The matching is the work.

The inputs are all public filings. Lobbying disclosures, IRS 990s, campaign finance records, state ethics filings are available for analysis. The hard part comes with resolving discrepancies and cleaning the raw inputs.

The Iowa State Capitol building and grounds.
How it works

Resolving one organization out of six inconsistent filings.

Every public filing that touches money or lobbying gets pulled and reconciled before any claim goes in a report.

I use a combination of manual analysis and language models to match those spellings up and draft the first version of the writeup, then I check every claim against the filing it came from before it goes out.

Keeping the matching accurate, and current, is what takes the time. It isn’t a one-time scrape. Filings get amended, organizations rename, and officers move between entities.

If it’s on the map, you can open the document behind it.

That’s the standard the matching has to clear: a connection has to trace back to a specific filing, on a specific date, that you could pull yourself.

The report is grounded in strong accuracy standards. A connection that can’t be traced back to a filing doesn’t go in the report.

Scroll to see the full diagram →

Diagram showing four public filing types resolving into one matched organization, then checked back against the source filing. LOBBYING FILINGS IRS 990s CAMPAIGN FINANCE STATE ETHICS FILINGS MATCH SAME ENTITY, RESOLVED ORGANIZATION & SHARED OFFICERS EVERY CLAIM CHECKED BACK AGAINST ITS ORIGINAL FILING

Four filing types, reconciled to one organization, then checked claim by claim against the record it came from.

The case

Four bills, three sessions, one pipeline fight.

The Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline case, tracked bill by bill since the eminent domain question first reached the floor.

HF565
2023

Sets a 90% voluntary-easement threshold before a CO2 pipeline company can use eminent domain.

Study committee created
HF2664
2024

Lets landowners challenge a pipeline’s eminent domain authority in court before permits are issued.

Passed House 86 to 7
HF639
2025

Omnibus common-carrier and eminent domain standards bill. Passed the legislature.

Vetoed by governor
HF2104
2025 to 2026

Bans eminent domain for CO2 pipelines outright. Passed the House 64 to 28.

Pending in Senate
In progress…
Limits

Limitations to this work.

These reports don’t cover federal fights, which don’t have a clean disclosure trail at this level.

This isn’t a guessing game. The same standard applies no matter who’s asking or which party the filing belongs to. What the filings don’t say, the report says plainly.

What you get instead.

One fight, fully mapped, with every claim linked back to the filing it came from. Where the public record is silent, the report says so directly instead of guessing at it.

8

states require a lobbyist to disclose which side of a bill they’re on. Iowa is one of them.

18

states require naming the bill number at all, and that’s a large part of why this started here.

Wherever your fight is, tell me about it and I’ll tell you straight whether it’s a fit.

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