shareUpdate: Lobbyist Disclosures
Date: 11/17/2008
VPAP has keyed more than 10,000 pages from the 2007-08 lobbyist disclosure reports. Highlights include:
In disclosing what actions they sought to influence, a small percentage of lobbyists provided lists of bills they tracked during the 2008 session of the Virginia General Assembly.
It's difficult to compare how much money two groups report spend on lobbying activities. That is because Virginia's disclosure laws give lobbyists wide discretion in what they report. Still, VPAP provides a list of top spenders overall or by a single category such as communications or entertainment expenses.
Virginia places no prohibition on lobbyists providing entertainment -- meals, trips, sporting event tickets -- to executive and legislative officials. For the period of May 2007 through April 2008, lobbyists filed 795 entertainment expenses reports. VPAP's Event Calendar lists events per day.