Clerk and Secretary Tweak LDA Reporting Guidance

On June 15, 2010, the clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and the secretary of the Senate announced several slight revisions to their Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) Guidance. First, the Guidance stresses that both lobbyist employers and individual lobbyists are required to file Form LD-203 by July 30 and January 30 of each year. The filings by the employer do not extinguish the obligation for the individual lobbyist and vice-versa. Second, a lobbyist employer need only list the previous 20 years of covered positions held by a new lobbyist on the first LDA report (Form LD-2) containing the new lobbyist's name. For corporations and trade associations, this means that such a listing will happen only once. For lobbying firms, the covered positions must be repeated each time the lobbyist is listed for the first time on a particular client's reports.

The updated Guidance can be found at http://lobbyingdisclosure.house.gov/amended_lda_guide.html. Lobbyist employers and lobbyist firms must file the second-quarter Form LD-2 by July 20, 2010. Lobbyists, lobbying firms and individual lobbyists must file Form LD-203 on July 30, covering the first half of 2010.