Wisconsin

The hardest thing to find in some states–disclosures of clients’ business and legislative interests–is featured prominently in WI’s complete lobbyist list. Wisconsin has the best system of any state for tracking lobbyist activity on individual bills; and it even links to all advocacy by all lobbyists on any particular bill. The system also tracks hours spent lobbying for each client, and the percentage of a lobbyist’s time that their work on a particular bill took.

The University of Wisconsin Climate Connection warns that Wisconsin will face increasingly severe storms and floods because of the climate crisis. Yet lobbyists for UW’s Eau Claire campus and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation share the lobbying firm of Michael Best Strategies with Enbridge, which operates the largest network of fossil-fuel carrying pipelines in North America and has lobbied to export Canadian tar sands oil through New England. This oil has been called some of the dirtiest oil in the world and these tar sands represent one of its biggest unexploded “carbon bombs,” a resource whose development would jeopardize any chance of limiting global warming to 1.5° C. Meanwhile, Badger Advocates, an alumni advocacy organization, shares Enbridge with a different firm, Wimmer Consulting.

All of these UW lobbyists disclose working on the state budget in 2024; and since UW, like other institutions, faces rising climate mitigation costs, some of these funds will inevitably go toward solving problems caused by fossil fuel companies like Enbridge. Closer to home, it is remarkable that Badger Advocates also shares a firm with Madison Gas & Electric because this company’s highly-polluting West Campus gas plant sits right next to the offices of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

Best feature: strongest bill and position reporting system of any state.

Worst feature: integrated list of lobbyists and their clients is in an unhelpful PDF format.

Additional Findings

Simple, fast, and dynamic system for tracking and disclosing positions taken by all lobbyists, and positions taken on all bills. Up, down, and sideways arrows are used to show whether a lobbyist supported, opposed, or proposed amendments on a particular bill. The system also flags lobbyists who failed to disclose their position on a bill with a “?” symbol, making WI the only state to flag these non-disclosures.