US Lobbying: Federal, State and City

What’s in the listing

Under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, lobbying firms and organizations that lobby for themselves register with Congress and file a report every quarter (twice a year before 2008). Each report names the client, the issues and bills lobbied, the parts of Congress and the federal agencies contacted, the lobbyists who did the work, and the income or expenses for the period. Lobbyists and the organizations they work for also file a report twice a year (form LD-203) listing their political contributions. This listing carries both, from LDA.gov, the U.S. Senate’s lobbying disclosure site.

It adds state lobbying filings from New York and Colorado and the lobbyist registries of four local governments: Austin, Los Angeles, Cook County and Dallas. Civly maps the four local registries into one table with the same columns. Other states and cities are not included yet.

Common uses: who lobbies for a company or on an issue, which outside firms a client hires and what they report being paid, which agencies an issue is taken to, the candidates and committees lobbyists give to, and the same clients’ lobbying in state capitols and city halls.

How much is in each table

Row counts as of October 6, 2026.

Data dictionary

Four tables, 92 columns in total: FEDERAL_FILINGS, FEDERAL_CONTRIBUTIONS, STATE_FILINGS and LOCAL_FILINGS. The same tables serve the trial and the subscription. During the free trial they return 2024 only: FILING_YEAR = 2024 in the federal tables, YEAR_START = 2024 in STATE_FILINGS, and a PERIOD_START in 2024 in LOCAL_FILINGS. A subscription adds every other year.

Data dictionary: FEDERAL_FILINGS

One row per filing posted on LDA.gov: registrations, quarterly reports (semiannual before 2008), amendments and terminations. 22 columns. Values are as LDA.gov publishes them, except AMOUNT.

Data dictionary: FEDERAL_CONTRIBUTIONS

One row per semiannual contribution report (LD-203), filed by each registered lobbyist and by each registrant. 20 columns. Values are as LDA.gov publishes them.

Data dictionary: STATE_FILINGS

New York and Colorado lobbying filings, one row per registrant, client and period as each state publishes them. 24 columns. FILING_KIND separates registrations from expenditure filings.

Data dictionary: LOCAL_FILINGS

Civly’s table: the Austin, Los Angeles, Cook County and Dallas registries mapped into one set of columns, one row per source record. A column a city or county does not publish is empty. Names are as filed. 26 columns.

Joining the tables

REGISTRANT_ID joins FEDERAL_FILINGS and FEDERAL_CONTRIBUTIONS, so a firm’s clients sit beside its lobbyists’ contributions. The state and local tables share no id with the federal tables or with each other. Match them by name: CLIENT_NAME in every table (CLIENT_NAME_NORM in STATE_FILINGS), and REGISTRANT_NAME, LOBBYIST_NAME or LOBBYING_FIRM for the lobbyist side. Names are as filed, so one organization can be spelled several ways.

Sample queries

After installing, set your worksheet’s database selector to the installed database and these run as written.

-- Federal issue areas lobbied most often in 2024
SELECT a.value:general_issue_code::string AS issue_code,
       COUNT(DISTINCT f.filing_uuid) AS filings
FROM US_LOBBYING.FEDERAL_FILINGS f,
     LATERAL FLATTEN(input => PARSE_JSON(f.lobbying_activities)) a
WHERE f.filing_year = 2024
GROUP BY issue_code
ORDER BY filings DESC
LIMIT 25;

-- One client's 2024 federal lobbying: the latest filing with a figure per registrant and period,
-- with in-house expenses kept apart from outside firms' income (in-house filers usually name themselves as client)
WITH latest AS (
    SELECT * FROM US_LOBBYING.FEDERAL_FILINGS
    WHERE filing_year = 2024 AND client_name ILIKE 'pfizer%' AND amount IS NOT NULL
    QUALIFY ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY registrant_id, client_id, filing_period ORDER BY dt_posted DESC) = 1
)
SELECT IFF(UPPER(registrant_name) = UPPER(client_name), 'in-house expenses', 'outside firm income') AS kind,
       registrant_name, SUM(amount) AS reported_usd
FROM latest
GROUP BY kind, registrant_name
ORDER BY reported_usd DESC NULLS LAST;

-- 2024 contributions by honoree, latest report per filer and period so amendments count once
WITH latest AS (
    SELECT * FROM US_LOBBYING.FEDERAL_CONTRIBUTIONS
    WHERE filing_year = 2024
    QUALIFY ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY registrant_id, lobbyist_id, filing_period ORDER BY dt_posted DESC) = 1
)
SELECT i.value:honoree_name::string AS honoree, COUNT(*) AS contributions,
       SUM(TRY_TO_NUMBER(i.value:amount::string, 18, 2)) AS total_usd
FROM latest l,
     LATERAL FLATTEN(input => PARSE_JSON(l.contribution_items)) i
GROUP BY honoree
ORDER BY total_usd DESC NULLS LAST
LIMIT 25;

-- One client across the state and local registries
SELECT 'state' AS level, state AS filed_in, registrant_name AS lobbyist, client_name, year_start AS yr
FROM US_LOBBYING.STATE_FILINGS
WHERE client_name ILIKE '%uber%'
UNION ALL
SELECT jurisdiction_level, jurisdiction, COALESCE(lobbyist_name, lobbying_firm), client_name, YEAR(period_start)
FROM US_LOBBYING.LOCAL_FILINGS
WHERE client_name ILIKE '%uber%'
ORDER BY yr DESC;

-- Austin: what lobbyists reported being paid, one pass per quarter
SELECT period_start, client_name, lobbyist_name, lobbying_firm, compensation, compensation_range
FROM US_LOBBYING.LOCAL_FILINGS
WHERE jurisdiction = 'Austin' AND record_type = 'compensation'
  AND filing_type = 'Quarterly_Activity_Report' AND YEAR(period_start) = 2024
ORDER BY period_start, client_name;

Sourcing and attribution

Federal filings and contribution reports come from LDA.gov, retrieved every week. The listing gives the date of the latest retrieval, and each row’s UPDATED_AT is when Civly last retrieved it. LDA.gov’s content is kept as published. Two parts are Civly’s work, not the Senate’s: the AMOUNT column, where Civly takes the income figure or the expenses figure, and the LOCAL_FILINGS table, which is Civly’s mapping of four local registries into one set of columns. YEAR_START, YEAR_END, COMPENSATION_AMOUNT and the _NORM columns in STATE_FILINGS are Civly’s readings too. Lobbyists’ criminal-conviction disclosures, which LDA.gov publishes, are not included.

This product does not use the Senate seal and is not endorsed by the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, or any state or local government.

State and local sources: the New York State Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government (data.ny.gov), the Colorado Secretary of State (data.colorado.gov, public domain), the City of Austin (public domain), the City of Los Angeles (CC0) and Cook County (public domain). Cook County’s registry stops in October 2021. Dallas data is credited to the City of Dallas and used under the Open Data Commons Attribution License. Other states and cities are not included yet.

Permitted use: not for employment, tenant, credit, insurance or licensing decisions about a person.

For coverage or access questions: matthew@civly.ai