In a blog entry today, former Connecticut legislator Jon Pelto is asserting that Michelle Rhee and other StudentsFirst employees who lobbied in the Connecticut legislature did not transparently register as lobbyists for StudentsFirst but instead for a fictional organization, GNEPSA, whose URL http://gnepsa.org is immediately redirected to … StudentsFirst CT. I downloaded the relevant lobbyist database from the Office of State Ethics’ lobbyist-report page, and Pelto’s story checks out. Lobbyists are transparently registered for ConnCAN (formally, the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now) as well as for the two state teachers unions (AFT Connecticut and the Connecticut Education Association), and it is just plain odd that Rhee’s organization has not been transparent.
There is the possibility that the weird registration of Rhee as a lobbyist in CT but not for her organization has some plausible explanation; paperwork errors happen. But given Rhee’s history of PR flubs and too often avoiding hard questions, I understand why Pelto is suspicious. ((There is also an odd discussion on Twitter — I asked Patrick Riccards if ConnCAN had any comment, he said ConnCAN’s lobbyists were all registered transparently [which they are] and asked why I asked him. Leonie Haimson then asserted that ConnCAN and StudentsFirst CT are both “division[s] in [the] AstroTurf #CORPREFORM army.” I suppose I should appreciate the public support, but while it is fair to ask questions of legislative allies about evolving situations, there is no reformy monolith.))