Author | Lightnews

The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · 2d

… but it's allowed, thanks to a regulatory change that went into effect the prior quarter (2025 Q2). The change promised "to assist with general compliance, reduce administrative burden, increase disclosures, and clarify reports to the public."

🤔

Hmm.

www.portland.gov/auditor/lobb...

Lobbyist and Lobbying Entity Questions

On this page, you will find a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the City’s lobbying regulations for lobbyists and lobbying entities.

www.portland.gov

The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · 2d

One thing to note is that the numbers are almost surely undercounts!

In the table of lobbying incidents, you'll see a number of entries dated to the full duration of Q3. These entries collect unknown numbers of distinct lobbying interactions. That seems a little weird …

bigblinkpdx.org/sources/95

Data Sources · The Big Blink PDX

Activity from Lobbying Activity Report for Q3 2025 according to lobbying data published by the City of Portland, Oregon

bigblinkpdx.org

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · 2d

Q3 lobbying data is online! Overall lobbying is way down from the first two quarters … possibly. More on that in a bit.

Big surprises? Nah. The Portland Business Alliance claimed responsibility for more than 40% of all entries, securing the org's #1 spot since 2014.

bigblinkpdx.org?quarter=2025...

Remixing lobbying data published by the City of Portland, Oregon · The Big Blink PDX

Lobbying activity according to data published by the City of Portland, Oregon

bigblinkpdx.org

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Sep 20

Thanks for using it! And thanks for the feedback!

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Sep 20

Search is difficult to do well and easy to get wrong … and probably will have to include details like entity names and personal names in results. It’s long been in the thinking stage, along with some related means of making the Topic field manageable, for the reason you cite

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Sep 20

Currently filters are available on the detail views for individual entities, people/groups, and sources, and those views serve as primary filters. Are there other filters that would be helpful?

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Sep 20

Sort and filter settings are recorded in the URL so users can bookmark their preferences. Like this: bigblinkpdx.org/incidents?so...

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Sep 20

In the meantime, expect the same old steady stream of imperceptible website performance upgrades.

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Sep 20

Next Monday, Portland summer terms out 🍁 and City Hall’s lobbyists have eight more days to get their Q3 policy requests in. One month after that, we’ll be paging through another comma-separated snapshot showing who pushed what concern with whom. End of quarter + 1mo. Just setting expectations here.

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Aug 30

As always, reach out with questions or bug reports.

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Aug 30

Without a doubt, this is the most complex and delicate feature added to the website since its debut two years ago. It’s been important to get the implementation right, to set a good foundation for other uses of this data. And this implementation is pretty close to right.

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Aug 30

Thanks to a trove of City personnel data and two months of unobtrusive changes, Big Blink PDX can answer a question left unanswered by City lobbying reports:

Who is this??

Wherever possible, Portland City officials are now identified by the position they held on the date of each lobbying incident.

Lobbying Incident

ENTITY:
Oregon Smart Growth

DATE:
June 25, 2025

TYPE:
Text Message

CATEGORY:
Housing and Community Development

TOPIC:
Temporary SDC Waiver

OFFICIALS:
Dan Ryan
Councilor for District 2

Kezia Wanner
Senior Council Aide for Councilor Dan Ryan (District 2)

LOBBYISTS: Amy Ruiz

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Jul 31

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

Data Sources · The Big Blink PDX

Activity from Lobbying Activity Report for Q2 2025 according to lobbying data published by the City of Portland, Oregon

bigblinkpdx.org

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Jul 31

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.

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Jul 31

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.

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Jul 31

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.

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Jul 31

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.

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Jul 31

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.

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Jul 31

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:

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Jul 31

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:

Remixing lobbying data published by the City of Portland, Oregon · The Big Blink PDX

Lobbying activity according to data published by the City of Portland, Oregon

bigblinkpdx.org

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Jul 26

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.

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Jul 26

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.

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Jul 26

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.

The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Jun 25

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!

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Jul 16

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.

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The Big Blink @bigblinkpdx.bsky.social · Jun 25

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!

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