Bottom Line: Spotify warms up for app competition bill encore

Online Competition

Spotify hired Resolution Public Affairs to lobby on issues related to mobile streaming and mobile app competition. The streaming giant endorsed a bipartisan bill last Congress that would have prohibited product self-preferencing by companies including Apple, which Spotify accused of “anti-competitive behavior” and “choking competition” in the audiobook market.

Spotify is gearing up for an encore, as Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) reintroduced the American Innovation and Choice Online Act in June. The company is also lobbying up to support the Open App Markets Act, a 2021 bill Spotify hopes will be reintroduced soon that would protect third party app “side loading” and prevent Google and Apple from self-preferencing its own apps, a spokesperson told The Hill. One of the lobbyists on the account is Heather McHugh, previously the legislative director for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Agriculture

Bayer USA hired The Peterson Group to lobby on issues related to tools for crop protection. Former Rep. Collin ​Peterson (D-Minn.), the former chairman of the House Agriculture Committee who spent three decades in Congress, will work on the account.

Energy

The ​Northern California Power Agency hired Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck to lobby on issues related to the Hydrogen Production Tax Credit, which awards up to $3 per every kilogram of “clean” hydrogen produced. Mark Warren, former Senate Finance Committee chief tax counsel, will work on the account.

Health care

The ​American Heart Association hired alb solutions to lobby on issues related to the Access to AEDs Act, a bill that would promote students’ access to defibrillators, and other legislation related to its heart-healthy mission. Adam Buckalew, a Capitol Hill veteran whose resume includes a stint as deputy health policy director for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, will work on the account.

Washington State

The ​City of Olympia hired DeSimone Consulting to lobby on a range of legislative issues related to infrastructure, housing, homelessness, public safety and behavioral health. Rick DeSimone, former chief of staff to current Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray (D-Wash.), will work on the account.

Two of Murray’s former Southwest Washington directors will work on a new public utility account for CFM Strategic Communications, formerly known as Conkling Fiskum & McCormick. ​Washington’s ​Cowlitz County Public Utility District hired the firm to lobby on issues related to electric grid funding and other utility projects.

This story was updated at 8:30 p.m.