Track Changes Made on Amended Lobbyist Disclosure Statements

The San Francisco Ethics Commission publishes disclosure statements submitted by Lobbyists on the Commission's web site. Lobbyists disclose information such as client lists, activity expenses, political contributions, contacts of public officials, and payments promised by clients. Lobbyists are required to verify the accuracy and completeness of the disclosure statement that they submit to the Commission.

If the lobbyist makes an error on a disclosure statement, the lobbyist may submit corrections on an amended disclosure statement. When a lobbyist submits an amended disclosure statement, the Commission preserves a copy of the original disclosure statement in addition to the amended disclosure statement. However, the Commission's lobbyist web site directories and transaction searches display only the most current version of the content filed on a lobbyist disclosure statement. To see the changes made to the original statement by any amendment, please follow the instructions below.

How to track changes on a lobbyist disclosure statement

I. Identify Amended Filings

On the Ethics Commission's home page, click on "Lobbyist Activity" located under the heading entitled "Research".  Open the "All Lobbyist Filings" page which lists disclosure statements submitted by lobbyists to the Ethics Commission.

On the "All Lobbyist Filings" page, you will see a table similar to the table in Example #1 below. When a lobbyist submits a statement, the table will update with the date of the filing, ID number, filer name, and the period covered by the statement. The content of a disclosure statement is viewable in the "Directories" or "Transactions" section of the web site.

All disclosure statements submitted to the Commission are assigned a "Filing ID" number. Original disclosure statements and amended disclosure statements can be differentiated by the information in the Caption (Filing Period) column. Amended disclosure statements denote the "Filing ID" number of the original disclosure statement that the amendment is intended to replace. The amendment number identifies the sequence number should the lobbyist submit multiple amendments.

In Example #1 below, the lobbyist John Doe submitted an original disclosure statement on 9/28/2011 for the period 8/1/2011 to 8/31/2011 and the filing was assigned the ID number 987654321. He subsequently amended the disclosure statement on 9/29/2011.  The text in the "Caption (Filing Period)" column references the original filing by noting that the amended disclosure statement supercedes the 987654321 disclosure statement. The amended disclosure statement is also assigned a unique "Filing ID" number.

Example #1

Filing Date	Filing ID	Filer	Caption (Filing Period)	Details
9/29/2011	123456789	Doe, John	Individual Lobbyist Statement (08/01/2011 to 08/31/2011) Supercedes filing 987654321 as amendment #1	Details
9/28/2011	987654321	Doe, John	Individual Lobbyist Statement (08/01/2011 to 08/31/2011)	Details

II. View Amendment Details

To track the changes made to the original disclosure statement, click the "Details" link next to either the original or amended disclosure statement.

Click the text "Differences: Original Filing - Amendment 1" to expand the box to view the changes made to the original disclosure statement. If a lobbyist submits multiple amendments, the page will also display the changes between each amendment by clicking, for example, "Differences: Amendment 1 - Amendment 2".  If no amendments have been made to a disclosure statement then you will not see these options when you click the "Details" link.

The page will only list disclosable information that has changed since the previous disclosure statement. At the top of each box, the page will list the piece of information that has changed. Below each piece of information, the page will display whether the amended disclosure statement added or removed the content from the previous disclosure statement.

In Example #2 below, the client "Widgets Incorporated" was not included on the original disclosure statement and was added on the amended disclosure statement. As a result of the change, the client "Widgets Incorporated" will now appear as a client of the lobbyist in the directory section of the web site.

Example #2

Client:	Widgets Incorporated
Property	Value (Original Filing)	Value (Amendment 1)
	Not Present	Added

In Example #3, the lobbyist disclosed "Widgets Incorporated" as a client on the original disclosure statement and removed the client on the amended disclosure statement. As a result of the change, the client "Widgets Incorporated" will no longer appear as a client on the lobbyist's directory page. However, the information is preserved by viewing the changes on the "All Lobbyist Filings" page.

Example # 3

Client:	Widgets Incorporated
Property	Value (Original Filing)	Value (Amendment 1)
	Present	Removed