The Big Blink

Peruse the data at your leisure, reach out with corrections and ideas, and stay tuned for site upgrades.

Which is to say this batch of lobbying data comes pretty close to validating the intuitions of the Charter Reform advocates and the will of the voters. Bit by bit, Portland is starting to see something that looks a little like a representative democracy.

Overall, we're seeing things we haven't seen in Portland — maybe ever. For one, there's a set of before-and-after images emerging, showing a clear contrast between the two forms of government. These days, different interest groups are being represented, and different perspectives are being heard.

It turns out that lobbying relationships are as complex as any other sort of human relationship, built on shared interest and reciprocity. Not every City Council member is meeting with the same lobbyists. And the lobbying heavyweights of yesteryear aren't seeing the same audience share they used to.

What's the good news? The reporting changes accompany a nearly simultaneous shift in how lobbying happens in Portland, as lobbyists start to gravitate towards those particular City officials who are friendly to their interests … and those particular officials who are willing to make time for them.

Big Blink might not yet be in a state to showcase all that's changed since Charter Reform. (Working on it! This operation is literally one guy.) But there's some very good stuff in here.

First, the bad news. As expected, the familiar quarter-to-quarter numerical comparisons are basically history.

It was impossible to predict which lobbying entities would take advantage of the updated reporting tools or what combinations we'd see. Even so, these changes weren't the reason the new dataset proved more of a challenge to pull apart and process than the last set, and that's a good thing. Read on:

Not only was City budget season hectic. It overlapped with the first quarter (Q2) lobbyists were allowed to merge multiple lobbying interactions into a single entry.

Q2 is online, with a teensy bundle of technical changes that couldn't have shipped before today. Numbers are down, but that's fine:

Instead of wondering, “who is this person talking to a lobbyist from NW Natural on March 24?” we’ll know that it was Dan Ryan’s chief of staff. Good to know!

There’s still an awful lot of coding work ahead before we get there, but the first batch of changes is on track to debut in a week or two.

Not only will the new data (including more than 1500 rows identifying City officials by office, rank, and role) help demystify and make sense of the structure of relationships inside City Hall. It should also go a ways towards making the policy inclinations of elected officials legible to outsiders.

Q2 data arrives sometime in the middle of next week!

In the meantime, work is underway on the feature teased last month.

Thanks to recently acquired personnel data, it’s possible to start identifying City officials by role. The lobbying records name names, but neglect to say who these people are.

Quarterly top fives are now viewable in the site's Leaderboard, with totals and percentages representing for the selected quarter.

Data for the most recent quarter (2025 Q1) is available at bigblinkpdx.org?quarter=2025..., with Q2 data expected to arrive at the end of the month.

Luckily for everyone, the Big Blink goes just as hard for quality as it has for quantity. A fresh cache of public records has unblocked a digital reorientation long on the Big Blink wishlist and guaranteed to please.

Slowly at first, then all at once. Stay tuned!

While this change is a time-saver for everyone involved, it is likely to be exploited by the most active lobbying groups, and it's sure to obscure the direct, 1-to-1 quantitative analysis provided by bigblinkpdx.org. Q2 data will probably break quarter-by-quarter (and entity-by-entity) comparisons.

The change means that multiple discrete interactions between a lobbyist and a City official can be merged into a single interaction.

Prior to Q2, a scheduling email, a phone call, an in-person meeting, and a followup email would comprise 4 incidents. In Q2, these 4 might be grouped into 1 incident.

A screenshot from slide 28 of a presentation on the Portland City Auditor's 2025 lobbying disclosure regulations. Under the header: Lobbying activity reports New changes to help streamline reporting begin Q2 2025 appears a table showing columns for required lobbying incident details, including this text in the "Date" column: *Upcoming Change: Select one date/ date range for same subjects and actions of interest and this text in the "Contact Type" column: *Upcoming Change: Select multiple methods https://www.portland.gov/auditor/lobbyist/documents/lobbyist-training-2025-city-disclosure-requirements-notes/download

Next Monday, the 2nd quarter of 2025 wraps up, with new Portland lobbying data expected to follow on 7/30 … including a change to reporting requirements that may affect your enjoyment of the Big Blink PDX service.

Starting in Q2, lobbying entities may combine multiple related lobbying incidents.

👁️👁️👁️

The Portland Business Alliance is responsible for almost 40% of Q1 lobbying at Portland City Hall (that’s no surprise, if you’ve been following along at home) and the PBA’s Jon Isaacs secured his lead over veteran lobbyist Amy Ruiz

Depending how you’re counting, Portland City Council is 2-3x the size it was in Q4 … but Q/Q lobbying activity nearly quadrupled! There’s a bunch of interesting stuff in here, so be sure to check it out:

A screenshot of bigblinkpdx.org displaying a chart of lobbying activity over time

Wow

Introducing date filters:

Luckily, The Big Blink's been built to accommodate a little variation in self-representation. Shoes have been gummed, addresses have been cross-referenced, and lobbying records for eight people in the Big Blink database have now been redirected to five people with remarkably similar-sounding names.

Lil ish: City Hall expects lobbying entities to self-report their interactions with officials, so people can turn up in City records under different names and even spellings. It's fair play to go by "Dan" in one room and "Daniel" in another, tho software tends to want the same things to be the same.

In the meantime, you can anticipate a slew of imperceptible changes to the website (of the “bug fixes and performance improvements” variety) leading up to a cool new feature or two. As always, drop a line if something breaks!

To spare you a week of hitting reload …

… although our first full quarter under Portland’s new form of government (!) wraps up this Monday, March 31, Q1 lobbying data is not expected to be released until April 30. Big Blink should be able to chew through that data in a couple three days. Early May?

Do you need to register with Metro as a lobbyist? Metro code has specific requirements for registering lobbyists. Registration is free. Review the definitions to see if you need to register.

Metro does okay, maintaining a clean, striped table of lobbyist registrations.

That list provides Big Blink less data than is needed for its purposes (it's a numbers 📈📊 thing) though regular Big Blink visitors are sure to find their eyes settling on a few familiar names, and that's interesting.

Multnomah County Awards a Billion Dollars in Contracts Each Year Without Lobbying Rules

The Big Blink would have its work cut out for it if Multnomah County, Metro, and the City of Portland adopted uniform lobbyist registration and reporting requirements!

Among local governments the City does the most — keeping track of lobbyists and their activity and publishing the data it collects.

And here’s a direct link to the data for Q4: bigblinkpdx.org/sources/88

Also notable in this batch: new (Olivia Clark, Loretta Smith, Eric Zimmerman) and returning (Steve Novick, Dan Ryan) Council members and incoming Mayor Keith Wilson, who attended a happy hour hosted by the Revitalize Portland Coalition.

As always, please reach out with any corrections or errors.

Although Q4 saw the lowest number of lobbying incidents in four years, the Portland Business Alliance increased its share among all entities since 2014 by 0.25% (to 35.41%). Jon Isaacs, Amy Ruiz, and Andrew Hoan ticked upwards too and held their positions as the most active lobbyists in City Hall.