Anne Arundel County, MD has clear and relatively stringent lobbying registration requirements.
“Failure to comply with these requirements may result in the imposition of civil fines or other penalties. §7-4-104.”
Anne Arundel County is one of the Center for Climate Integrity‘s recent (and presumably current) targets to join the climate litigation sweepstakes to “identify new streams of revenue”.
This campaign seeks to encourage government officials to sue other parties, claiming a failure to be transparent or properly disclose.
CCI and its partner Chesapeake Climate Action Network aggressively lobbied Anne Arundel County officials, generally and specifically to file this suit.
That they did so as cutouts between the Mayor of Annapolis and AA County Executive Steuart Pittman does not appear to be relevant to the respective ethics and disclosure obligations.
You will not, however, find these parties (or CCI’s parent the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development) on AA County’s lobbying registrations over the relevant time. Or, apparently, for any time over the past four years.
Nonetheless, one way or the other and sooner or later, CLW expects more public information about these relationships, and efforts to deploy the powers of government this way, will out.
Annapolis has heavily redacted numerous documents pertaining to this campaign, withholding the correspondence from a party that has shown a willingness to challenge such claims to secrecy, Energy Policy Advocates. Other requests also remain outstanding.