By Jonah Hahn
Sunlight Foundation
Back in 2011, Sunlight, through the work of Daniel Schuman, Melanie Buck and Eric Dunn, examined the various aspects of lobbying disclosure at the state level throughout the United States. After reading legislation about who has to report, when a lobbyist must register, what needs to be included in the necessary forms and how much lobbyists must pay to register, they concluded that states could easily offer more data to their citizens.
An update of that database with an emphasis on lobbyist disclosure requirements, facilitated with informational support from State Integrity and the National Institute on Money in State Politics, reveals that many states fail to address the legislative flaws that create unfortunate loopholes, do not provide citizens with easily accessible information and navigable websites, and lack stringent transparency policies. Check out our full scorecard, with rankings of how each state performed, here. Our methodology and scoring criteria can be found below.
This investigation was a review of legislative requirements for and practical implementation of lobbyist disclosure, not an assessment of the quality of the data’s openness. An analysis of how well states provide lobbyist disclosure information to the public according to our “Open Data Policy Guidelines”will be forthcoming.
Read full coverage here.