Lobbyists are turning away from approps.

Earmarks survived the changeover in Congress and Democratic pledges of reform, but several lobbying firms are starting to turn away from appropriations work in favor of new sources of revenue.

Lobbyists say a variety of factors have them rethinking business models built on what critics call pork-barrel spending.

{mosads}Scandals involving former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) brought new and unwelcome scrutiny to directed spending projects.

That, in turn, has driven down the amount of money available.

“The days of getting $5 million for a start-up company are rapidly declining,” said one former Republican appropriations staffer who is now a lobbyist.

As Congress debated earmark reform, “most people in town pivoted away from that work,” the lobbyist said.

Cassidy & Associates, for example, proudly claims responsibility for adding the first earmark to a spending bill. In the years since, the firm has built its practice around convincing Congress to add targeted spending programs to appropriations bills.

More recently, however, the firm has shifted more of its business to policy issues that may offer more consistent revenues. Nearly 70 percent of the new work the firm attracts is tied to non-appropriations business.

“A business decision was made to expand that policy work and spread the balance on the spreadsheet. It makes sense to offer more than one product to the public,” said Greg Gill, executive vice president for Cassidy.

The age of the earmark is hardly over. Democrats did not promise to end the practice, and lawmakers still brag about the bacon they bring home to their districts.

The new omnibus bill includes more than 700 pages of earmark disclosure letters, released as part of a broader Democratic effort to shed more light on the appropriations process.

Those letters likely translate to thousands of earmarks elsewhere in the bill, according to Steve Ellis, vice president for programs at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a chief critic of congressional add-ons.

Democrats deserve credit for improving transparency, Ellis said, even though they have done less well in significantly limiting the number of earmarks. But Ellis added that the targeted spending market may be “saturated” and lobbying firms are smart to begin looking for “the next big thing.”

“The earmark market has popped,” Ellis said.

Judging from lobbying registrations and press releases issued from K Street, lobbying on issues like climate change and renewable energy and helping clients through oversight and investigations hearings on Capitol Hill are increasingly important revenue generators for lobbying shops.

When the high-tech bubble burst, it left in its wake an overabundance of computer scientists and engineers. Now there may be more appropriations lobbyists than there are earmarks to go around.

Mike Fulton, an appropriations lobbyist at GolinHarris, said the past year has been among the most competitive for federal dollars that he can remember.

Rather than a rejection of earmarking as a practice, he said, that trend is better explained by the Democrats’ decision last year to pass an earmark-free continuing resolution. That created a backlog of projects waiting at the front of the line when the budget battle over fiscal year 2008 funding began earlier this year.

“As long as members of Congress are elected by people, there are going to be special projects that they want to come back to their district,” says Fulton. “It’s not going to go away.”

“Earmarks have shrunk in size,” said Cassidy’s Gill. “But Congress in no way is going to abandon earmarking.”

Fulton said that despite the scrutiny, his clients fared well in the omnibus. That underscores an important shift. Fulton represents universities and hospitals and nonprofits that stand up better in press accounts than other types of earmarks and have had local champions.

Lobbyists predict that local projects will continue to do well in Congress. But national programs, which do not have local champions, are feeling the pinch this year, lobbyists said.