaign committees for?Maryland Senate?and House of Delegates candidates, said the FBI investigation concerns work the firm performed during the 2013 Virginia gubernatorial campaign of former Virginia?Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican.Rogers said the investigation did not involve Maryland politics and insisted his firm had done nothing wrong, but said he would release clients from their contracts if desired.Maryland?Republicans?quickly distanced themselves from the firm.Both?Senate?Minority Leader?J.B. Jennings, of Baltimore County, and House Minority Leader Nic Kipke, of Anne Arundel County, said their committees will not use the firm again until its legal issues are resolved.They confirmed that campaign committees for GOP senators and delegates had hired the firm to raise money and do other work before the 2017 session."I'm shocked by what has come to light today and we will not be working with them on any new projects until the legal process is completed and they are cleared," Kipke said a few hours after the raid.Kipke's campaign committee was one of the firm's best customers, having spent more than $30,000 on their services since 2014, according to state campaign finance records.Jennings said the company did satisfactory work last year but added that GOP senators haven't been in touch with the firm since the session ended last month."I think, should we hire a company, we would look elsewhere," he said.The firm also worked with Maryland lawmakers running for federal seats. Del. Patrick L. McDonough, a Baltimore County Republican, employed the firm in his campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives last year. Strategic Campaign Group also worked to support Del. Kathy Szeliga as the Baltimore County Republican ran for U.S. Senate.According to Rogers, his firm settled a civil suit brought by the Cuccinelli campaign after the candidate lost the 2013 Virginia governor's race to Democrat Terry McAuliffe. Rogers said the investigation appears to stem from allegations brought in that suit.The Cuccinelli suit alleged that Strategic Campaign Group and the associated Conservative Strike Force Political Action Committee — an independent group not affiliated with the candidate — raised about $2.2 million by assuring donors it would spend that money to help elect the GOP candidate. But the suit alleged the PAC and Strategic Campaign Group failed to follow through on promises of an extensive media campaign on Cuccinelli's behalf.In the suit, Cuccinelli accused the firm of false advertising, breach of contract and unauthorized use of his name and image.Rogers said his firm settled the dispute for what he recalls as $75,000. Press accounts put the amount at $85,000.He insisted Thursday that the Cuccinelli campaign's claims have no merit. He said his firm raised about $300,000 for the PAC to spend on the governor's race. Of that amount, $10,000 was donated to Cuccinelli's campaign. He said the PAC, which he controlled, conducted an email campaign on behalf of Cuccinelli but was unable to raise enough money for direct mail or broadcast campaigns."I feel like we did everything in our power," Rogers said. "Had he been a better candidate, I think we could have done better."Rogers and firm vice president Chip O'Neil spoke to reporters Thursday while FBI agents still were working in their office. Both spoke without lawyers present.Cuccinelli said in a statement that he had not spoken to federal law enforcement officials about the consulting firm but is "curious" to see where the case goes."It was my hope when we brought our lawsuit to cast light on the dark practices of scam PACs. I think we did that successfully," Cuccinelli said. "Any cleaning up of these practices would be good for our political system."Rogers praised the professionalism of the FBI agents and predicted the investigation would clear his name and that of the firm."The truth shall set you free," he said. "I think it was frivolous then. I think it was frivolous now."Rogers said agents arrived without notice and presented a search warrant. He said they took records and downloaded other information from the firm's computers.FBI spokeswoman Lindsay Ram said the investigation is being conducted through the bureau's Washington field office, which has jurisdiction in the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia. She said agents from the office sometimes cross over into other jurisdictions when the entity they are investigating has offices in multiple locations. She declined to provide more details. ................
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