Chicago Lobbyist Expenditure Summaries Under $250

Expenditures under $250 per transaction are aggregated per three-month reporting period, as reported to the Chicago Board of Ethics. The City of Chicago provides this data to detail smaller lobbying expenditures, with larger transactions itemized separately. The dataset was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyze quarterly trends in small lobbying expenditures using the three-month reporting period field.
• Compare aggregated small expenditure patterns against itemized large expenditures from the linked companion dataset.
• Study the distribution of lobbying activity by examining the frequency and volume of sub-$250 transactions.

Strengths

• Data is provided in multiple machine-readable formats including CSV, JSON, XML, and RDF.
• Managed and published by the authoritative City of Chicago Board of Ethics, ensuring official provenance.
• Last update timestamp indicates recent maintenance as of April 2026.

Limitations

• Specific row count, column names, and total data size are unknown.
• Expenditures are aggregated by period, preventing analysis of individual transactions under $250.
• Lacks companion data on itemized large expenditures, which is stored in a separate dataset.

Provenance

Source

City of Chicago Board of Ethics

Collection Method

Summarized from mandatory lobbying activity reports filed with the Board.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-04-05.

Geography

City of Chicago, Illinois, USA