NYT editorial: Round Up the Usual Lobbyists

Even before the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico was finally capped, an army of more than 600 lobbyists was at work in Washington trying to put a lid on a rush of government proposals to crack down on the oil and gas industry. This is the natural order in the world of government and the K Street lobbying industry. They co-exist so handsomely. But new data provide worthwhile insight into just how tight the hand-in-glove relationship of government and the industry has become.

Three out of four lobbyists working for the oil and gas industry — a total of 432 — arrived by way of Washington’s golden revolving door, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. They operate as special-interest pleaders with deep past experience as legislators, staffers and executive appointees who are better paid in the fields where they lobby.

The typical federal alumni mix on K Street is less than one out of three. The oil lobbyists’ far higher ratio should be kept in mind as questions focus on how haphazard government regulation has been in overseeing the industry and its many wells in the field.

By coincidence, just weeks before the disaster, the director of the Minerals Management Service — the now renamed oversight agency heavily criticized after the gulf explosion — departed his $150,000 job for an industry post typically paid twice that. His path was well worn, according to The Post, which found more than a dozen former specialists from the agency already working for the industry. These include former monitors of the gulf’s wells now paid by companies they regulated.

(More here.)