How We Got The Numbers: The Broken Process
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Inconsistent data listed by the Secretary of State
After procuring an annual list of legislative lobbyists from the Secretary of State’s office, we input each lobbyist’s name, lobby firm, each entity represented, start time, end time, compensation amount, and units (e.g. John Doe earned $4,000 per month for 12 units) into a spreadsheet.
Once all the data were entered, we sorted the spreadsheet by lobby firm. Note: If entities were indicated as lobby firms, then they were inputted as such.
From the data, we calculated the total compensation for each lobbyist's entry by multiplying the compensation amount by the units per time frame. In this step, for the entries that lacked units, we took one of two steps. If detail values were listed under the entity’s 2009 Final Legislative Report, these values were totaled to yield the total compensation. If they didn't supply this information clearly, then we sought information from the other point of view: the entity's report on the Secretary of State's website. This was not an optimum number, however, since it appeared inconsistent across multiple entries. But it was the closest thing to a consistent application, based on the data provided.
From this point, the entries for each lobbyist were totaled, and then grouped and summed under each lobbying firm.
Finally, the top ten earning lobby firms were isolated by ranking the highest total compensation for the lobby firm’s values.
