BishopAccountability.org
	Rally Wasn't Lobbying The Hartford Courant July 5, 2009 http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-diocese-no-lobbyist.artjul05,0,5153583.story BRIDGEPORT DIOCESE •Ethics agency wise to drop inquiry into Catholic protest at Capitol Connecticut's Office of State Ethics owes Attorney General Richard Blumenthal a debt of gratitude for talking it down from conducting an inquiry it would have come to regret. The ethics agency had begun an investigation of whether a protest rally organized by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport on the Capitol grounds in Hartford last March violated the state's lobbyist-registration statute. (For example, the diocese might have spent more than the statute's $2,000 threshold amount on renting buses without registering.) Catholics were protesting an ill-conceived bill — which was quickly withdrawn — that would have radically changed the way churches handled their internal financial affairs. Earlier this week, Mr. Blumenthal said that whether the lobby-registration law applied was not as important as the likelihood that a court would find the ethics agency's inquiry to be illegally intrusive and in violation of the separation of church and state. Under the circumstances — a protest rally at the seat of state government — the rights of freedom of assembly, speech and religion would trump the lobby law, he said. Wednesday, the ethics board decided to follow Mr. Blumenthal's good advice to drop the investigation because of its chilling effect on fundamental rights. It is essential, as Bishop William E. Lori of the Bridgeport Diocese says, "that citizens have the right to organize." If the lobbyist-registration law applies to citizen protests on the Capitol lawn, it is overly broad. That brings up Mr. Blumenthal's second piece of good advice: His office, ethics officials and the General Assembly should work together to clarify the law.
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