I downloaded the latest lobbyist expenditure reports filed with the State Ethics Commission last week, and did a quick review for my column that appears at Civil Beat today (“Ian Lind: Lobbyist Spending Is Concentrated at the Top“).

The latest reporting period covered January and February of this year.

I found several interesting things.

First, lobbying expenditures are dropping overall. Looking at the same two-month period over the past several years, total spending dropped from $1,250,532 in 2013 to $832,808 in 2015.

Second, a few organizations with substantial budgets accounted for a large part of the total spent on lobbying.

I found that the top 22 organizations racked up just over half of everything spent for lobbying during the period.

Altria, the tobacco giant which owns Philip Morris and other smoking-related companies, outspent all others during the same two-month period in 2014 and 2015, and was in second place in 2013, according to the reports filed with the ethics commission.

And, finally, I looked at the field of lobbyists. Two firms stand out with the most clients. Capitol Consultants, and Slovin and Ito, LLP, each had more than two dozen major clients.

I found that it’s getting easier to do this kind of very basic breakdown using the State Ethics Commission records now available online. I was able to download their lobbyist expenditure database and the lobbyist registration database, open the data on my laptop, and relatively quickly massage it to produce some usable insights.

I wonder if a step-by-step guide would be useful? If more than a couple of people would find it of interest, then I’ll spend a little time pulling something together.