Inquiry opened in alleged lobbying violations

BOISE – Secretary of State Ben Ysursa has opened a formal inquiry into whether Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s former chief of staff violated Idaho lobbying law when he met with a state legislator earlier this month over a disputed $50 million state contract.

Phil Reberger, who headed Kempthorne’s office for 11 years until he resigned in 2002 to work as a consultant, was hired by Unisys Corp. to help the Reston, Va.,-based company win the contract with the state Department of Administration to manage Idaho’s Medicaid claims starting in 2008.

On Jan. 17, Reberger and Unisys officials met with Sen. Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, to discuss the contract, which is the subject of a lawsuit filed by EDS Inc. EDS contends it was improperly disqualified from bidding.

Reberger is not a registered Idaho lobbyist, and Ysursa wants to find out if the meeting met requirements that people who are being paid by companies or special interest groups to lobby lawmakers on issues before the Legislature report their activities and spending to the state.

“I am requesting that you provide me information pertaining to the manner and character of your meeting with Senator Dean Cameron and Unisys Corporation officials on January 17, 2006,” Ysursa wrote in a Jan. 25 letter to Reberger obtained by The Associated Press. “I am specifically interested in the context of the meeting in relation to” Idaho’s lobbying disclosure laws.

Idaho’s lobbying laws are loose compared to many states. A recent AP story detailed how they allow Reberger to avoid disclosing any work lobbying Kempthorne and others in the state’s executive branch.

Neither Reberger nor colleagues at a Boise-based lobbying firm immediately returned phone calls to the AP seeking comment. Andrea Mihm and Pat Sullivan, Reberger’s colleagues, are registered as lobbyists for Unisys.

On Jan. 25 – the day of Ysursa’s letter to Reberger – the company registered itself as a lobbyist with the state.

Cameron, who is not a target of Ysursa’s inquiry, was out of town and couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.

Cameron, the co-chairman of the Idaho Legislature’s budget writing committee, told the AP last week that he wanted to learn more about why EDS, which has had the Medicaid contract for 27 years, was excluded.

“The committee doesn’t really care who won the bid, we’re more interested that the process was done fairly and correctly,” Cameron said.

Roy Eiguren, the registered lobbyist who represents EDS, declined to comment Friday.

Reberger, who in a Dec. 5 interview with the AP said “I’m not a lobbyist,” also works for Washington Group International and the Associated General Contractors of Idaho. Washington Group won a $5 million a year contract to oversee Kempthorne’s $1.6 billion “Connecting Idaho” road-building project.

Last March, Reberger was enlisted by members of Kempthorne’s staff, including his policy adviser Kent Kunz, to sway members of the Idaho Senate to kill attempts to amend the “Connecting Idaho” plan, according to a March 15, 2005, e-mail obtained by the AP through an Idaho Open Records Act request.

A pair of Idaho lawmakers, Sens. David Langhorst and Kate Kelly, both Democrats from Boise, are trying to build consensus among Republican colleagues to expand the definition of lobbying to include not just legislative lobbyists, but also those who attempt to influence statewide elected officials including the governor – as is the case in 36 other states.

Observers of Idaho politics say questions over Reberger’s contacts with elected officials, coupled with Jack Abramoff’s recent guilty plea in a federal lobbying scandal, could make timing right for changes in the state’s 32-year-old “Sunshine Law” that governs lobbying and campaign disclosure.

“If there ever was a moment for ethics legislation, this has got to be it,” said Keith Allred, a Boise-based Harvard University professor who heads up The Common Interest, an Idaho political activist group. “With what’s going on nationally, and questions being raised at the state level, people’s confidence in their government has got to come into question.”

Kempthorne told the AP on Jan. 24 he had not yet seen the proposal to tighten lobbying requirements. He declined to comment on it at the time. His staff didn’t return phone calls immediately Friday.