* Lobbying should be more transparent- union pension group

* Wants more accountability at boards

NEW YORK, Jan 24 (Reuters) - An activist union pension group called on Monday for banks and other U.S. companies to disclose more about their lobbying activities, saying resources in some cases could be better spent on fostering growth.

Wall Street spent heavily lobbying Congress last year as lawmakers were considering reforms to prevent a repeat of the global financial crisis.

“Pension funds lost billions of dollars in the financial meltdown that was caused by risky behavior of financial institutions,” said Lisa Lindsley, director of capital strategies at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

“We think there should be transparency to shareholders,” she said. “If corporate assets are going to be used for some type of lobbying, then there should be some type of disclosure about that.”

AFSCME’s pension, with $850 million in assets, has long pushed proposals to give shareholders a greater voice in how companies are run. It said it is trying to get the lobbying disclosure measure on corporate ballots that shareholders will vote on at company meetings this spring.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform act gave shareholders the opportunity to make an advisory vote on CEO pay at all companies starting this year . However, activist investors are lobbying for further reforms to make corporate boards and executives accountable.

In addition to the new push for lobbying disclosure, AFSCME repeated its call for reforms it has been pushing for years, like having annual votes for corporate boards and separating the roles of CEO and chairman of the board.

In particular, it recommended separating the chairman and CEO roles at Dell DELL.O, Abercrombie & Fitch ANF.N and Anadarko Petroleum APC.N.

The role of a board is to monitor management, and when a CEO leads a board as its chair, he is effectively his own boss AFSCME said.

Companies where AFSCME urged more disclosure of lobbying activities were Bank of America BAC.N, Citigroup C.N, ConocoPhillips COP.N, International Business Machines IBM.N, Lockheed Martin LMT.N, Occidental Petroleum OXY.N, Prudential Financial PRU.N and Raytheon RTN.N.

While companies have to disclose direct lobbying at the federal level, they do not have to disclose contributions to trade associations that lobby, or lobbying about state legislation, Lindsley said.

Contributions to trade associations were quite large at companies that did disclose them, Lindsley said.

“We don’t think these activities they are supporting are in the interests of pension fund participants,” she said. “We’d really rather see shareholder resources be used to grow the company.” (Reporting by Dena Aubin; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)