Lobbyists Tangled in a Paperless Pursuit

The Senate posts its lobbying reports -- some filed electronically but most handed in on paper and then scanned into an Internet-ready format -- for all the world to see under the "legislation and records" section at http://www.senate.gov/ . Researchers are able to peruse the site to gain real insight and knowledge. The House, in contrast, makes reading its documents as difficult as possible. House-deposited reports are not posted on the Internet. To read them, a person must find his way to the basement of the Cannon House Office Building and wrestle with computer terminals there that offer limited search capabilities.

And here's the clincher: Even though the House will require filing over the Internet, it has no plans to put the records online. Its habit of keeping its door largely closed to public inspections will remain entirely unchanged.

That, said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), "is absurd."

"Why would [the House] have electronic filing if it didn't put the information online so people could see it?" asked Lofgren, a member of the House Administration Committee. "What you'd want to do is file electronically so that the data is widely searchable."

What's more, the rise of the House system could lead to the fall of the Senate's. Congressional aides figure that almost no one will bother filing online to the Senate when they'll have to put so much time and effort into complying with the House's elaborate procedures. It's more likely that they will print the House form and deliver it on paper to the Senate.

"We knew that [the House's system] pretty much could sink the Senate system," said Gerasimos C. Vans, the deputy House clerk.

Taken from a different vantage -- the lobbyists' -- the House system is much more convoluted than the Senate's and may collapse from its own weight.

The Senate's system is password protected and asks lobbyists to type in codes to complete their filings. The House system has a fancier technology that requires a more foolproof identification called a digital signature, which places the responsibility for verification with a nongovernmental third party.

Lobbyists prefer neither method. At least 85 percent of registered lobbyists have continued to file their reports on paper even though electronic filing has been available in the Senate since 2000 and in the House since 2004.

Those days are over. Soon, the House won't accept paper filings. One result will be a mad rush to file disclosures on paper by year-end as a way to avoid the electronic system.

Yet there are reasons to doubt whether the House's electronic system will ever work. The House technology requires Adobe Reader Version 6.0 software to fill out the disclosure forms. Sadly, the current version of Adobe Reader, 7.0, is unable to deal with the House's electronic reports.

Worse yet, lobbyists can't use Macintosh computers to file electronically to the House.