However, the council may end up with at least three different proposals to debate when City Attorney Bob Shannon takes his recommended ordinance to the council next month. Council members Patrick O'Donnell and Gary DeLong both said they have their own lobbyist rules in mind.

The issue was brought up by council members Gerrie Schipske and Robert Garcia one year after the council killed a similar proposal. At the time, only Schipske and Garcia's predecessor on the council, Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, supported the ordinance.

Schipske and Garcia said they had been working on revisiting lobbyist regulations for a few months, but the news in recent weeks about a top city official going on vacation with a lobbyist and getting a free hotel room has made the issue more pertinent.

The lobbyist ordinance, as proposed one year ago, would include requirements that lobbyists register with the city and list their clients, that council members report publicly about any one-on-one conversations they have with lobbyists about any matter being decided at City Hall, and that no city officials be allowed to accept gifts.

"The bottom line is that I think people in this city want assurance that there's a level playing field in terms of access to public officials," Schipske said.

Shannon said his recommendations will be "substantially the same" as last year's ordinance, which had languished in committees since 2003 before finally dying at council.

One thing Shannon said his ordinance will do is include nonprofit agencies and city employee associations as lobbyists, which previously were exempt. Those exemptions have been one of the pivotal debates in the ordinance.

DeLong and Vice Mayor Val Lerch have said they would support the ordinance if it doesn't have such exemptions, and that that was why they voted against the "flawed" ordinance, as DeLong described it, last year. Schipske also has said she supports removing the exemptions.

However, Garcia, O'Donnell and Tonia Reyes Uranga have said they are concerned that requiring nonprofits to register as lobbyists and pay a fee will shut some groups out of City Hall.

Members of the public who spoke to the council Tuesday seemed to be against the exemptions.

"I would urge you to have a level playing field in whatever ordinance is eventually enacted," said Lou Baglietto, a lobbyist who works for Butterfield Communications, Inc.

Jack Smith, a council candidate who is running against Uranga in the 7 th District, shared that opinion, but noted the line should probably be drawn at those who are paid to lobby at City Hall and shouldn't include community advocates.

"Multimillion-dollar nonprofits, huge unions - I don't think there should be an exemption for that," Smith said.

A couple dozen members of the Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community also were at the meeting. Several spoke out in support of the ordinance, but called for more action.

"We do feel that any lobbying ordinance won't go far enough," said Jeannine Pearce.

The coalition has called for a moratorium on new tourism development projects and an investigation of past projects. The activist group, composed of labor rights advocates, students and university professors, has filed a lawsuit to prevent the proposed Sierra Suites hotel at the Pike downtown.

That project is owned by LodgeWorks, a hotel chain that also owns AVIA hotels in Long Beach and Napa, and which gave Long Beach's top development official a free room last month.

Craig Beck, Long Beach's director of development services and the Redevelopment Agency, went on a Napa vacation with prominent development lobbyist Mike Murchison and Kraig Kojian, head of the Downtown Long Beach Associates, on Nov. 13-14. During that trip, they and their wives reportedly received free hotel rooms at the AVIA Hotel there, although Beck and Kojian said they didn't know it at the time and later repaid the cost.

A Press-Telegram investigation uncovered e-mails among the three men that indicate they all knew their rooms would be "comped." Beck has reportedly gone on at least two other vacations with Murchison.

City Manager Pat West placed Beck on paid administrative leave Friday while Shannon was completing an investigation of the matter. Shannon gave that review to West on Tuesday, West said, but the city manager said he couldn't discuss the matter further because it is a personnel issue.

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