Regulating Our Local Real Estate Lobbyist Group TREBIC Not a Bad Idea.

Headline in Providence, Rhode Island article " Providence could become first RI City to Regulate Lobbyist".

CLICKHERE

Nice to see local politicians who actually are looking out for transparency in government here is a few quotes from article. 

At the state level, lobbyists are required to register with the Secretary of State. But no other city or town has similar requirements, according to the Providence City Clerk’s office.

The current draft of the Providence ordinance would require anyone who is lobbying council members, the mayor, and other city officials—and being paid for that lobbying—to register with the City Clerk. The lobbyists would have to pay a registration fee, likely hundreds of dollars, and file annual reports on their lobbying activities. They could also face hefty fines for not complying with the rules.

Supporters of a proposed ordinance on lobbyists—including Council President Michael Solomon and Finance Chairman John Igliozzi—say the reform would boost accountability and transparency in city government

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Novel idea and later in article we see that major cities all over this United States already have this in place and it is time for major cities all over North Carolina to do the same.

We have one local lobbyist group by the name of Triad Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition (TREBIC) who are not regulated by anything. They have these annual pigs poultry and politics dinner where local elected officials get in free but should pay their way to a nice dinner with a meet and greet. TREBIC also has meetings or luncheons that they invite local elected politicians to hear what they have to say. To make matters even worse there is a local board in greensboro called the RUCO board which is regulated by the City of Greensboro with a post on July of 2010 titled TREBIC + RUCO = Fox Guarding Hen House CLICKHERE   ,  it was amazing to see the local lobbyist group have the meeting at their place , no such hint of influence there.

This idea for regulating local lobbyist groups might be a long way off but planting the seeds could make this come to reality because as we have seen in the past,  TREBIC wanted to deny the citizens of Greensboro the right to protest petitions CLICKHERE in the zoning process and fought long and hard to no avail. The state legislators were all in agreement that this was a good state law and made Greensboro be like every other municipality in this state and comply with protest petitions. Having the transparency of our local lobbyist groups be regulated on a quarterly basis will make for better government.