Effective 28 Aug 2002

105.477. Electronic filing, lobbying reports — information to be made available, to whom — internet website connection, when. — 1. The commission shall supply an electronic reporting system which shall be used by all lobbyists registered with the ethics commission for filing by electronic format prescribed by the commission. The electronic reporting system shall be able to operate using either the Windows or Macintosh operating environment with minimum standards set by the commission.

2. The commission shall have the appropriate software and hardware in place by January 1, 2003, for acceptance of reports electronically. The commission shall make this information available via an internet website connection by no later than January 1, 2004.

3. All lobbyists shall file expenditure reports required by the commission electronically as prescribed by the commission. In addition, lobbyists shall file a signed form prescribed by the commission which verifies the information filed electronically within five working days; except that, when a means becomes available which will allow a verifiable electronic signature, the commission may accept this in lieu of a signed form.

4. All records that are in electronic format, not otherwise closed by law, shall be available in electronic format to the public. The commission shall maintain and provide for public inspection a listing of all reports, with a complete description for each field contained on the report, that has been used to extract information from their database files. The commission shall develop a report or reports which contain every field in each database.

5. Annually, the commission shall provide to the general assembly at no cost a complete copy of information contained in the commission's electronic reporting system database files. The information shall be copied onto a medium specified by the general assembly. Such information shall not contain records otherwise closed by law. It is the intent of the general assembly to provide open access to the commission's records. The commission shall make every reasonable effort to comply with requests for information and shall take a liberal interpretation when considering such requests. Priority shall be given to public requests for reports identifying lobbyist or lobbyist principal expenditures per individual legislator.

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(L. 1997 S.B. 16, A.L. 2002 H.B. 1840)