By Thomas M. Susman, Roll Call, September 5, 2006

6 Sep 2006 // Lobbyists who filed their mid-year disclosure reports on Aug. 14 faced continuing frustrations. Stories of filing fiascos already are in circulation, with the most common characterizations of the process being “tedious, redundant and ridiculous.”

The bit of good news was that a few weeks before the filing deadline, the House announced the Clerk would accept disclosure filings in the most recent version of the PDF program, Adobe Acrobat. The bad news: Templates created with prior versions — that is, those used for February’s filing — did not work with this version.

The history of electronic filing has been a long and winding road. In 1995, the Lobbying Disclosure Act optimistically required both the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House to develop “computerized systems designed to minimize the burden of filing and maximize public access to materials” — in other words, to provide online, electronic filing of disclosure statements.

The two main objectives of electronic filing are to increase efficiency, by reducing both lobbyist and Congressional staff time in processing paperwork, and to enhance accountability and transparency in the lobbying process. Unfortunately, neither objective has been achieved yet. After a decade, Congress still does not have an efficient, unified, searchable filing system for the lobbying disclosure registrations and reports.

The Senate went digital in 2000 — sort of. However, the Secretary accepted, and still accepts, paper reports. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the anthrax scare, those mailed reports were irradiated in Ohio and then delivered weeks later to Congress. The Senate went so far as to set up a trailer in the parking lot to accept and process delivered reports. The demand for electronic filing continued to build, and the House began to give serious attention to a filing system that had been in the works since early 1999.

As a testament to Congressional bureaucracy, the House waited until Dec. 31, 2005, to accept electronically filed reports. But there was no option: Electronic filing was mandatory, by direction of then-House Administration Chairman Bob Ney (R-Ohio), who recently announced he will not seek re-election this fall. (At the time, Ney had been identified as a recipient of now-disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s largess.)

The House filing system, then and now, required digitally signed electronic reports. The House Web site initially identified two firms authorized to issue them, but before the February 2006 filing deadline, the House eliminated one firm, so any attempt to file using the previously recommended vendor would fail.

Then, on filing day, for this and other reasons relating to system overload, the House system rejected numerous attempts to file by lobbyists and their employers, resulting in the Clerk’s having to accept paper filings once again, accompanied by an explanation letter for paper versions.

This spring, many lobbying firms discovered another maddening quirk involving Adobe Acrobat. Earlier in the year, many law and lobbying firms, associations and corporations upgraded to the more versatile Adobe Acrobat, shortly after it was released. However, that version proved incompatible with the House’s already outdated filing system and strict digital signature requirements. For some lobbyists, the only solution would be a dedicated laptop running the older Adobe 6.0 version.

Finally, on July 21, the House announced the Clerk would accept the newer version. While this was a welcome step, the filings still proved to be burdensome and time-consuming, often involving conversion of previous templates to the new format. While staff of both the Clerk’s and Secretary’s offices (when they could be reached) were courteous and helpful in answering questions of callers, the filing system was in short order, characterized by filers as a mess.

On top of it all, the Senate still accepts paper filings, which require manual data entries. With the Secretary’s small staff, the lobbying database remains months behind the filings.

Regrettably, PDF versions are not searchable, and the House still offers no Internet-accessible lobbying database. Likewise, the Senate provides no full-text search capability, and even the search categories are limited, omitting important parameters such as what specific issues were lobbied. So much for creating timeliness and transparency in the lobbying process.

Of course, others already have entered the breach; the Center for Public Integrity, for example, has alleviated these shortcomings by offering fully searchable lobbying and campaign contribution databases. (PoliticalMoneyLine.com does, too for an annual fee.)

Yes, we have two chambers of Congress, but the U.S. has only one Architect of the Capitol, one Capitol Police force and one Library of Congress. There’s no constitutional imperative for — nor any good reason for — two lobbying filing venues. And we certainly should not have to wait for another round of legislation to establish a unified, up-to-date, fully searchable electronic database for lobbying registrations and reports. After all, the 1995 statute already directs the Secretary and Clerk to create systems “to minimize the burden of filing and maximize public access to materials.” It’s past time for that to happen.

Even without enactment of pending lobby reform legislation — which would compound the logistical problem by increasing the lobbying reporting requirements from semiannual to quarterly — the House and Senate jointly should implement the 1995 lobbying disclosure statute and make the filing process easier and more transparent for everyone.

Congress and the nation only are beginning to see some of the fallout from the activities of Abramoff and others. Modern electronic filing and disclosure won’t solve these problems, but they could be a start. Lobbying is not only a constitutional right but an honest profession as well. Lobbyists deserve the scrutiny, and the convenience, of a 21st century electronic filing system. That is not what we’re getting from the House and Senate right now.

Thomas M. Susman is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Ropes & Gray. He has been a lobbyist for more than 25 years, teaches lobbying and the legislative process at American University’s Washington College of Law, co-edited the American Bar Association’s Lobbying Manual and is chairman of the American League of Lobbyists’ ethics committee.