The Huffington Post reports:

Hordes of lobbyists have deregistered in the last two years after Congress enacted more onerous disclosure requirements and the Obama administration put in place a series of anti-lobbyist policies. But that doesn't mean there's been less lobbying.

In fact, we'll likely find out this week (when fourth-quarter reports are filed) that the influence industry beat its all-time record for lobbying revenue in 2009.

Huffington's story included this assessment by CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan:

"This is the consequence of the Obama administration demonizing lobbyists and so the result is more and more deregistration. It's an unsurprising reaction to the administration's efforts to make lobbying less and less palatable."

That's the question asked by the Project on Government Oversight. POGO's Bryan Rahija commends the Obama administration's just-announced Open Government Directive as a welcome "shift away from a policy of secrecy in all areas of the federal governance process."

Yet Rahija adds this cautionary note:

... it will be up to our community to ensure all open government initiatives live up to their potential.

Only time will tell if the document will go down as the Magna Carta of government transparency, or just another memo for the archive. For now, it's worth commending the White House for taking this first step.

In other words, we must welcome the announcement, yet monitor the implementation. Or, to borrow a Reagan era phrase, we must "trust but verify."

Yesterday, news outlets were reporting on an article from the Washington Times about the Obama administration and its donors. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun, Melanie Sloan provided some perspective and identified the real issue:

One government watchdog group said it was neither surprised nor especially troubled to learn the White House had given special access and attention to top donors. More worrisome would be if the White House were promising specific policy actions in exchange for contributions, said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. (emphasis added)

"Is it in any way surprising that top donors get better treatment and more information than the rest of us? No,'' Sloan said. The newspaper said two people who had raised money received invitations to use the private bowling alley at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. That is a separate alley from the one-lane facility in the White House built during the Nixon administration.

Over the first months of the Obama administration, CREW has encountered less than promised transparency on several fronts. We've even had to go to court to obtain information that shouldn't be so hard to obtain. So, the lack of transparency in something as complicated as negotiations over health care reform doesn't surprise us. But, the President should be transparent about that:

Obama is learning what some political observers said during the campaign — that it’s unreasonable to promise open negotiations on an issue as complicated as health reform.

“I guess I just never believed it when it was promised. It seemed unrealistic,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “Nobody can have all their negotiations in public because then you never get to ‘yes.’”

But that doesn’t mean Obama’s off the hook, Sloan said. The president needs to explain why he’s not living up to his campaign promise and should at least be briefing the public on what’s happening in the meetings, she said.

On the campaign trail last year, Obama promised an unprecedented level of transparency.

Leave it to the lobbyists to find a way around the new restrictions imposed by the Obama administration. Reuters examines how the lobbyists have changed their registration to work around the system:

President Barack Obama's new special interest rules are having unexpected consequences with some lobbyists giving up their formal registrations and finding other ways to influence policy as they try to maintain access to key agencies or hope for future government jobs.

Congressional aides, industry executives and watchdog groups say the rules have also slowed Obama's ability to fill key government jobs, eliminated some highly qualified candidates and kept away some others who worry tougher "revolving door" rules could tie their hands in the future.

"The president's executive order isn't working the way they planned," said one top Washington industry lobbyist, who asked not to be identified, given the sensitivity of the subject. He said he personally knew of several companies and non-profit groups who had filed papers with Congress terminating the lobbyist status of people on their payrolls after realizing that they were being shut out.

Reading the rules narrowly, even he could deregister and leave the actual "lobbying" to others on his staff, said the lobbyist, but quickly added he had no intention to do that.

From today's New York Times, an editorial supporting the new White House policy on visitor records, which was initiated by CREW:

Transparency doesn’t come easy in Washington, where deal makers and favor seekers prefer to work from the shadows. But the Obama administration is taking a major step into the sunlight with the presidential order to post online the thousands of White House visitors who come and go each month.

Dick Cheney fiercely indulged White House secrecy as vice president, most notoriously in refusing to name the corporate moguls who visited to create energy policy. But the Clinton administration was no less secretive about fund-raisers and other favored drop-ins.

The policy requires the routine posting of the Secret Service’s logs three to four months after White House visitations. Disclosure will name the visitor, who set up the meeting, where it was held and how long it lasted.

There are exceptions for national security and sensitive visitors, such as someone quietly under consideration for a Supreme Court nomination. But President Obama is promising citizens far more about “whose voices are being heard in the policy-making process.”

It took a court challenge by a watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, to remind the administration of Mr. Obama’s campaign vows for a new era of openness.

ABC's Jake Tapper:

The move marks a significant policy change. The Bush administration refused to make public visitor's logs. Reporters and others had sought them during the Jack Abramoff scandal, and in Vice President Cheney's meetings with his energy task force. In 2006, the Secret Service and the Bush White House declared the logs off-limits to the public.

In January of this year, a federal judge ruled against the "presidential communications privilege" President Bush had invoked. The White House would have to make the visitors logs public, he ruled.

CREW had sought the logs to learn more about visits to the White House by conservative religious leaders and a Texas businessman and lobbyist accused of selling access to Bush administration officials in exchange for contributions to the pending George W. Bush presidential library.

CREW also served as a thorn in the Obama White House's side, earlier this year filing a lawsuit to force disclosure of meetings from officials of the pharmaceutical and clean coal industries with the Obama administration.

Yesterday, the Obama administration and CREW settled four ongoing cases regarding public access to White House visitor records.  The most significant development, however, is the commitment by the Obama administration to affirmatively post visitor records on-line on an ongoing basis, bringing a historic level of transparency to the White House.
 
CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan praised the White House stating:

The Obama administration has proven its pledge to usher in a new era of government transparency was more than just a campaign promise.  The Bush administration fought tooth and nail to keep secret the identities of those who visited the White House.  In contrast, the Obama administration – by putting visitor records on the White House web site – will have the most open White House in history.  Because visitor records will now be available online, CREW dismissed its lawsuits. Providing public access to visitor records is an important step in restoring transparency and accountability to our government.  CREW is proud to have been part of this historic decision.

Yesterday’s agreement stems from lawsuits CREW filed after the Bush and later the Obama administration refused to provide White House visitor records in response to CREW’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.  Visitor records are created by the Secret Service as part of its statutory responsibility to protect the president, vice president, their residences, and the White House generally.                  
 
In lawsuits for records of visits by Christian conservative leaders and lobbyist Stephen Payne, the Bush administration argued the records were presidential records, not agency records of the Secret Service, and therefore exempt from the FOIA’s mandatory disclosure requirements.  U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth disagreed, ruling twice that the records are subject to the FOIA and not within any of the claimed exemptions.  The government appealed those decisions to the District of Columbia Circuit Court.
 
After President Obama took office, CREW sought records of visits to the White House by health care and coal executives to determine the degree of their influence on health care and energy legislative proposals.  The government initially refused to turn over these records, but now has agreed to produce them, as well as the Bush era records, as part of the settlement.  In turn, CREW has agreed to dismiss all the pending litigation.

There's a lot of lobbying taking place in Washington DC because of the stimulus bill. Yet, despite promises of transparency, there's not a lot of reporting about interactions between lobbyists and federal officials, according to the Associated Press:

President Obama ordered federal officials to disclose their contacts with lobbyists trying to influence how the government doles out money to jump-start the economy. Yet few such communications have been reported even though lobbyists say they are busier than ever with the multibillion-dollar stimulus.

Since the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in February, federal agencies have reported 197 contacts with lobbyists about stimulus grants.

In August, the entire government reported only eight such lobbying contacts. The Pentagon, which controls about $7.4 billion in stimulus spending, reported just one lobbying contact so far this year. The Homeland Security Department, with at least $3 billion to spend, reported none.

Yet the paucity of reporting masks activities by lobbyists and clients eager to obtain stimulus money for their projects. Lobbyists have separately reported work related to stimulus projects, and in many cases have operated in new ways to skirt restrictions on their efforts to influence stimulus spending.

We'll have more on this shortly, but here's the question asked of President Obama last night by Christi Parsons from the Los Angeles Times -- and Obama's answer. The "watchdog group" in the question is CREW. We'll have more on the President's next:

Christi Parsons.

Q During the campaign, you promised that health-care negotiations would take place on C-SPAN. And that hasn't happened. And your administration recently turned down a request, from a watchdog group, seeking a list of health-care executives who have visited the White House to talk about health-care reform.

Also the TARP inspector general recently said that your White House is withholding too much information on the bank bailouts. So my question for you is, are you fulfilling your promise of transparency in the White House?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, on the list of health-care executives who visited us, most of the time, you guys have been in there taking pictures. So it hasn't been a secret. And my understanding is, we just sent a letter out providing a full list of all the executives. But frankly these have mostly been at least photo sprays, where you could see who was participating.

With respect to all the negotiations not being on C-SPAN, you will recall in this very room that our kickoff event was here, on C- SPAN. And at a certain point, you know, you start getting into all kinds of different meetings. Senate Finance is having a meeting. The House is having a meeting. If they want those to be on C-SPAN, then I would welcome it. But I don't think there are a lot of secrets going on in there.

And the last question was with respect to TARP. I -- let me take a look at what exactly they say we have not provided. I think that we've provided much greater transparency than existed prior to our administration coming in. It is a big program. I don't know exactly what's been requested. I'll find out, and I will have an answer for you.