FollowTheMoney.org will create a 50-state database of all lobbyists and clients and mash it with political donor data to reveal power players in each state and let citizens and journalist see how campaign cash affects public policy. The National Institute on Money in State Politics (FollowTheMoney.org) requests $125,000 to create the nation's first 50-state online database that identifies all state-registered lobbyists and their clients and is coded to business category to empower independent investigation. Other foundation grants will contribute $1 million to build and code the 50-state political contributions database the Institute builds each election. We will do a mash-up of the two resources for public access and let citizens and journalists and other researchers investigate the political funds elected officials accept from lobbyists and their clients.
Lobbyist Link will be of value for everyone concerned with special-interest influence in government, combining data from 50 states into a one-stop shop.
* Journalists can use the mash-up with political donors to get unbiased empirical evidence for investigation of influence in state policy. * National and state reporters can use it to help keep government transparent. * Public-interest groups can use it to identify clients lobbyists represent in testimony to committee hearings. * Groups tracking government contracts can use it to check on influence in contract awards. * Citizen journalists can use it to report on elected officials’ relationships with lobbyists to increase accountability. * Voters can check candidate-lobbyist-client relationships to learn if they conflict or agree with their views on issues.
Lobbyist Link is a natural extension of our work to make transparent special-interest influence in state elections and to inform debates on policy issues. We create and display at FollowTheMoney.org the nation’s only complete database of contribution records reported by all state-level candidates, ballot measure committees and political party committees each election. Complete for all states back to 2000, it includes 14 million records of $9 billion in contributions. The site attracts 6 million visits annually and has earned the trust of journalists in the states and academic researchers at the nation’s top universities for offering unbiased empirical evidence and reporting. RAND Corp. of Santa Monica endorsed the completeness and accuracy of the data in 2003. Lobbyist registration is often handled by the same state ethics, disclosure or elections agencies from which we collect campaign-finance reports. Using these existing relationships, we can efficiently collect information for 40,000 lobbyists and 50,000 clients each year – a massive task. Researchers will collect lists of lobbyists and clients from all 50 states and the data team will enter the information and check its accuracy. Researchers will then code clients consistent with contributor codes to facilitate subsequent data mash-ups with our political donor database. Researchers’ skills and experience in analyzing the political contribution data will ensure quality research and reporting for the lobbyist-client data produced under the project. Institute programmers pioneered development of political donor API windows and widgets and will provide their knowledge and expertise to the project. Our relationships with journalists at the nation’s largest newspapers and broadcast outlets will ensure the new tools are put to immediate use. Our major foundation general support and project grants total $1 million annually and will support development of the contributions database needed for the data mash-up. Altogether, the Institute offers a unique package for a Knight investment.
The stars already appear to be favoring the Institute’s launch of Lobbyist Link. In October, the Institute hooked up with a Project Vote Smart API for legislative committee data. On Nov. 14, the Institute successfully finished a prototype API that mashes the Institute’s campaign-finance data with legislative committee rosters to form a tool that lets users see who sits on legislative committees in all 50 states, how much they raised total and, most importantly, how much they received in campaign cash from those who support or oppose bills in their committees. Access the prototype tool at: http://newweb.followthemoney.org/pvs/c-test.phtml. Lobbyist Link will add a valuable layer of information to this API mash-up so that a user, after selecting a committee and seeing how much specific interests or companies gave to lawmakers, can answer the question “How much did lobbyists give to these committee members?” and get a dollar figure and names. With this powerful tool, citizen reporters and the press will be able to quickly and accurately track lobbyist’s access to the public-policy process via campaign contributions. Lobbyist Link also will show how many lobbyists are at work in statehouses across the country for specific clients, such as Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds that continue to battle tobacco taxes, or pharmaceutical companies that are aggressively pursuing health-care legislation in the states. A continued alignment of the stars will result in groups in each state compiling lists of legislation of interest to them and mashing that data with Institute APIs, and linking legislation with earmarks or contracts. The stars will have aligned perfectly when Full-Circle Transparency has been achieved, when a citizen can see if a lawmaker has a personal stake in a company or industry, whether that industry has given him or her political contributions, whether that lawmaker is pressing legislation that would benefit the industry, whether industry lobbyists testify in front of the lawmaker and whether favorable legislation is approved.
Given past successes, we expect a 50-state database of lobbyists and their clients to be a valuable asset because of its uniqueness and accessibility. When paired with the Institute’s comprehensive campaign-contribution data, we expect Lobbyist Link to become a tool that is heavily used by those watching state elections and legislatures to see correlations in the actions of those with specific policy interests and outcomes. We will use Google Analytics and internal monitoring programs to track the use of Lobbyist Link. We’ve also contracted with M+R Strategic Services to develop protocols for tracking short and long-term impacts. The Institute regularly receives communications from users that document how our work affects their projects and adds substance to their news stories. Like so many Web-based organizations, the Institute relies on technology to tell us how what we’re doing is valuable and used, and thus making a difference. We are able to track the number of times specific pieces of information are accessed. We know that last year, for example, we experienced a 50 percent increase in the number of unique hits to our Web site, to more than 6 million from 4 million, and that users focus on the detailed state-data pages, averaging 14 page views each. That level of use translates into more newspaper articles that use the Institute’s data – more than 150 citations in 2007 alone so far – and in the use of the data by students and professors of politics and elections. More than 13 percent of the Institute’s traffic is from institutions of higher learning, led by MIT with 241,775 hits. Since the Institute launched its API methods, nearly 130 users have signed up for access. The pilot API user, Project Vote Smart, which combines the Institute’s campaign-finance information with its candidate voting records and other biographical information, has logged nearly 1.3 million “calls” for Institute information.
Right now, information about lobbyists who are active at the state level and their clients is fragmented; reported 50 different ways to 50 different state agencies, and accessible only through a very time-consuming collection process. The Institute will combine the data into one place in a searchable format, thus meeting the ever-growing demand for information about people seeking to influence decision-makers. (The Center for Public Integrity years ago compiled lobbyist data, but has since stopped and is focusing on investigative reporting.) Further, by combining the lobbyist and client information with comprehensive campaign-finance data, the Institute will help citizen journalists, professionals and the public at large make the connections between financial support during elections and influencing policy debates during legislatures. Enhanced transparency is our ultimate goal. Lobbyist Link is a huge step in the right direction.
Timing is everything, especially in this case. The Institute plans to promote Lobbyist Link and other new information-analysis tools during Sunshine Week, March 16-22, 2008, with the assistance of Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, and others involved with coordinating the national effort. Unlike previous attempts to compile lobbyist and client information, the Institute takes a comprehensive approach that is informed by its experience compiling detailed campaign-finance data from 50 state disclosure agencies. (Center for Public Integrity compiled lobbyist data for a couple of years but stopped.) The goal of this approach is the creation of a verifiable and on-going tool that can be used by citizens and journalists investigating correlations between campaign finances and lobbying in the states. The Institute has spent nearly a decade building its valuable database of state-level political donors. We successfully launched our data onto the Web via APIs last year and have pioneered visual analysis tools that let users see campaign-finance trends, not just numbers. The successful mash-up of Project Vote Smart’s legislative committee data with our campaign-finance data provides an intersection from which to launch Lobbyist Link. Interest in the online legislative committee-analysis tool is already high. The addition of lobbyist and client information is a natural enhancement that is sure to attract a lot of attention
For more than a decade, the Institute focused on the news media as priority users of its data, analyses and reports, and as the primary way of disseminating our information. Over the years, we’ve developed first-name relationships with reporters at some of the largest newspapers in the country, and also some awfully good small ones. In the past two years, we expanded our priorities to include those in the academic community that could use our comprehensive data to perform complex electoral and legislative analyses. Here, too, the payoff has been some quality relationships with professors and researchers looking at issues as diverse as competitive districts, small-donor impacts and incumbency advantage to health-care legislation and labor union donating trends. Lobbyist Link will be informative to these tried-and-true users, and we will continue to foster these relationships and priorities as they ensure our data reaches high-value audiences. Specific to this project, the Institute will work with coordinators of Sunshine Week (March 16-22, 2008) to ensure that those most interested in accessing public information know about this unique, valuable tool. We’ve talked already with Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, about coordinating the national effort. During 2008, we also will reach out to groups working around fiscal issues in the states and public disclosure agencies, with the goals of providing quality analysis and tools to groups asking tough questions about the fiscal impacts of policies, and of providing our expertise and tools to state agencies struggling to understand how the Internet can make their jobs easier. With Ford Foundation funding, we’ve contracted with M+R Strategic Services to help the Institute hone its message and products to maximize our exposure during the 2008 elections, a time when the public is most sensitive to public debate and issues.
The Institute receives general support funding from some of the largest foundations in the country to support the massive data-acquisition work the Institute undertakes every year: Pew Charitable Trusts has been with the Institute for several years and recently asked that we submit a three-year proposal at $200,000 a year, with the potential for $50,000 the first two years to expand outreach of our API and visual analysis tools. Ford Foundation recently asked the Institute to submit a proposal for fiscal year 2009 general support at $150,000 a year, with an additional $70,000 for fiscal year 2008 to fund an updated communications and marketing plan, which we’ve contracted with M+R Strategic Services to develop. Additional funding for the Institute comes from the Open Society Institute, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Recently, we’ve been asked to submit proposals to The California Endowment for health-care research and the Education Foundation of America for high school civics curriculum development. We’re also diversifying our funding sources by developing contracts for research, data and services with groups like AARP, the California Center for Public Health Advocacy and MAPLight.org. With new tools like Lobbyist Link and the on-line state legislative committee analysis, we hope to attract additional funding that will help us further expand transparency in state governmental and public policy processes, especially fiscal policy and impacts.
The Institute actively pursues collaborations wherever they add value to the data, online tools and analyses it offers. We work one-on-one with disclosure officials in each state to ensure that we’re getting complete information as it is filed with the states. Development of Lobbyist Link, though, is a project of the Institute exclusively. When completed, we will work with groups like Good Jobs First, state policy groups, Council On Governmental Ethics Laws and others to ensure that it is used and promoted broadly.
The Center for Public Integrity compiled information on state-level lobbyists and their clients through 2005, but has since refocused its efforts on investigative reporting. CPI has used the Institute’s data in its award-winning investigations, and we hope to collaborate with CPI in the future if/when it pursues state-level investigative pieces. No other nonprofit group is attempting to compile an on-going, comprehensive, verifiable and accessible database of lobbyists and their clients. More importantly, no other group can link lobbyists and their clients with the Institute’s comprehensive database of campaign contributors.
With campaign-finance data for all state-level candidates, party committees and ballot measures from all 50 states in one place, we can guarantee that with the development of Lobbyist Link, the public will have access as never before to important information about lobbyists, their clients and others attempting to affect elections and legislation. Based on that, and the user base developed by the Institute over the past decade, we’re positive that the weight of this new information and tools for sifting and sorting through the relationships will dramatically increase the expectations of the public about what public information should be freely and easily accessible, and therefore pressure state agencies and lawmakers to continue moving toward total freedom of easily available public information. We strongly believe that as word of Lobbyist Link circulates, the public will become more involved in policing the actions of its lawmakers and encourage a new level of citizen journalism, one that itself strengthens the roots of our democratic system of government.
