HELENA -- Desolate Carter County is where the blacktop ends. Literally.

About 20 miles south of Ekalaka, the county seat, Highway 323 -- the north-south route that connects Ekalaka to the county's other town, Alzada -- becomes a gravel road. On a wet day, it's gumbo, usually impassable.

After trying for almost half a century to get federal money to pave the road, Carter County two years ago joined a growing number of state and local government entities in Montana and hired a Washington, D.C., lobbyist. Since then, the county has spent $92,250 in public and private money on lobbying in Washington for the road project.

The investment seems to be paying off. Congress gave more than $8 million for the project in 2003 and allocated another $9.6 million this year, a total of more than $13,000 for every one of the county's 1,324 residents.

Not bad for a sparsely populated county in Montana's extreme southeast corner, where the U.S. Census Bureau counts 0.4 persons per square mile.

Crews are preparing to pave another section of the highway this month.

''I would think within four years, we would see it paved all the way through here,'' said Carter County Commissioner Bill Loehding.

Montana officials like Loehding who have hired D.C. lobbyists say the practice works, reaping far more in federal dollars than local governments spend on lobbying.

Others, like Alex Knott, political editor at the Center for Public Integrity, a D.C.-based nonprofit group, take a different view, characterizing the industry as a network of money, influence and power. Often, Knott said, lobbyists donate money to the lawmakers they're lobbying; their corporate clients do the same, and in many cases, the lobbyists are former lawmakers or staffers of former lawmakers making profitable use of their experience in public service. The ongoing scandal surrounding indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff underscores the need to track the industry more closely, he said.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer has taken a stand: He won't employ registered lobbyists in state government and has referred to the industry as part of the ''manure piled around government.'' Schweitzer has also questioned the millions that Montana government entities have spent on lobbying, often to hire lobbyists that only compete against other Montana projects. Schweitzer would like to see one lobbyist to represent the state, something 47 other states already have. But he also wonders why Montana's three-man congressional delegation can't go to bat for Montana projects.

''These (lobbyist) guys aren't elected officials, but they're acting as gatekeepers to elected officials,'' he said.

Lobbying is a huge and growing business, Knott said. Spending on lobbying last year topped $2.1 billion nationwide, an increase of 30 percent since 1998. And it's not all big corporations and well-connected non-profits spreading around the cash. Spending by public universities doubled between 1998 and 2003 to $29.5 million, a Center for Public Integrity analysis shows. Local government spending increased 110 percent to $73 million.

In Montana, government entities have spent $3.9 million on D.C. lobbying since 1998, a Lee Newspapers analysis shows. The state's public colleges and universities are the biggest lobbying spenders in the state, funneling more than $635,000 last year into D.C. lobbying. None of that money came directly from state tax or tuition dollars. But two federal drinking water projects have spent $840,000 of state tax money on D.C. lobbying since 2000. Part of that money went to hire the lobbyist whom Carter County hired: Kevin Ring, a former associate of Jack Abramoff, who cited his right not to incriminate himself when he declined to answer any questions at a U.S. Senate hearing this summer looking into lobbying fraud.

For Carter County, the decision to hire a lobbyist grew out of necessity, said James Courtney, another commissioner. While the state's congressional delegation and highway department have always supported the idea of paving Highway 323, that support never translated into dollars.

The county needed someone to bird-dog Congress, and commissioners figured they couldn't do it themselves.

''We're all ranchers down here,'' Courtney said. ''We don't have the time to go to Washington on a set date. It's pretty costly.''

More than 13,000 lobbyists work in Washington, Knott said, outnumbering lawmakers 24 to 1. Among them are dozens of former lawmakers, including Montana's former Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Marlenee, and former staffers of current lawmakers who parlay their years of government service for bigger payouts as lobbyists. David Castagnetti, Democratic U.S. Sen. Max Baucus' former chief of staff, has worked for firms that reported more than $31 million in lobbying earnings since 1998, when a federal law required lobbyists to disclose who they work for and how much they get paid.

Ring also is a former Capitol Hill staffer, once serving as the legislative director for Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif. Ring's association with Doolittle helped him win a much more lucrative Montana government account than humble Carter County's. Since 2000, Ring and his firm have received $570,000 in state money to lobby for the Dry Prairie Rural Water Authority, a $241 million federal drinking water project that will bring fresh water to 30,000 mostly rural residents across north-central Montana.

Doolittle chaired the House Subcommittee on Water and Power, which along with a similar Senate committee had the sole power to authorize any new water projects in the country. Without congressional authorization, the water project couldn't go anywhere.

At the time, said John Tubbs, chief of Montana's Department of Natural Resources and Conservation's Resource Development Bureau, Doolittle was holding up all water project authorizations.

''(Ring's) first project was Dry Prairie,'' said Tubbs, who also oversees the money for the state's regional water program.

Clint Jacobs, manager of the Dry Prairie authority, said Ring's history with Doolittle was his main selling point.

''Kevin Ring was the only former staffer for Rep. Doolittle who was a lobbyist, so that was the reason we selected him,'' Jacobs said.

Three months after the group hired Ring, Doolittle's committee began working on authorizing the project, a stamp of government approval the water authority itself had unsuccessfully sought for four years.

The money flows both ways. Lobbyists also give tens of millions of dollars nationwide each year to the campaign coffers of the lawmakers they lobby, Knott said. In Montana, lobbyists hired by government entities have plowed more than $120,000 into the campaign funds of Montana's three-man congressional delegation, with most going to Republicans. The D.C. lobbyist for the city of Billings, Van Scoyoc and Associates, which also represents Montana State University, is ranked by the Center for Responsive Politics as the 13th-biggest donor to Republican Sen. Conrad Burns between 1999 and 2004.

Ring, Carter County's lobbyist, is also a campaign donor. Records show that Ring donated $2,000 to Rehberg in 2002 and 2003 and another $1,000 to fellow Republican Burns. He gave no money to Montana's Democratic Sen. Max Baucus.

It was Rehberg who advised the Carter County Commission to hire Ring.

''Rehberg suggested this man because he knew him,'' Courtney said.

Erik Iverson, Rehberg's chief of staff, said Ring's donations had nothing to do with the congressman's endorsement. Rehberg early on made paving the road a priority, he said. The commissioners asked Rehberg point-blank if a lobbyist would help them get money to pave the highway.

''They asked 'Should we hire a lobbyist, give us a suggestion?''' Iverson said. ''He recommended Kevin because they asked him. I can't think of anybody better. Now, little Carter County ended up with one of the top lobbyists in D.C.''

The fact is, Iverson said, Rehberg ''is one of 435'' congressmen. He can't do everything he wants.

''Sometimes it doesn't hurt to have another set of eyes,'' Iverson said. ''Sometimes a lobbyist will have a different set of contacts.''

Democrat Schweitzer questioned why lobbyists and their corporate clients would donate money to lawmakers if not to buy a little influence, creating a situation where citizens who want help from Washington may be better off going to a lobbyist who gives money to their congressman instead of to the congressman himself.

Barrett Kaiser, a Baucus spokesman, said Montanans don't really need lobbyists at all.

''We're a small state and we have a very receptive delegation,'' Kaiser said. ''Max will meet with any Montanan who wants to meet with him.''

It's unclear exactly what role Ring played in the Carter County road project, especially in the latest go-round of highway spending when Montana's delegation was in a particularly good spot to secure federal highway dollars.

Rehberg set aside about $12 million for the project in the version of the bill that left the House, Iverson said, but he would have done that with or without a lobbyist's involvement.

Democrat Baucus was one of four lawmakers who wrote the final bill, where Carter County's $12 million got whittled down to $9.6 million. Kaiser said Ring never spoke to Baucus.

Ring did not return phone calls for this story.

The Montanans who have hired Ring all praised his work, saying the lobbyist was influential in helping them secure the first major federal funding they ever received. But Ring's lobbying has come under scrutiny in the past. As a onetime associate of Abramoff, Ring is in the middle of that expanding lobbying scandal. Ring and former Burns staffer Shawn Vassell, another Abramoff associate, invoked their right not to incriminate themselves when questioned this summer about what they did and what they got paid when working for Abramoff.

At a hearing in June of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Ring refused to tell Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., what, if anything, he did to earn $125,000 paid by the Sandia Pueblo tribe in New Mexico. The tribe gave the money to Abramoff's lobbying partner, Michael Scanlon. Scanlon, in turn, gave the money to a consulting firm registered to Ring's Maryland home address.

''In fact, you didn't provide any services (to the tribe) according to the information that we have,'' McCain said at the hearing. Ring did not respond.

Ring also refused to tell McCain why his club dues at Washington's upscale University Club were charged to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, one of Abramoff's clients.

McCain read an e-mail that Ring sent to Abramoff in which he asked if there was any way to ''bury'' his club dues in the tribe's lobbying bill.

For Loehding and the rest of the Carter County Commission, Ring's lobbying is simple to evaluate: He got $92,250 and they got millions of dollars in brand-new blacktop.

During the 2005 Legislature, Schweitzer unsuccessfully proposed a plan to spend $250,000 to hire one D.C. lobbyist for the entire state -- an idea he still supports. That way, Schweitzer said in a recent interview, the lobbyists earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in state money could be reduced to one and the state would save money.

Mark Baker, a Helena lawyer who lobbies both Congress and the Montana Legislature, said the plan isn't a bad idea. Baker is the only lobbyist hired by the state of Montana since 1998. He was paid less than $10,000, records show.

''I think it could work. It may be a very good approach,'' he said, but cautioned that the state should be careful when picking a firm to represent it. Montana has so many far-flung needs, from federal highway funding to university-level research, that a single lobbyist probably wouldn't have expertise in all areas. Montana would be best served, Baker said, by hiring a large firm with lobbyists who specialize in different areas.

Tom McCoy, vice president of research, creativity and technology transfer at Montana State University in Bozeman, said he didn't think the plan would work. MSU's lobbyist has special expertise: getting research money.

''It's a very different type of activity than what you would have if you had somebody worried about an agriculture issue,'' McCoy said.

For all its problems, said Knott of the Center for Public Integrity, lobbying may be an entrenched way of doing business, especially for a small state like Montana with just three members of Congress.

A growing number of businesses have hired former lawmakers to lobby for them. Right now, Knott said, 82 private companies nationwide have at least four former lawmakers in their employ. For a small state like Montana to cut back on lobbying representation could put the state at a disadvantage.

''The economic reality is Montana without lobbyists would have an even lower profile amongst federal legislators, which is unfortunate,'' Knott said.