The Washington Post’s Dan Eggen reports that the White House ethics counsel has told federal agencies that they can no longer have registered lobbyists on their federal advisory boards. Federal advisory boards, Eggen explains, are a bureaucratic labyrinth of about about 1,000 panels featuring a total of 60,000 people that provide expertise to federal agencies. For example, there’s a National Petroleum Council and a Defense Policy Board, that played a role in the Pentagon’s support for invading Iraq.

Industry reps tell Eggen that these boards, and by extension these agencies, will lose crucial expertise on how to handle complex policies and regulations. A good government advocate says it will make these boards more neutral. What’s not clear is how such a rule will be enforced considering that specific federal agencies, not the White House, control these boards and that the federal government is unsure how many of them even exist. Also, it’d be good to learn more about what, exactly, is the influence of these boards.

As with with most Obama/lobbying issues, I like his efforts to break the status quo power relations in Washington. But I think he’s silly to make a distinction between those who are registered lobbyists and those whose aren’t lobbyists but still represent a certain interest. To give a hypothetical example, having the CFO of Exxon sit on the National Petroleum Council is no better than the Council featuring an Exxon lobbyist.

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