SAN JOSE — In a wave of open-government reforms following scandals over costly backroom deals, San Jose’s elected leaders nearly a decade ago began posting their calendars online to show the public who they’re meeting with and why.

But a review by this newspaper found those calendars are leaving out many discussions with lobbyists paid to sway City Council votes and influence city policy.

Since the beginning of the year, every member of the City Council — including the mayor — had “contacts” with lobbyists that they did not disclose on their official calendars, which are supposed to be updated weekly. Those interactions were disclosed only in forms that the city requires lobbyists to file quarterly, which means the public often did not learn of them until long after the lobbying took place.

Council members defended themselves by saying the undisclosed contacts with lobbyists were human error, that they didn’t realize they were chatting with a lobbyist, or that the contacts were unexpected run-ins or email communications that the policy doesn’t require them to report.

But government watchdogs say the discrepancy undermines the goals of transparency and deceives the public. For instance, the intense lobbying surrounding the rules for Uber and Lyft at Mineta San Jose International Airport was almost entirely absent from council calendars.

“It presents the public with a very misleading view about how their officials spend their day,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School and president of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission. “We’re not asking them to tell us when they were at their kid’s soccer game. It’s in the public’s interest to be able to know who the legislators are meeting with and how often.”

San Jose’s lobbying law, adopted in 2007, requires lobbyists to publicly disclose in the quarterly reports any “contact” with a city official — a meeting, phone call, email or letter — intended to sway a policy decision. The lobbyists don’t have to specify the type of contact, though some firms, such as Saggau & DeRollo, voluntarily disclose whether it was a phone call or meeting.

That same year, the City Council adopted a policy calling for its members to publish their official calendars online and update them weekly.

A review of the activity of seven major San Jose lobbyists or firms — Leslee Guardino of Canyon Snow Consulting, The Schoennauer Co., Jerry Strangis, Ed McGovern, Saggau & DeRollo, Pete Carrillo and Forest Consulting Group — shows 105 meetings or other contacts with elected officials since January that those council members did not disclose in their published calendars.

This isn’t the first time the accuracy of council members’ calendars has come into question. But the council has done little over the years to ensure consistency between what council members and lobbyists report. And because the lobbyists’ reports are filed only four times a year, government watchdogs say it may be too late to help the public understand who’s influencing policy decisions.

“That means that there’s always a gap of perhaps three months in which intensive meetings can be going on with lobbyists about issues that are before the City Council that are actually decided on before the lobbying reports are released,” said Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition.

That in fact happened when the City Council voted 7-3 on June 23 to allow ride-booking companies such as Uber and Lyft to pick up passengers at San Jose’s airport. The issue was heavily influenced on both sides — some lobbyists pushing to protect the taxicab industry, while others urged the council to embrace the new app-based ride-booking companies.

Lobbyists contacted council members numerous times from April 1 to June 30, but those encounters were not disclosed until their reports went online on July 15 — nearly three weeks after the council approved ride-booking at the airport, though with conditions the online companies oppose.

Representing the taxicabs, McGovern reported two contacts with Councilman Raul Peralez; Strangis reported one contact with Councilman Don Rocha; and Forest Consulting reported one contact with Vice Mayor Rose Herrera and one with Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio. Representing Lyft, Guardino’s firm reported contacting Rocha and Councilman Ash Kalra. None of those council members reported those contacts on their calendars.

In response to the missing calendar entries, some elected officials, including Herrera, Peralez and Kalra, say there needs to be more frequent reporting from lobbyists — perhaps a weekly online calendar, instead of quarterly reports. Rocha said council members could verbally disclose lobbyist discussions before voting at meetings. They did that in the past, Rocha said, but it hasn’t happened in a year.

Oliverio said he avoids in-person meetings in favor of email exchanges, which do not have to appear in his calendar. So while Erik Schoennauer contacted Oliverio 21 times this year to discuss development projects, Oliverio’s calendar showed blank spaces on those days.

“I try to avoid all meetings like that and ask them to share over email,” Oliverio said.

Oliverio said he shuns meetings because he’s already decided certain issues and doesn’t need persuasion.

Mayor Sam Liccardo said it’s not practical for elected officials to report unexpected meetings or run-ins with lobbyists. He said most of his undisclosed contacts were either emails or unplanned encounters.

“I do not rush back and report that on my calendar,” Liccardo said.

Only one council member, Johnny Khamis, reported retroactively updating his calendar regularly to add unplanned events.

“I’ve got nothing to be hiding,” he said. “We don’t want to take votes with the public thinking we had undue influence.”

The council’s calendar-posting policy calls for officials to disclose “all city-related appointments, including regular and special City Council meetings, public events or speaking engagements, meetings with developers, meetings with consultants, meetings with lobbyists, regional meetings, and meetings of subcommittees or task forces.”

But those officials are only “encouraged to record unscheduled meetings of a material nature with interested parties in any matter coming before the City Council or a council committee for a vote in which the matter under consideration is discussed.” The policy does not mention phone or email discussions.

And unlike the lobbyists, who face fines of $79 per day for filing late reports, there is no punishment for council members who fail to post thorough and up-to-date calendars.

Sean Kali-rai, co-owner of Forest Consulting, said San Jose’s lobbying laws can be strengthened by requiring politicians to report the same information that lobbyists do.

“It’s not a game of ‘gotcha,'” Kali-rai said, “but an effort to give the public a full disclosure of public affairs.”

While Liccardo wouldn’t go that far, he said he’s open to considering changes when the council reviews its ethics and transparency policies later this year, saying transparency is “never a finished job.”

Former Councilman Pete Constant, who was the first to publish his calendar online and maintained detailed, updated entries, said the only way to motivate council members to do the same is to punish them for not doing it.

“There needs to be some punitive pressure to get someone to do it,” Constant said.

Follow Ramona Giwargis at Twitter.com/ramonagiwargis or contact her at 408-920-5705.

Undisclosed Lobbyist Campaign Contributions:

San Jose requires lobbyists to report money they donate to City Council members, but this newspaper found at least three lobbyists or firms that didn’t disclose recent campaign contributions to politicians in their quarterly reports.

Leslee Guardino gave $1,100 to Liccardo in July 2014 and $1,100 in December 2013, but neither were reported on Canyon Snow’s corresponding forms. Guardino, whose husband is Carl Guardino of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and has a close relationship with Liccardo, filed an amendment four months later to report the December contribution. Guardino said she didn’t need to report the July contribution because she had no lobbying activity that period, but City Attorney Rick Doyle said it should have been disclosed.

Ed McGovern failed to report $500 given to Tim Orozco; $500 to Dave Cortese’s campaign for mayor. He did not donate to the campaigns of Raul Peralez or George Kleidon, as originally reported. McGovern filed amendments Monday to disclose the Orozco and Cortese donations.