Currently, anyone who spends $5,000 or more to influence legislative or administrative action is required quarterly to disclose payments to lobbying firms, payments to lobbyists, activity expenses and other payments to influence legislative or administrative action.

The regulation, which will go into effect July 1 — meaning it’ll start showing up in October just before the election — makes it so the fourth category “other payments to influence” will be itemized. As it stands now, that fourth category has become a catchall with no accountability.

This “other payments” classification could include hiring consultants — such as former politicians who aren’t registered lobbyists — or the cost of advertising, hiring a public affairs firm, media consulting firm, or even something simple like paying rent.

But no one really knows on a case-by-case basis, since up until now it’s just reported as a top line amount with no specificity.

And groups are more regularly relying on this ambiguous classification. For example, the 10 interest groups that regularly spend the most on lobbying have gone from 52 percent of their total amount reported as “other payments” in 2000 to 69 percent in 2014, according to the Fair Political Practices Commission report.

Total spending has increased as well, up 34 percent over that same period of time among the top 10.

“There are two main goals behind the regulation, to increase transparency and promote compliance,” said FPPC Chair Jodi Remke in a statement. “As for transparency, the public is entitled to know who is trying to influence public officials and how they are doing it. As for compliance, lobbying is largely a self-regulated industry and requiring more detailed reporting is the most effective tool to promote compliance and facilitate enforcement against improper activity.”

The threshold for itemization will be $2,500 per expense, broken out into multiple categories, including salary, lobbyist expenses, legislative-related services, consultants and government relations, public affairs, advertising, research, lobbying events and other. Disclosing the name and address of the payee will also be required.

Critics say because the $2,500 threshold is so low, the new law imposes cumbersome reporting requirements on filers, particularly now in the middle of an election cycle, and the privacy of employees whose names will be published will be violated with little value to the public.

“These are individuals within many organizations who are not registered lobbyists, and while they may engage in some direct lobbying communications, they do not qualify as lobbyists,” wrote Diane M. Fishburn and Richard R. Rios of the law firm Olson, Hagel and Fishburn, in a letter to the FPPC.

“We ask that the commission recognize that there is little if any value to the public in the disclosure of the individual names and addresses or the salaries paid to these individuals,” continued Fishburn and Rios, whose firm represents the California State Council of Service Employees, an SEIU affiliate.

In a string of news events and reports, the many faces of lobbying have resurfaced as the political year winds down.

And Silicon Valley, forging its way deeper into politics, has pushed lobbying to the fore with its efforts to advance special objectives at the state and federal levels.

According to figures tallied by the Sacramento Bee, California lobbying firms were off to a great start in the first half of the year, posting big numbers. Over that time, they pulled in $92.6 million, 7 percent better than last year’s January-to-June cycle; plus interest groups shelled out some $141.5 million on lobbying, exceeding last year’s outlay.

Responsible for the uptick were squabbles over legislation involving online poker, health warnings on soft drinks and — a big new entrant — ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft.

Alone, Uber’s employment of lobbying became a major story in the second half of the year. To spearhead lobbying operations, Uber hired former Obama campaign strategist David Plouffe, a man with an insuperable Rolodex for a company seeking favorable outcomes from Democratic-controlled states.

According to the Washington Post, over the past two years Uber “hired private lobbyists in at least 50 U.S. cities and states, employing multiple firms in some places. … The records show that the company has hired at least 161 individuals to lobby on its behalf, on top of its own rapidly expanding policy office.”

That meant major outlays between summer and winter. In Sacramento, the Post noted, Uber paid “$475,000 from July to November to lobby California lawmakers.”

Silicon Valley struggles

Although Uber and its peer tech companies are sometimes portrayed as unstoppable goliaths, their headway in political circles has come at a cost, and not always with results as transformative as their disruption-friendly CEOs would wish. Uber itself has faced a fresh wave of bad publicity in recent months, with the company facing an outright ban on some Uber services in France and other European countries.

What’s more, even broadly shared political interests among Silicon Valley’s leading firms have encountered opposition, with lobbying unable to deliver results. Companies have pushed hard, as the Peninsula Press observed, to increase the number of so-called H-1B visas, which would trigger an influx of highly-skilled immigrants well trained in tech.

The Press quoted Emily Lam, the vice president of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a public policy trade organization that counts many of tech’s biggest companies among its members:

“We’ve been lobbying for this for over 10 years, and it’s not happened, so there is a lot of frustration. The tide is turning where this isn’t going to be the place where people want to be because it’s so difficult to get a visa, and we want to have the best and brightest here.”

Through the revolving door

One group that has found success in lobbying is former California members of Congress from both parties who have taken up lobbying, a new McClatchy report has highlighted.

Some retired representatives even see their work as a continuation of their time in Congress. Former Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., was tapped to curry legislative favor for the Water Resources Development Act, which was sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. The act improved rivers and harbors and increased water conservation.

Flush with experience and close contacts with the representatives and senators closest to the issue, Doolittle got a bill through both houses of Congress within three years.

“In this hyperpartisan era, it was quite frankly a major accomplishment,” he told McClatchy. “It was a very satisfying continuation of my public service.”

The madcap character of the turnaround captured the same sense of absurdity that critics said pervaded the intended ban. The journey from Pan’s original bill to its hurried demise laid bare some of the more unflattering trends in politics as usual, from the mechanics of contemporary lawmaking to the ways around regulatory enforcement.

Legislators often strive to beat a challenge to the punch by passing laws as quickly as possible. In the absence of strong opposition from the lobbyists and corporations who traditionally mobilize to push for or against a particular scheme, the path to new laws can be fast and smooth. “The law apparently sneaked its way through both houses of the Legislature in 2013 unbeknownst to most small restaurant and bar owners,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “It wasn’t until January, after the law was already in effect, that most businesses got wind of the rule.”

Smaller businesses hit harder

For major corporations in the food industry, such as Subway, glove use is already standard policy. That left smaller businesses unaware of the ban plan — a problem exacerbated by the gap between the law’s winter implementation and summer enforcement.

Sushi restaurants and bars, catering to more selective and artisanal-friendly patrons, found themselves facing major obstacles to the presentation and preparation of their products. Not only do latex gloves make it more difficult and less appealing to craft and serve raw fish or custom cocktails; they also come at a substantial cost.

The manager of one high-end bar in San Francisco anticipated going through some 175 gloves per shift, according to The Washington Post. Joshua Miller, an Alameda bartender, told the Los Angeles Times that more than glove counts would have driven up costs. “Having to change gloves constantly slows down service, and for a busy bar, time is money,” he said.

For some economists, that kind of unpleasant regulatory surprise is characteristic of the unanticipated consequences officeholders can usher in on the heels of hasty, instinct-driven lawmaking.

A political hornet’s nest

Beyond the lessons of economics, the repealed glove ban gave restauranteurs an opportunity to shed light on the strange psychological effects of the law. Sacramento chef Ravin Patel told the Associated Press that the best way to cope with its demands was simply to pretend. “It just becomes common practice that you don’t touch food as much,” he said. “When the health inspector comes, you slap on a bunch of gloves.”

What’s more, the legislation failed to take into account the politics of environmentalism. Another San Francisco entrepreneur, Remy Nelson, told the Chronicle in March that his Mojo Bicycle Cafe would need 50,000 gloves a year — simply to ready and serve bagels. Amid California cities’ bans on plastic bags, the sudden proliferation of disposable gloves made for an awkward, illogical contrast.

Superficial science

Finally, the glove ordeal underscored how politics can play fast and loose with scientific evidence and rigor. As the AP reports, the ban can be traced back to federal research on mitigating the risks of foodborne illness. One study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that norovirus outbreaks originating in food were spread most often by those who handled food without gloves.

But now, Pan has told the AP, “It’s not about whether you wear gloves or not. It’s about how clean the surfaces are. We need to have the conversation go back to, ‘This is about food safety.'”

“Unfortunately the focus from last year’s law was just on gloves, and until we repeal the glove law we can’t have a meaningful stakeholder discussion on food safety in the restaurant industry,” the Times quoted Pan separately.

For political scientists, the episode may carry broader lessons about how legislators can better look before they leap. But in Sacramento, relief over the scuttled ban seems so universal that lawmakers appear ready to act as if the intended ban had simply never happened.