Lobbying disclosure briefing

I'm sitting at the AFJ lobbying disclosure briefing I mentioned a few posts ago... If you are out of town and signed up for the teleconference, call in! zI'll post a brief summary of the highlights later today.

The highlights:

Lobbying disclosure... civil penalties are skyrocketing to $200,000 max and criminal penalties are as high as 5 years in prison

New compliance certification requires lobbying disclosure reporting entities to verify they are not engaging in any knowing violations of the new law

Because there are steeper consequences of filing, the former best practices of filing "just to be safe" may not be the right call anymore.

Coalitions face different rules. Now every group that contributes to the formal lobbying coalition must have their names/addresses reported by the coalition if they participate in any of the running of the coalition.

Gift and travel rules... if you're a nonprofit, you cannot give gifts to members of Congress the same way you used to. The rules have become tremendously more complicated.Rather than outline them here, take a look at the AFJ report here (pdf).