The state legislature will not reconvene until January, a period often mistaken for a legislative lull. In reality, this interim phase is when the groundwork for the upcoming session is laid through committee work groups, agency rulemaking, and budget requests submitted to the governor’s office in the fall. Throughout these months, various parties are compensated for their presence in these decision-making environments.
The source of this compensation has long been subject to public scrutiny. The same 1972 initiative that mandated financial disclosure for political campaigns also required lobbying activities to report their funding. The Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) releases all these filings as an open dataset.
However, accessing this information has traditionally been a cumbersome task. Employers, lobbying firms, individual lobbyists, and public agencies submit reports on different forms into separate data tables. Furthermore, the name a corporation uses in its filings often differs from the common name users might search for.
Beginning today, The Real Olympic Herald is launching a free online tool designed to simplify this process.
https://therealolympicherald.com/lobbying/
Users can analyze the data in four distinct ways: identifying who funds lobbying efforts, determining who receives the payments, examining which individual lobbyists represent which clients, and tracking which public agencies are lobbying the legislature using public funds.
Selecting any name in the lists generates a dedicated page for that entity. The tool requires no user registration and is free to access. This resource is the second in a series of data tools, following a campaign finance tracker introduced in July, both of which were developed with the support of readers.
Current Data Snapshot
As of September 2, the tool indicated that employers had reported paying $53.2 million for lobbying services in 2026, with four months of reporting still pending.
Puget Sound Energy topped the list, reporting $385,000 in payments across five lobbyists. Amazon followed with $338,660, Boeing reported $321,424, and Microsoft reported $317,591. The Western States Petroleum Association reported $317,322, a figure attributed to just three individuals.
On the recipient side, Gordon Thomas Honeywell Governmental Affairs has received $2.1 million this year from 75 distinct clients. McBride Public Affairs ranks second, having been paid $1.3 million by 40 clients.
A less publicized aspect of this data involves government entities lobbying other government bodies. King County reported $516,178 spent lobbying the legislature in 2025, the highest amount among all public agencies in Washington. The Chelan County public utility district reported spending $233,824.
Selecting either agency in the tool displays a breakdown of the four quarterly reports filed, with each entry linked to the original document.
Technical Functionality
The Real Olympic Herald does not maintain a proprietary lobbying database. There is no nightly data import or internal archive.
Instead, the webpage queries data.wa.gov directly from the user’s browser upon each load. It accesses four specific PDC datasets: lobbyist compensation and expenses, the Commission’s annual employer summaries, public agency lobbying totals, and the registry of lobbyists and their associated firms.
The data displayed reflects exactly what the state was publishing at the moment of the query. Every row in the table links back to the PDC’s original filing.
Names are displayed exactly as entered by the filer. For instance, Boeing appears in the records as “BOEING” rather than “The Boeing Company.” If a user searches for a name that does not match any record, the tool explicitly states this rather than displaying a zero value.
Lobbying disclosures are submitted on a monthly basis while the legislative session is active, shifting to a quarterly schedule once it concludes. Consequently, figures cited at any given moment may be superseded by subsequent filings before a reader verifies the data. The platform features a unique address for each distinct view, allowing users to copy a specific link to their clipboard. When this link is accessed later, the system executes a fresh query against the most current database, ensuring the display reflects real-time records rather than a static snapshot.
A comprehensive explanation of the tool’s methodology is available for public review. This project aligns with the philosophy behind the previously launched campaign finance tracker, operating on the belief that these public records inherently belong to the community. The primary barrier to accessing this information is often the effort required to locate and organize it.
Reader contributions directly fund the development of this tool and upcoming journalism projects. Individuals can support the publication through paid subscriptions or one-time donations.
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