Following the annual review of Lobbying Disclosure Act Guidance, Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives issued revised guidance on January 31st, 2017. Outlined below are the new updates included in the revised guidance. The full revised guidance can be found here.
Updated Registration Threshold
As required by the LDA, the lobbying disclosure thresholds referenced throughout the Guidance have been updated to reflect changes in the Consumer Price Index (as determined by the Secretary of Labor) during the preceding 4-year period. After January 1, 2017, an organization employing in-house lobbyists is exempt from registration if its total expenses for lobbying activities does not exceed and is not expected to exceed $13,000 during a quarterly period. The $3,000 income threshold for lobbying firms remains unchanged. See Guidance Section 4 on “Who Must Register and When” for additional information.
The previous Guidance update included non-substantive grammatical changes throughout and revisions to sections that previously referred to Line numbers in the reporting forms, as the current online filing system no longer relies on Line numbers. References to the LDA were also revised to identify the citation from the U.S. Code, with Internet links added in the online Guidance document to the U.S. Code.
Identification of Client and Covered Officials
Clarification is added in Guidance Section 4 to reflect the requirement of lobbyists to identify their client and interest of foreign entities when making lobbying contacts, and the requirement of covered officials or their employing office to identify whether the individual is a covered official.
Outside Retained Lobbyists
Guidance Section 4 includes an additional example confirming that outside retained lobbyist names are not reported on the registration (LD-1) or quarterly activity reports (LD-2) of organizations that employ in-house lobbyists. The section re-affirms that outside retained lobbying costs must be taken into account when calculating lobbying expenses. Outside retained lobbyists file their own registration and quarterly reports.
Income and Expense Rounding and Reporting, Agencies Contacted
Guidance Section 6 includes a new example to clarify that income or expenses are required to be rounded to the nearest $10,000. Another example is expanded to suggest care be taken when an organization uses an entire office budget for reporting purposes, since additional lobbying expenses need to be factored in and may be overlooked when using such an expense reporting method. In the discussion of “Contents of the Report,” additional clarification is added to confirm that filers should choose the most specific Agency available from the reporting system list. If the list does not display the government entity contacted, the filer is advised to select the agency or department in which the entity is housed.
Lobbyist and Registrant Contribution Reports (LD-203)
An example is added to Guidance Section 7 to make it clear that sole proprietors, including those who register with their lobbyist name as the registrant name, are required to file two contribution reports each filing period—one report for the registrant and one report for the individual lobbyist.
Public Availability and Compliance
In Guidance Section 10, filers are encouraged to use the online public databases for compliance purposes, to verify that registrations and reports have been received and processed into the public databases. Registrations and reports are available online at the House website at http://lobbyingdisclosure.house.gov, as well as the Senate website at http://www.senate.gov/lobby.
