Rarely kept track of publicly...
There are concerns in Nebraska's capital city about the amount of money spent on the lobbying of lawmakers.It has more than quadrupled in the past decade, statistics show, and that is raising questions of whether a privileged few are buying influence. There are 339 registered lobbyists in Nebraska. Each January, they gather inside the Capitol to sway 49 senators.
"I don't know that the senators even realize how much money is being spent on them," said unpaid lobbyist Jack Gould, of Common Cause, a citizen watchdog group.
Gould said he checked the lobbying figures recently. According the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission, state lobbyists made more than $13 million in 2007. Gould said that's about $10 million more than they made a decade ago.
And Nebraska - with their bicameral Legislature and short legislative sessions and comparatively small state budget - is a relatively smaller example of lobbyist inflation.