So, the BC Government is telling BC universities that they shouldn’t hire lobbyists to lobby the provincial government.
On the one hand, it’s easy to spout slogans on this subject: “Governments give money to universities to teach, not to lobby”; “That money should be in the classroom”, etc., etc. But look a little deeper and the answer is not as obvious. I mean, if it’s wrong for universities to “spend money lobbying governments”, why stop at paying outside consultants? Why not force institutions to layoff their entire government relations staff? After all, they’re doing the same thing, just at lower rates of remuneration and more oversight from the boss. But no one’s suggesting that. Why not? That money, too, could go to classrooms, couldn’t it?
Or, conversely: if institutions are not allowed to pay consulting fees to lobbyists, would it be OK if they put them on payroll? Sure, they’d be getting paid a little more on an hourly basis than your average GR person, but if we think GR employees are good but GR consultants are bad, who cares?
From the university’s perspective, the sloganeering makes no sense unless you take the lobbyists effectiveness into account. If the lobbyist achieves nothing, then yes, that money would be better spent in the classroom. But if by spending 50K on a lobbyist an institution ends up receiving another 500K in money, then that’s money extremely well spent. Obviously, it’s not always simple to determine cause and effect when it comes to an individual’s work, but that’s how universities need to look at the problem; is there a return on investment?
Admittedly, from the public’s point of view it’s not so simple. There is an unseemliness to institutions who receive public money to lobby government for more money. I get that. But if “receipt of public funds” is the dividing line between who does and does not get to have lobbyists, we ought to be consistent. Bombardier lives on public sector funds; does anyone question Bombardier’s lobbying activities? If not, why not?
As you can tell, I’m pretty sanguine about universities and lobbying (which shouldn’t surprise anyone – lobbying for students and universities is how I got into this business); but that doesn’t mean there are no red lines. One obvious one that shouldn’t be crossed is universities directly or indirectly paying money to political parties, as Athabasca did when it bought a table at a Conservative fundraiser a few years ago. That’s just dumb – and can lead to serious corruption (not to mention reprisals if/when an opposition party comes to power – a fairly remote possibility in Alberta, but still).
But here’s the basic point: we shouldn’t pretend all government decisions regarding universities are made on the basis of pure unadulterated reason. Lots of things still get settled by grace and favour, and who knows who. That story I linked to up top notes that UBC doesn’t pay any lobbyists. That of course is because they don’t have to: UBC is connected up the wazoo, and it shows in any number of funding decisions the provincial government has made over the years. For other universities, paying lobbyists is just a way of trying to equalize the playing field. And what’s wrong with that?
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The short answer is that whoever pays the band, chooses the tune. If the government is handing over money to the university, then they get to choose what they are willing to fund. If universities want to hire lobbyists, they should do so with funds clearly derived from other sources of revenue. Would, for example, you be willing to say the university could hire them through an extra student levy? Hardly popular, but highly transparent — and the lobbyist would get no funds because no student would agree to pay it.
Charities have a much more pointed situation that mirrors universities — registered charities can only engage in up to 10% advocacy work. Of course, many charities argue this is an infringement of their freedom of speech (surprising you didn’t go there on universities). But the truth is that if you are a charity, you are being underwritten by the taxpayer. Not 1:1, but there are tax breaks. So governments limit the $$ spent to just 10% — because the charitable status comes from doing charitable works, not being a mouthpiece on the taxpayer’s dime. There’s a great quote from a U.S. judge that basically summed it up in a case — you have the right to freedom of speech, not the right to freedom of speech underwritten by the taxpayer.
So if the government says “here’s money to run the university”, internal staff doing advocacy work are a small %age of the costs, and most of them are doing COMMS in general. But lobbyists charge a lot of money, and no offense to your profession, produce little in tangible results. Most of them are used car salesmen in better suits. Not surprisingly, the government doesn’t want to fund universities in order to have them bite their hand.
But more importantly? If universities want to tell the government something, they can do so any day of the week with a letter that will get read by many. They don’t have to pay lobbyists like their some backwater company that nobody has ever heard of…when universities talk about university affairs, people listen. They don’t always agree with the self-serving analysis, but they listen.
PolyWogg