Bill announced to exempt communications with editorial boards

The leader of the state Assembly announced a bill Thursday that would exempt communications with newspaper editorial boards from lobbying disclosure rules -- a rebuke of a policy being contemplated by the state’s ethics commission.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) and Assemb. Matthew Titone (D-Staten Island), the bill’s sponsor, said the proposal “takes a critical step to protect the First Amendment and the free flow of information between sources and journalists.”

It comes in reaction to a policy advanced in January by the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics to expand the definition of lobbying to include public relations consultants. JCOPE could require those consultants to report conversations with editorial boards. At least one prominent political consulting firm has said the proposal amounts to spying and said it won’t comply.

The Heastie-Titone bill also would lower the threshold for reporting lobbing activity. Currently lobbyists and their clients must disclose sources of funding of any amount in excess of $5,000 if they have spent more than $50,000 and at least 3 percent of their total expenditures that are devoted to lobbying in New York. The Democrats proposed lowering the threshold amount spent to $5,000, regardless of the percentage of the total expenditure and requiring the disclosure of any donor who gives $1,000 or more.