This story is excerpted from Capitolized, a weekly newsletter featuring expert reporting, analysis and insight from the reporters and editors of Montana Free Press. Want to see Capitolized in your inbox every Thursday? Sign up here. Montana’s political cop is struggling to keep track of lobbyists’ spending, legislative auditors have found.Speaking to the Legislative Audit Committee this week, an analyst said sampled lobbying reports filed with the Commissioner of Political Practices were missing key information. Businesses and organizations lobbying the Legislature, known as principals, failed to identify what bills they were trying to influence, their physical addresses, and expenses — all of which are required to be reported.Deputy auditor Christiane Rudmann told legislators this week the COPP office has been too overwhelmed to scrutinize the content of lobbying reports and instead focused on filing deadlines.“Staff told us that bills and subjects lobbyists worked on are not the focus of their review,” Rudmann told the Legislative Audit Committee. “We were told that the office had to choose between ensuring either timeliness or completeness, due to the high workload and limited resources, and that they chose to focus on timeliness. The law requires the Commissioner of Political Practices to inspect reports and follow up on issues of noncompliance. The legislative auditor is recommending that records be reported only electronically, and not by paper. Hard copies of lobbying reports are accepted currently, but are not combined with electronic reports, which means the public must inspect two different databases to get the full picture of what lobbyists are up to. Rudmann’s report recommends that lobbyists report monthly when the Legislature is in session and quarterly when it isn’t. Currently the state requires just three lobbying reports over a two-year period.  RELATED Chris Gallus confirmed as Commissioner of Political Practices Gallus, a longtime attorney and lobbyist for the Montana Chamber of Commerce and several conservative-aligned causes, replaces Jeff Mangan. by Arren Kimbel-Sannit 02.15.202302.15.2023 Commissioner of Political Practices Chris Gallus agreed with the recommendations, but said lawmakers would have to provide him with more staff and resources to comply. Gallus has six employees who shepherd candidates through campaign compliance, review conduct complaints, and process reports for lobbyists and the 450 businesses and organizations lobbying state government. Reports are due in mid-February when the Legislature is in session, 30 days after the Legislature adjourns, and once in February in years the Legislature isn’t in session. Monthly reports are required only when lobbying expenses are greater than $5,000, a threshold auditors concluded allows some activity to go unnoticed.“Say a lobbyist receives a monthly retainer payment of $4,500 from their principal. This lobbyist is approaching [a legislator] in any of the non-mandatory months, for example, after the session, but in the context of an interim committee, and the principal who’s hiring that lobbyist doesn’t have any other expenses that would make them cross that $5,000 threshold. That lobbying activity will not be reported, which all means the public has no way of learning about it,” Rudmann said.The auditor recommends getting rid of the $5,000 threshold and requiring monthly reports during the legislative session and quarterly reports the rest of the time.Rep. Fiona Nave, R-Columbus, questioned why getting reports filed on time is prioritized over making sure information in the reports is accurate.“It appears to me that if I get information that’s timely, but it’s not accurate, it doesn’t do anything for me,” Nave said. “It’s better to be complete and accurate.”Gallus agreed with Nave. He said if reports were automated, blank spaces where required details should be could trigger a prompt for missing information. “It might just trigger as a reminder, like, ‘Yeah, I did buy Sen. Flowers those two steaks and he took a lobster home.’ People will forget things, and if we trigger them, maybe that will increase the reporting.”The scenario posed by Gallus was hypothetical, not a factual example of Senate Minority Leader Pat Flowers, D-Belgrade, going full surf and turf on a lobbyist.  The post Legislative auditors recommend changes at Office of Political Practice appeared first on Montana Free Press.