If you are working on a campaign to bring about policy changes, or advocating for a specific piece of legislation, it is essential that you know who else is lobbying on the issue, how much they are spending, and which individuals and firms are doing the work. But even if you are working on other types of campaigns—such as organizing campaigns that focus on a single industry or sector—these records can be helpful. Understanding how a company or industry trade association spends its lobbying dollars can give you insight into how these businesses work. For example, businesses in a certain sector might rely on a certain tax credit, or worry about the effects of a certain regulation, or benefit from a specific federal or state appropriation. Here’s how to figure it out.
Federal Lobbying Expenditures
It’s actually relatively easy to track federal lobbying expenditures. The U.S. Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act Database is an easy-to-use search tool that covers all branches of government (including, despite its name, both chambers of Congress). The search page looks like this:
The search page of the U.S. Senate lobbying disclosure database. Click to enlarge.
The four sections you will probably use most are:
Clients: Search based on the company or association that hired the lobbyist.
Lobbyists: Search based on the name of the individual person who does the lobbying.
Registrants: Search based on the name of the firm who is registered as a lobbyist. This could be a corporation or association (if they have in-house lobbyists) or a lobbying firm hired on behalf of another entity.
Filings: Include other variables, such as the year of the report or the filing period (reports are filed quarterly).
Select the fields you want to search on, then press the Submit button. If, for example, you want to search by client and filing year, you would get a screen that looks like this:
Example of the second-level search screen in the Senate lobbying database. Click to enlarge.
Tip: If you choose two categories for search terms (in this example, Client and Filing Year), you must enter search values for both items on this screen. If you decide you don’t need one (for example, you want to search on all filing years), go back to the previous screen, uncheck the box next to the search category you want to drop, and then hit Submit again.
After you hit submit, you will get a list of filings that look like this:
Example of search results from Senate lobbying disclosure database. Click to enlarge.
In this example, you’ll see that it pulls up not only the direct lobbying expenditures by the trade association, but the expenditures for two other lobbying firms that it hired. To see the complete report, that includes much more information about individual lobbyists and issues than is contained in this summary screen, just click on any one of the lines in the table. You can download a sample of what one these reports looks like by clicking here.
State Lobbying Expenditures
State lobbying disclosure laws—and the web site used to search the information—are a mixed bag, ranging from the very good to the almost impossible to use. States vary by how good the search capabilities are (some only have lists of lobbyists and clients that you have to scroll through one-by-one), and by the amount of information that is provided.
The National Conference of State Legislatures publishes a state-by-state chart with details on lobbying disclosure regulations. In addition, the Center for Public Integrity does a regular report on a number of state policies related to honest, transparent government (including lobbying disclosure) that has helpful analysis on the strength of each state’s rules.
You can find the lobbyist disclosure site for a state here, or just by searching on the name of the state and the words “lobbyist disclosure.” If you do the latter, you might have to click around for a while to find the search page. The llinks in the list below goes directly go to the search page.
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
District of Columbia
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming