Not being a Legislature regular — I've been four or five times, for just a short time — I have not had much experience with lobbyists. I've seen them on tv and read their words in various places, but damn; it's nothing compared to seeing one in action. And I gotta tell: I did not like what I saw.

The Senate Consumer Protection Committee held a public hearing on SB 1045, sponsored by Senator, and Committee Chair, Diane Rosenbaum. The bill would block the use of credit reports in a job application process. There are a number of problems with credit reports: they are prone to many and serious errors (approximately one-quarter to one-third of entries are wrong); they reveal unnecessary personal info (Sen George and I were both surprised to learn that you could discern a person's sexual orientation by who they have credit cards, mortgages and other loans with); people don't even bother to apply for jobs they may be qualified for figuring ahead of time, why bother; and many of the legitimate issues noted on a credit report have nothing to do with a person's fitness for a job (an expensive family illness or divorce). There are many reasons to keep credit reports out of most job applications (the committee passed an amendment to cover jobs where a report would refect "substantially job-related" information).

That's not how the flak for Transunion saw it. Representing one of the three major credit reporting firms, he brushed aside the concerns and critiques with no evidence beyond the steady, assured tone of his voice. He told the committee the U.S. Government Accounting Office had found credit reports reliably accurate (the studies that found errors were, he proclaimed, based on faulty data —amateurish data, in fact). In fact, he assured the committee, if a person is turned down for a job because of a credit report, they are supposed to receive a notce of adverse action from the employer. It'll be too late to get that job, of course, but they can see what the problem was and fix it in the future.

Or sue the employer for screwing up, the possibility of which means that no employer will ever admit the job was awarded on the basis of a credit report. So applicants will continue to not receive these reports, but that's acceptable to the Transunion spokesperson because they can, before job hunting or taking out a loan, request a copy of their own credit report in order to take care of any problems they can fix.

Which is a pointless endeavor when you've been unemployed for most of a year, or have massive student loans, or spent a week in the hospital and racked up $50,000 in expenses. These are situations that will obliterate a credit record — in full accordance with the law — and have no bearing on a person's fitness for a job. In fact, speaking for myself, the circumstances that led to my credit record turning to shit have also led me to be a better person and a better employee. My credit still sucks balls, but I am someone you would want on your — and would refuse to hire if it came down to my credit record.

None of which matters to the lobbyist. His job was to get the committee to do nothing. Washington state's law, a year old now, has resulted in no litagation, so it appears to be a safe course of action for Oregon to follow. But it undermines the power Transunion and the other companies have — the power to make huge amounts of money. These are shadow companies, operating outside the law on the basis of massive, untraceable bureaucracy. The lobbyist admitted as much, attributing the few errors he was willing to confess did exist to the billions of entries made each day — by fallable humans. If some woman somewhere enters a number wrong, or into the wrong account, and then it takes a month to even trace that — if you get lucky — well, dude, that's your hard luck. The profusion of tales about trying to get an error removed goes far beyond the anecdotal; we have no reason to trust Transunion and the others.

I'm confident in this case that the lobbyist will get no joy; with the Dems in control of the committee, and the bill's sponsor as the committee chair, it's sure to make it to the Senate floor for a vote (and you could tell in Sen Rosenbaum's tone she was not going to let her bill get derailed by lobbyist scare tactics). But the smooth, assured, "fact-filled" voice of the lobbyist is not going away. It may take only a few Senators to defeat the bill on the floor; we know this happens repeatedly. Ben Cannon's bill to ban offshore drilling turned into a 10-year moratorium, and I know the lobbyist from the Western States Petroleum Assn was behind that change: it was he alone argued for.

Lobbyists have huge power, not only in being paid richly to be expert and in the offices and ears of elected officials, but by crowding out the voices of voters. If the members of the Oregon Legislature, with so little time to conduct business, have their few "free" hours taken by lobbyists, and only the organized events that bring them into tepid contact with constituents, what chance do the people have? We are fortunate in Oregon that many of our elected officials do remember the voters and manage to act on our behalf despite lobbying pressure. But the effect over time is telling, as those who have the institutional memory and expertise with difficult topics are not citizens but paid representatives of corporations and special interests.

The only way to fight lobbyists is with citizens, but how do we get an equivalent presence at the Capital for one month this year, six months next? Until we answer that question, the lobbyists have the ability to thwart even the most dedicated democrat with their calm, sensible, rational line of bullshit.