Richard B. Berman, head of the Center for Consumer Freedom and other nonprofit groups, is under criticism from legal experts who say he is blurring the line between lobbying and advocacy, writes The New York Times.

Mr. Berman’s groups—which have fought efforts to curb snack and soda consumption in schools, to require ignition locks on convicted drunken drivers’ cars, and to improve living conditions for livestock—appear to get money from companies in industries on whose behalf Mr. Berman once lobbied. The nonprofit groups pay much of their revenue to his for-profit firm, Berman and Company, for services such as bookkeeping and writing op-ed articles, according to The Times.

The Humane Society and Mothers Against Drunken Driving, two targets of Mr. Berman’s advocacy campaigns, complained last month to the New York Commission on Public Integrity, charging that Berman and Company is acting as a lobbyist in the state without having registered as such.

Mr. Berman said his nonprofit operations are “squeaky clean,” and a spokeswoman for Berman and Company called the complaint “the desperate acts of groups who can’t respond to the substance of our criticisms.”

Read The Chronicle’s article about Mr. Berman in March and another one from 2004.

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