Tag: Corporate political spending

Follow the Money

Follow the Money

Chris Cox

Multiple crises over the past year reminded us that our global economy and our democracies are unjust and fragile. With decades of lobbying and political spending, companies have contributed to the breakdown of trust in the system by distorting elections, policymaking, law enforcement, and citizens’ ability to hold power to account.

Why do industries like meatpacking enjoy little oversight under both Democrat and Republican administrations? A recent report from the nonprofit advocacy group Feed the Truth suggests a disquieting answer. The report documents how the largest companies in the U.S. food system invest a significant sum in lobbying and campaign donations, all but guaranteeing a friendlier regulatory environment.

Corporate political spending and lobbying are possibly the major factors obstructing progress on critical policy issues including the climate crisis, corporate tax loopholes, fossil fuel subsidies, pharmaceutical pricing, minimum wage, worker rights, and youth tobacco use. Companies impede legislators and regulators from acting on evidence and for the common good. The 2010 Citizens United court ruling only exasperated corporate political influence.

Investors try to address this. For example, SGI members led or co-filed 10 political spending or lobbying resolutions.

When It comes to political spending on elections, we rely on guidance from the Center for Political Accountability (CPA). CPA, collaborating with the Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research and Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, developed a model code of conduct. They apply that code and produce an annual report on political spending disclosure.

Capturing information on corporate lobbying is more difficult. Generally, it comes in three streams:

  1. Corporations directly employ lobbyists for matters of concern on the federal, state, and local level. The laws regarding disclosure vary in each jurisdiction making it difficult to track. For example, e-cigarette maker Juul admitted to Congress that it lobbies in 48 states, but try to gather all that data on your own.
  2. Corporations also make payments to trade associations that lobby on their behalf without specific disclosure or accountability. The US Chamber of Commerce has spent more than $1.6 billion since 1998.
  3. Corporations make payments to 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofits and 527 political organizations, often referred to as “dark money,” that can create legal and reputational risk for companies. Ohio utility FirstEnergy is under investigation for funneling $60 million through a dark money 501(c)(4) group called Generation Now that was used for bribery. In another example, the Rule of Law Defense Fund is a social welfare group that helped organize the protest before the January 6th riots and is an arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA).

While corporate and traditional PAC direct donations to politicians have strict limits, company payments to trade associations and 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofits for lobbying have no restrictions. This means companies can give unlimited amounts to third-party groups that spend millions on lobbying and undisclosed grassroots activity. Thus, shareholder proposals for lobbying disclosure capture indirect spending through trade associations or social welfare groups.

The CPA-Zicklin Index found that, among companies listed in S&P 500, only 18% fully disclose their contributions to 501(c)(4) advocacy groups, only 24% fully disclose their contributions to trade associations, and only 30% fully disclose their donations to 527 political organizations. So there is a long way to go.

In the wake of January’s attack on the U.S. Capitol and the pause imposed by some companies on their political donations, prospects for a change in the status quo may be improving. In February, ICCR asked companies to consider ending political spending on elections. This proxy season, shareholders sent a clear message for more disclosure and alignment of corporate political spending and lobbying.

This post is in a series that exams the outcome of the 2021 proxy season. For a complete list of SGI resolutions from 2021, please visit this page.

Corporate Governance Webinar

Corporate Governance Webinar

Chris Cox

At the heart of this webinar is the conviction, born of evidence, that transparent and accountable corporate practices correlates to higher shareholder value and lower volatility in share prices. A company run well will deliver superior financial returns, over the long term, than a company that does not adhere to principles of transparency and accountability,

On Thursday, August 29, we were joined in our quarterly webinar by two leaders within the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR): Tim Smith of Walden Asset Management and John Keenan of  American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

We are very grateful for the presence of both our guests in this webinar, for their commitment to work on these issues, and their generosity in sharing their wisdom with us.

As always, we welcome your feedback via a confidential evaluation found here. Slides from the webinar are found here.

The Decade We Stopped Climate Change

The Decade We Stopped Climate Change

Chris Cox

By Aaron Ziulkowski, Walden Asset Management

A New York Times Magazine published in August included one single article: “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change.” The title contains the spoiler that we all already knew: We are not stopping climate change. But the focus of the article by Nathaniel Rich—a whopping 30,000 words—is a historical recounting of how close the U.S. and global community came to establishing a binding framework that would have set us on a path to limit warming to what scientists consider manageable. Several decades later, we have still not accomplished this feat.

While some readers likely found the article depressing, it gave me a bit of hope. Rich chronicled a time when the risks of climate change were appreciated and regulations to limit emissions were recognized as the prudent action to take. This knowledge was accepted and embraced by conservatives and liberals as well as leaders of business and advocacy groups. While this promising response eventually derailed, investors may be able to help return the U.S. to a 1980s context—poised to act to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change.

Here’s what we can do.      

Ask companies to set emissions reduction goals that align with climate science. While this may sound outlandish, it is not. Many companies recognize that climate change presents both risks and opportunities and are committed to doing something about it. Forty-eight percent of Fortune 500 companies have set public targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve energy efficiency, source more renewable energy, or some combination of the three. While some of these targets are not science-based (i.e., aggressive enough to reach carbon neutrality by the second half of the century), nearly five hundred companies from around the globe have publicly committed to set science-based targets, and over one hundred have already done so.

Ask companies to be more transparent about their political spending and lobbying, as well as lobbying done on their behalf by trade associations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The business community wields significant influence over public policy, for better and for worse. Transparency breeds accountability. As investors, we need to know how a company is lobbying, both because the reputational risk it might entail for the companies we invest in, as well as the risks that lobbying may create for the broader economy. According to AFSCME, more than 40 companies engaged by investors have strengthened their corporate lobbying policies, practices (e.g. a decision to end ties with a third party involved in controversial lobbying activities), and transparency.

Ask companies to proactively advocate for comprehensive climate legislation. While at the federal level it is unlikely there will be an opportunity in the near-term to pass comprehensive climate legislation, there is important groundwork that needs to be done to prepare for when the political moment is right. There are also numerous opportunities to influence state- and local-level policies related to climate change. We should ask companies, especially those that are setting their own goals and targets to reduce emissions, to support legislative and regulatory efforts that are consistent and indeed facilitate achieving their goals. For example, recently, in my home state of Massachusetts, the business community successfully mobilized to support strengthening climate legislation, including the sourcing of renewable energy. Groups like the Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP), organized by Ceres, can help companies identify and participate in such efforts.

What we did not achieve in the past provides us our current goal and focus. The business community can be a supportive partner in fighting climate change, and investors have an important role in catalyzing that action.